Methodist 'Conscientious Objector' Offer Mostly Symbolic, Says Tooley
by Chad Groening and Jody Brown
June 27, 2006
(AgapePress) - - A United Methodist renewal advocate says he's not surprised that a Washington State congregation has agreed to give sanctuary to military personnel who don't want to be deployed to war zones. The move comes after an Army officer declared he wouldn't go to Iraq because he believes the war is illegal.When 1st Lt. Ehren Watada told the Seattle Post-Intelligencer that he would not go to Iraq, the administrative council of the First United Methodist Church of Tacoma voted to declare itself a sanctuary for military personnel who reject deployment orders. According to the newspaper, the 300-member church released a statement saying that service members "who are unable to deploy to combat areas for reasons of conscience" can find protection behind its doors.
Pastor Monty Smith told the Post-Intelligencer the church is "deeply involved in justice issues" in Tacoma, and that "any war, particularly this one, is inconsistent with Christian teachings."
Mark Tooley of the Institute on Religion and Democracy (IRD) says he is not surprised that a West Coast church would do this. "The leadership and major clergy out there are more interested in making political and social statements than they are in spreading the gospel -- and the result is there is virtually no church left," he states. "This [action] sounds like a very liberal and relatively isolated Methodist Church on the West Coast, where there aren't that many Methodists to begin with."
Tooley doubts the national denomination will take action against the Tacoma congregation. "The national church leadership of the United Methodist Church [UMC], of course, is very much on the left and would sympathize with this church," he explains. "The official teachings of the denomination acknowledge that Christians believe war is justified in some circumstances, but the bureaucracy of the church will not acknowledge that teaching."
In fact, Tooley notes in a recent column that theologians and others within the UMC debated the issue of a "just war" at a conference last year in Pennsylvania. He states that "although some of the speakers were themselves uncomfortable with historic 'just war' teachings, they admitted that [John] Wesley [founder of Methodism] supported 'just war.'"
But Jim Winkler, the head of the UMC's General Board of Church and Society, which is based in Washington, DC, seems to be a "functional pacifist," Tooley writes. "Like many other United Methodist officials, Winkler has never recognized any situation in which armed force might be morally acceptable," he says.
The IRD spokesman says he doubts that many service members will take advantage of the offer being extended by the Tacoma church, so he expects the move will prove to be symbolic rather than substantive.
