LUTHERANS: Bishop says war is moral, not strategic, issue for faithful


BY STEPHEN SCOTT

Religion Editor


Bishop Mark Hanson came home this past week. For two days.


The presiding bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America visited

the city of his last assignment, where he headed the ELCA's St. Paul Area

Synod before his election to national office in August 2001.


Hanson, in the second year of a six-year term, travels 80 percent of the

time, so he seldom is at his new home in Chicago, either. Next month, he is

planning a pilgrimage to Europe to meet with Pope John Paul II, the

archbishop of Canterbury and the ecumenical patriarch of the Orthodox Church.


"For a guy who's been a parish pastor 22 years,'' Hanson said, "when you're

in the parish, you don't sit around saying, 'OK, how am I going to get ready

to meet with the pope and the archbishop of Canterbury?' "


As leader of this country's sixth-largest church body, Hanson has a platform

from which to speak on issues as far-reaching as church growth and the

conflict in the Middle East. He is one of a group of U.S. religious leaders

pushing to meet soon with President Bush concerning Iraq.


Hanson met with the Pioneer Press on Tuesday before leading a daylong

gathering for Twin Cities ELCA leaders. An excerpt of that interview:


Q. A majority of Christian church bodies in the United States, among other

religious groups, have voiced their opposition to a potential war in Iraq.

Yet many would say war appears inevitable. What does that say about the

church's collective influence in matters of war and peace?


A. We've been urging our congregations to be communities of moral

deliberation. In my lifetime, I don't recall the possibility of a war having

such lead time that the population is afforded the opportunity to engage in

lively discourse about the morality of going to war. Usually, we're either

doing that in the midst of war or looking back historically and asking, was

that just?


In one sense, the government has handed the religious community on a platter

the opportunity to practice what we say: We are communities of moral

discourse.


As Americans, we tend to treat war as military and strategy, where I regard

it as a moral issue that has military and strategic implications. I think

people of faith historically, from Augustine on and probably before, have

always brought the moral question to the strategic undertaking called war.


I walk that line because I'm a public leader of a public church, the

sixth-largest church body in the U.S. That gives me public voice and

opportunity to be in conversation with President Bush and Condoleezza Rice

and others, and I'm going to exercise that office.


When I read letters that say, Bishop Hanson doesn't speak for me, that's

right in one sense. We Lutherans have a strong sense that the individual

conscience is bound only to the word of God. But we also have developed a

social statement on God's peace that's foundational for the world. Which has

in it relentless calls to be about making peace in the world.


Q. Last night you attended a gathering of lay leaders and asked them how many

of their congregations were engaging in a moral discussion about war. What

was the result?


A. Some raised their hands. I was hoping everyone would raise their hands. It

was a minority for sure.


Q. What would explain that?


A. I don't think we teach the art of moral deliberation in the church. To say

"moral deliberation'' is wonderful. To throw a group of Christians into a

room and say deliberate on the morality of war when we haven't been taught

the art. … Discourse is an art that we learn. It's not an intuitive skill

that everybody is given.


That's why we're struggling with sexuality so much. I asked last night, "How

many of you were raised in a home where you talked openly about sexuality

with your parents?'' Two people in this big gymnasium full of people raised

their hand. Is there any wonder we've got anxiety about our studies of

sexuality when we're a church of 5 million people and none of us has learned

how to do this?


Q. How do we learn?


A. In the ELCA, we've provided two tools that are meant to teach people just

how to talk and listen, just teaching the art of conversation. The ELCA, when

it couldn't agree about gay/lesbian ministry, developed a message on

sexuality that said, "upon these things we do have agreement.'' So now we've

got a study guide on that. But very few congregations are using it.


Q. Is that divisiveness a reason why some congregations haven't engaged in a

discussion about war? There have to be people who feel strongly on both

sides.


A. I don't know if that's it, or if people just don't perceive congregations

as a place where you corporately, collectively engage in moral deliberation.

I think Lutherans, like most people in this culture, have so bought into both

the privatization of faith — "I'll keep my convictions and you can have

yours'' — and the separation of church and state, and we've also bought into

the myth that a congregation absent of tension is a healthy congregation.


Weave those things into the context of a post-9/11 world, very aware that

terrorism now belongs on our shores, and we're hesitant to criticize our

government for fear it will sound unpatriotic. And you've got a horrific

dictator in Iraq who is a disaster for his own people and has the potential

to be a disaster for his region and the world; it's a complex set of

questions. Complexity challenges us to not give simple answers. We prefer to

think of right and wrong rather than grays, and this has a lot of hues and

grays in it.


Q. Has the church response to war grappled with the complexities, or is it

just about being for or against it?


A. I hope we're dealing with the complexities. I'm increasingly contacted by

religious leaders all over the world asking, how can the most powerful nation

in the world, militarily and economically, justify the expenditure of power

that is amassing now to bring regime change in Iraq, when we don't as the

U.S. seem to have that same resolve to negotiate peace in the Middle East, to

bring an end to AIDS, to resolve to end the famine that's devastating

sub-Saharan Africa. It's the perception of how can we justify this morally.


Q. Do you ever ask yourself, if the Gospel is a truth above all truths,

shouldn't it be so convincing and persuasive that there shouldn't be shades

of gray about something as elemental as life and death?


A. We Lutherans, of course, either hide by or offer our understanding of the

two kingdoms. God reigns through the Gospel for faith and salvation. God

reigns through law and order for the sake of justice and peace. Luther was

pretty intent on saying no special wisdom comes to a person who is Christian

by virtue of their Christian faith. If a person is a good mayor, for

instance, that comes out of wisdom to lead a city. Lutherans are pretty

hesitant to attribute to their faith special insight.


Now, do we as Lutherans say the Christ in whom we live and who lives in us

and through us calls us to be peacemakers, who longs for peace in Jerusalem?

Yes, obviously. That's a compelling vision.


Calvinists are more comfortable getting where you're leading with that

question than Lutherans are.


That's another thing: We shouldn't just be having this conversation with

Lutherans. We live in an interfaith context, struggling with questions about

what is our relationship to Muslims, Hindus, Sikhs. One of the arenas where

we find commonality is our commitment to build a just and peaceful earth.


I would hope religious leaders are taking this current global crisis as

occasion to have dialogue with one another about our common commitment to

peace.


Q. How has this call as presiding bishop changed you?


A. I hope it hasn't changed me. It gives me a bigger arena in which to share

my passion, and one of my passions is that the ELCA, as a young church, 15

years of age, seems increasingly to be defined by issues that divide us

rather than the faith and the mission that unites us. So I think a passion I

bring to this office is as one who is not going to flee difficult issues but

seek to contextualize them in the larger whole of the common work to which

God calls us in the church and the world.


I ask every Lutheran group, "How many of you have brought an unchurched

person with you to worship in the past two weeks?'' I've probably asked 8,000

people that in last few months. I think I'm up to about 18 people who have

raised their hands.


We Lutherans bemoan our decline, 26,000 fewer baptized members than the year

before. We fret and stew over all these divisive issues, and in the meantime,

we're not getting on with the business of sharing the Gospel and bringing

people to taste and see how good the Lord is.


If you want a conflict-free church, you must not be reading the New

Testament.


Stephen Scott may be reached at (651) 228-5526 or <A
HREF="mailto:sscott@...">sscott@...</A>.


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