On Nov. 14 Robin Meyers gave the following speech
at an anti-war rally on the University of Oklahoma campus. Meyers, a
commentary writer for Oklahoma Gazette, has been a senior minister of
Mayflower Congregational UCC Church since 1985 and is professor of
rhetoric at Oklahoma City University.)
As some of you know, I am minister of Mayflower Congregational Church
in Oklahoma City, an Open and Affirming, Peace and Justice church in
northwest Oklahoma City, and professor of Rhetoric at Oklahoma City
University.
But you would most likely have encountered me on the pages of the
Oklahoma Gazette, where I have been a columnist for six years, and
hold the record for the most number of angry letters to the editor.
Tonight, I join ranks of those who are angry, because I have watched
as the faith I love has been taken over by fundamentalists who claim
to speak for Jesus, but whose actions are anything but Christian.
We've heard a lot lately about so-called "moral values" as having
swung the election to President Bush. Well, I'm a great believer in
moral values, but we need to have a discussion, all over this
country, about exactly what constitutes a moral value -- I mean what
are we talking about?
Because we don't get to make them up as we go along, especially not
if we are people of faith. We have an inherited tradition of what is
right and wrong, and moral is as moral does.
Let me give you just a few of the reasons why I take issue with those
in power who claim moral values are on their side:
-- When you start a war on false pretenses, and then act as if your
deceptions are justified because you are doing God's will, and that
your critics are either unpatriotic or lacking in faith, there are
some of us who have given our lives to teaching and preaching the
faith who believe that this is not only not moral, but immoral.
-- When you live in a country that has established international
rules for waging a just war, build the United Nations on your own
soil to enforce them, and then arrogantly break the very rules you
set down for the rest of the world, you are doing something immoral.
-- When you claim that Jesus is the Lord of your life, and yet fail
to acknowledge that your policies ignore his essential teaching, or
turn them on their head (you know, Sermon on the Mount stuff like
that we must never return violence for violence and that those who
live by the sword will die
by the sword), you are doing something immoral.
-- When you act as if the lives of Iraqi civilians are not as
important as the lives of American soldiers, and refuse to even count
them, you are doing something immoral.
-- When you find a way to avoid combat in Vietnam, and then question
the patriotism of someone who volunteered to fight, and came home a
hero, you are doing something immoral.
-- When you ignore the fundamental teachings of the gospel, which
says that the way the strong treat the weak is the ultimate ethical
test, by giving tax breaks to the wealthiest among us so the strong
will get stronger and the weak will get weaker, you are doing
something immoral.
-- When you wink at the torture of prisoners, and deprive so-called
"enemy combatants" of the rules of the Geneva convention, which your
own country helped to establish and insists that other countries
follow, you are doing something immoral.
-- When you claim that the world can be divided up into the good guys
and the evil doers, slice up your own nation into those who are with
you, or with the terrorists -- and then launch a war which enriches
your own friends and seizes control of the oil to which we are
addicted, instead of helping us to kick the habit, you are doing
something immoral.
-- When you fail to veto a single spending bill, but ask us to pay
for a war with no exit strategy and no end in sight, creating an
enormous deficit that hangs like a great millstone around the necks
of our children, you are doing something immoral.
-- When you cause most of the rest of the world to hate a country
that was once the most loved country in the world, and act like it
doesn't matter what others think of us, only what God thinks of you,
you have done something immoral.
-- When you use hatred of homosexuals as a wedge issue to turn out
record numbers of evangelical voters, and use the Constitution as a
tool of discrimination, you are doing something immoral.
-- When you favor the death penalty, and yet claim to be a follower
of Jesus, who said an eye for an eye was the old way, not the way of
the kingdom, you are doing something immoral.
-- When you dismantle countless environmental laws designed to
protect the earth which is God's gift to us all, so that the
corporations that bought you and paid for your favors will make
higher profits while our children breathe dirty air and live in a
toxic world, you have done something
immoral. The earth belongs to the Lord, not Halliburton.
-- When you claim that our God is bigger than their God, and that our
killing is righteous, while theirs is evil, we have begun to resemble
the enemy we claim to be fighting, and that is immoral. We have met
the enemy, and the enemy is us.
-- When you tell people that you intend to run and govern as a
"compassionate conservative," using the word which is the essence of
all religious faith-compassion, and then show no compassion for
anyone who disagrees with you, and no patience with those who cry to
you for help, you are doing something immoral.
-- When you talk about Jesus constantly, who was a healer of the
sick, but do nothing to make sure that anyone who is sick can go to
see a doctor, even if she doesn't have a penny in her pocket, you are
doing something immoral.
-- When you put judges on the bench who are racist, and will set
women back a hundred years, and when you surround yourself with
preachers who say gays ought to be killed, you are doing something
immoral.
I'm tired of people thinking that because I'm a Christian, I must be
a supporter of President Bush, or that because I favor civil rights
and gay rights I must not be a person of faith.
I'm tired of people saying that I can't support the troops if I
oppose the war -- I heard that when I was your age, when the Vietnam
war was raging. We knew that that war was wrong, and you know that
this war is wrong--the only question is how many people are going to
die before these make-believe Christians are removed from power?
This country is bankrupt. The war is morally bankrupt. The claim of
this administration to be Christian is bankrupt. And the only people
who can turn things around are people like you--young people who are
just beginning to wake up to what is happening to them. It's your
country to take back. It's
your faith to take back. It's your future to take back.
Don't be afraid to speak out. Don't back down when your friends
begin to tell you that the cause is righteous and that the flag
should be wrapped around the cross, while the rest of us keep our
mouths shut.
Real Christians take chances for peace. So do real Jews, and real
Muslims, and real Hindus, and real Buddhists--so do all the faith
traditions of the world at their heart believe one thing: life is
precious. Every human being is precious. Arrogance is the opposite of
faith. Greed is the opposite of charity. And believing that one has
never made a mistake is the mark of a
deluded man, not a man of faith.
And war -- war is the greatest failure of the human race -- and thus
the greatest failure of faith.
There's an old rock and roll song, whose lyrics say it all: War, what
is it good for? absolutely nothing.
And what is the dream of the prophets? That we should study war no
more, that we should beat our swords into plowshares and our spears
into pruning hooks. Who would Jesus bomb, indeed? How many wars does
it take to know that too many people have died? What if they gave a
war and nobody came?
Maybe one day we will find out. Time to march again my friends. Time
to commit acts of civil disobedience. Time to sing, and to pray, and
refuse to participate in the madness. My generation finally stopped a
tragic war. You can too!