Evangelicals do not contribute to Community Building and Healing.

Published on Monday, October 23, 2006 by the Winnipeg Free Press (Canada)
The Super-Powered Gospel:
Evangelical Sabre-Rattling Doesn't Advance Global Understanding
by Will Braun


AS awkward as it feels to talk about God in the daily paper, the Almighty is an unavoidable player in world events. Presidents, politicized clerics and suicide bombers claim the stamp of divine endorsement. They're all fighting "evil" and they're all claiming the guarantee of ultimate victory.

So depending on what you believe, our world is either engaged in a cosmic battle to the apocalyptic finish, or just mired in raw politics with some players bluffing a divine trump card.

In either case, Christianity currently has the upper hand. With the undisputed world superpower officially presenting itself as a God-blessed nation, Christianity has the biggest guns. President Bush is never shy about framing his policies in religious language, from his God Bless America political mantra to quoting Psalm 23 after 9-11. According to a BBC report, Bush even claimed the orders to invade Iraq came directly from on high.

The days of the Crusades no longer seem as distant -- days when medieval Christian armies slaughtered infidels to protect Christianity's geo-political domain. Politics, religion and military might are still a powerful cocktail.

Many prominent American religious figures lend their clerical credibility to president Bush and his super-powered religion. Key among them is Rev. Franklin Graham, who came to Winnipeg this weekend to preach at the MTS Centre.

Perhaps more than any other clergy, Franklin Graham and his father Billy -- one of the most prominent Christian figures of this era -- have served to put the stamp of Godly blessing on the U.S. and its government. Ever since Eisenhower, Billy Graham has served as the nation's pastor, to use George Bush Sr.'s description. Graham has had a role in eight presidential inauguration ceremonies, was with Bush Sr. at the White House on the eve of Desert Storm, and can claim as his most famous convert, George Junior. One fundamentalist writer called Graham the "minister-in-chief."

With the elder Graham well into his 80s, Franklin is the heir apparent to the ministry. He filled in at the last presidential inauguration and has been vocal in his support of the U.S. government and its troops.

The Grahams -- widely respected in Christian circles and beyond -- have consistently provided a visible, public symbol of the church's blessing of the United States and its international forays, both in Republican and in Democratic eras.

This may be good or bad, depending on your view of the U.S. or a particular president, but it raises an issue beyond partisanship and national allegiance: What is the role of religion in an increasingly divided global village? With political leaders on many fronts talking tough, waving their guns and clinging to national self-interest, is the best role for religion that of bolstering the bravado?

Franklin Graham, brandishing a tone not heard from his father, called Islam "a very evil and wicked religion" and, in the wake of 9-11, said the U.S. should drop nuclear weapons on Afghanistan. He has backed down somewhat from the former statement but refuses to retract the latter. Rather than countering increased division in the world with calls for understanding and unity, he is digging the trenches deeper.

To be clear about what Rev. Graham suggested for Afghanistan, picture in your mind the apocalyptic images of Hiroshima and Nagasaki -- disfigured people and a lifeless smouldering moonscape.

Is that what the religious imagination has to offer the world?

Compare that with the Amish of Nickel Mines. When faced with senseless violence, they did not respond with righteous vengeance but reached out to the family of the man who killed their children, setting up trust funds for his kids. Confronted by unthinkable violence, they responded with unthinkable forgiveness and compassion.

For them, faith meant replacing the human impulse for fear and retaliation with something kinder and gentler.

Whether or not one believes in God, war or America, likely we would all agree that our volatile, fearful world would benefit from more voices of compassion and calm rather than more voices that turn us against each other? In this world, does religion not have a higher calling than aggression? As the world becomes increasingly polarized, will religion simply follow suit?

Right up until his final sermon in New York last year, Billy Graham called his services crusades, maintaining this allusion to Christianity's most violent and impositional phase. Though President Bush was forced to apologize for referring to the war on terror as a crusade, Graham somehow gets away with it. Though Franklin is moving away from the term, the undercurrent of aggression still seems strong.

The point is not that religion should necessarily retreat from the public sphere. Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., Bishop Desmond Tutu and Gandhi all blended religion with fearless engagement in the public realm, but they did it in a way that brought people together and dissipated violence. Gandhi went so far as to say: "I am a Muslim and a Hindu and a Christian and a Jew and so are all of you."

Where are the religious leaders with the courage and breadth to make such a statement today?

Perhaps religion, at its seldom-seen best, should allow society to imagine the unimaginable -- like responding to evil with goodness and forgiving murders. Maybe the power of such actions can do more for our world than the superpower of religio-political might.

Will Braun is editor of Geez magazine and attends Hope Mennonite Church in Winnipeg.

© Copyright 2006 Winnipeg Free Press