This is the second of three articles on the spring NCC Governing Board meeting. Coverage of the NCC’s budget can be viewed by clicking here.
National Council of Churches (NCC) General Secretary Michael Kinnamon has stressed the council’s primary identity as an instrument of Christian unity rather than political action. But there was still plenty of politics in evidence at the May 17-18 NCC Governing Board meeting in Elizabeth, New Jersey.
The governing board adopted, received, or considered statements on Afghanistan, public education, and gun violence, and it heard information about immigration. In all cases, the positions espoused were well to the left of the political spectrum: opposed to U.S. military involvement in Afghanistan, suspicious of efforts to introduce accountability and choice into public education, eager for restrictions on gun ownership, and favorable toward “comprehensive immigration reform” including amnesty for illegal immigrants. In many cases, these NCC positions are to the left of the Obama administration, which has increased the U.S. troop presence in Afghanistan, has shown some concern for accountability and choice in education, and has seemed reluctant to invest political capital in the gun or immigration issues.
Afghanistan
The governing board received a draft “Call for the Earliest Possible Withdrawal of United States and NATO Forces from Afghanistan.” The resolution expresses concern that continued military operations against the Taliban would solidify resistance and stimulate support for al-Qaeda terrorists. The draft resolution notes “the millennia-long history of failed efforts by foreign powers to defeat entrenched and insular Afghan forces by military means” and questions if the conflict with the Taliban meets the criteria for a “just war.”
“Although none of the 19 hijackers [on 9-11-2001] were Afghan nationals, Afghanistan was the al-Qaeda base and President George W. Bush quickly drew up plans to invade Afghanistan as a means of combating terrorism,” the resolution’s authors assert. The draft text expresses “profound concerns” about the war, among them its cost in lives, property, and political instability that “continues in Afghanistan despite – or perhaps because of – our presence there.”
“Neither the initial motivation to go to war nor the more recent decisions to escalate military operations in Afghanistan appear to be consistent with the churches’ consensus on what constitutes a just war,” the resolution says. It also notes that many NCC member communions do not subscribe to the just war tradition and quotes a World Council of Churches declaration from 1948 that “[w]ar is contrary to the will of God.”
In 2001 the NCC General Assembly opposed the U.S.-led intervention to help the Afghan Northern Alliance overthrow the Taliban regime. The current draft resolution quotes from that 2001 statement, advising that instead of employing military force “it would be wiser to address the political, economic and cultural injustices that give rise to unrest and terrorism.”
The resolution also lists a series of complicating factors, acknowledging that the desired withdrawal of U.S. and NATO forces might have unfortunate consequences for the Afghan people. “If President Karzai’s government falls, one fear is the re-establishment of safe havens in Afghanistan for al-Qaeda and other terrorist factions whose goals are to strike at the vital interests of American and European societies,” the draft resolution reads. “Perhaps an even more sobering scenario of a Taliban restoration is the bloodbath that might be inflicted on women and men who failed to observe fundamentalist religious law, and the abusive subjugation of women and girls.”
The draft text then asks, “In these situations, what is the moral obligation of the United States, and what must be the counsel of the churches?” The answer appears to be to turn the problem over to the United Nations, as the draft then quotes “Responsibility to Protect,” an NCC-endorsed declaration adopted by the UN Security Council in 2005. The declaration says that the international community, through the UN, should “take collective action” to prevent crimes such as genocide, ethnic cleansing, war crimes, and crimes against humanity “should peaceful means be inadequate and national authorities are manifestly failing to protect their populations” from these crimes. Critics point to the ineffectiveness of the UN in stopping genocide in places such as Bosnia and Rwanda.
The draft NCC resolution also calls upon the President of the United States to “continue to monitor the human-rights situation in Afghanistan in the context of the United Nations declaration to use all available diplomatic means to protect the population from crimes against humanity, and to employ military means of protection only as a last resort and as a function of the United Nations.”
Immediate past NCC President Archbishop Vicken Aykazian of the Armenian Orthodox Church said that he planned to support the resolution due to his opposition to war, but was concerned about the consequences of withdrawal. “If NATO forces leave Afghanistan, is it going to be better – for them [the Afghan people]?” Aykazian asked, urging the council to be careful about any resolution passed. The archbishop noted that Afghanistan had many hostile tribal groups and could “collapse into hell,” with terrorists “waiting to attack.”
Others found the draft resolution insufficiently strong in its condemnation of the U.S. role in Afghanistan. “The title is weak in my mind, and I would encourage us to strengthen the document itself and the punch of the title by saying, ‘Afghanistan, a Call to End an Unjust War and Build a Just Peace,’” said Stephen J. Sidorak, Jr., ecumenical officer for the United Methodist Church. Sidorak also criticized the U.S. practice of attacking suspected terrorists from unmanned aerial vehicles (also called drones), which he argued violated the just war tradition of preventing injury to non-combatants.
Education
The governing board voted to receive a pastoral letter on public education, authored by the NCC’s Education and Leadership Ministries Commission. The letter, addressed to President Obama and members of Congress, praises democratic governance of public schools through elected school boards. It voices concerns about non-traditional methods of education, including publicly funded charter schools that are administered separately from the public school bureaucracy.
“…[I]f government invests public funds in charter schools that report to private boards, government, not the vicissitudes of the marketplace, should be expected to provide oversight to protect the common good,” the NCC letter reads. The letter expresses skepticism about market-based reforms that give parents a choice in the schools their children attend and force the schools to compete against one another. It claims that such reforms increase educational opportunity for only a few children.
“When there is competition to attract students to a range of small schools or charter schools, and when these schools are sought out by parents who are active choosers, what happens to the traditional neighborhood public schools which are left to serve the majority of special education students, English language learners, and homeless children?” the letter asks.
The letter’s most strident criticisms are targeted at “the language of the marketplace” which it says has entered public education discussions. “The language of business accountability is used to talk about education,” the NCC letter complains, protesting that education should be viewed as “a human endeavor of caring.” The letter also criticizes “the relentless focus on testing basic skills,” which it argues has diminished attention to the humanities, social studies, and the arts.
During the presentation of the letter, governing board members were briefed by Jan Resseger, Minister for Public Education and Witness with the United Church of Christ, one of the NCC’s member communions. Ressenger criticized U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan and said the national education conversation had “veered into attacking on public education and scapegoating public school educators.”
Gun Violence
Following up a presentation on gun violence at last November’s NCC General Assembly in Minneapolis, the council adopted at its May governing board meeting a resolution on the subject. The resolution calls upon legislators to enact reforms that limit access to assault weapons and handguns.
“We have become a nation at war with ourselves and numbed to the sacredness of human life,” the resolution reads. “Every day (on average) 300 Americans are victims of gun violence, with 85 lives taken daily as a result.”
Seeking to frame the statement as both “idealistic” and “realistic,” the council appeals to both the stream within the Christian tradition that counsels non-violence in all circumstances and the stream that recognizes a need in some cases to use force to resist aggression.
“This ‘realistic’ view of human nature also argues for restricting access to guns which, in the wrong hands or without adequate supervision, can make violence ever more deadly,” the resolution argues. “Christians can certainly contend that it is necessary for public authorities to take up arms in order to protect citizens from violence, but to allow assault weapons in the hands of the general public can scarcely be justified on Christian grounds. The stark reality is that such weapons end up taking more lives than they defend, and the reckless sale or use of these weapons refutes the gospel’s prohibition against violence.”
The resolution does not address the Second Amendment guarantee of an individual right to bear arms. Nor does it reflect upon the concerns by the nation’s founders to ensure a well-armed citizenry. The resolution quotes the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5:38, in which Christ commands his followers, “Do not resist an evildoer.”
“It is idolatry to trust in guns to make us secure, since that usually leads to mutual escalation while distracting us from the One whose love alone gives us security,” the resolution insists.
Immigration
While the NCC did not introduce any new resolutions on the subject of immigration, the Rev. José Luis Casal of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) led the group in a prayer “for the human tragedy behind immigration.”
“Your love transcends our limitations and our unfair rules that discriminate against and divide humankind,” the prayer told God. “Your merciful compassion transcends our unlimited selfishness that condemns millions of people around the world to lives of misery, hunger, sickness and utter despair.”
NCC President Peg Chemberlin also spoke about the NCC’s efforts to advance comprehensive immigration reform legislation. Describing sitting in the Roosevelt Room of the White House to press the Obama administration to push harder on the issue, Chemberlin recalled “[Church World Service Director] John [McCullough] was down the table a little bit to my right and we were talking with one of the senior Obama program staff on immigration.”
“Of course CWS and NCC agreed on what we were asking for,” Chemberlin continued. “Right next to me was the policy director for the National Association of Evangelicals. Let me say that again. The National Association of Evangelicals and the National Council of Churches were sitting side by side, both asking the White House to lead on comprehensive immigration reform.”
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