The Looming War Comes Home to Clergy Families

c. 2003 Religion News Service MOBILE, Ala. _ The call came on a recent Sunday night. Second Lt. David Anderson told his mom and dad he had received deployment orders for Operation Enduring Freedom that afternoon. But he couldn’t tell them where he’d be going, or when. That information was classified. The next day, Anderson’s […]

c. 2003 Religion News Service

MOBILE, Ala. _ The call came on a recent Sunday night.

Second Lt. David Anderson told his mom and dad he had received deployment orders for Operation Enduring Freedom that afternoon. But he couldn’t tell them where he’d be going, or when. That information was classified.


The next day, Anderson’s parents sent an e-mail asking for prayers on behalf of their son and other members of the armed forces.

“As Christians, we need to try to seek peaceful solutions whenever it is possible,” said Monnie Anderson, David Anderson’s mother and minister of mission and urban development at Mobile’s Government Street Presbyterian Church. “But I will be the first to support our troops because it hits home now. It’s personal. We’re talking about my son now, not somebody else’s son.”

The Andersons are but one Mobile family intimately involved in the public debate about the escalating military presence in the Persian Gulf region and a possible war in Iraq.

But their situation may be more complicated than most.

Both of David Anderson’s parents are members of the clergy, men and women called to urge all whom they encounter to love their neighbors as themselves and to turn the other cheek toward their enemies. At the same time, the Andersons recognize and respect the freedom and security the military can provide Americans and others around the world.

“In a ministry situation and in a pastoral situation, I would always want to seek a peaceful solution to any problem, and that includes problems between nations as well as between individuals,” Monnie Anderson said. “As far as having a son who is in the military, I support my son 100 percent, and I realize that my son as well as all of our other troops provide the blanket of security under which all of us sleep at night.”

For his part, Michael Anderson, David Anderson’s father and executive director of missions for the Mobile Baptist Association, said he, too, struggles with the prospect of a war against Iraq.

“It’s become very personal now. I just don’t see war as a good alternative to anything,” Anderson said. But, he added, “I think there are times when you have no alternatives.”

He paused, remembering the atrocities committed by Nazis in World War II and the United States’ hesitation to get involved then.


“At what point should we have stepped in and said (to) the NazisâÂ?¦, `You’re not going to do this.’ … How many millions of lives could have been saved had we intervened earlier?”

For now, Michael Anderson said, all he really knows to do is to pray.

“I can’t think of anything more important for churches to do, regardless of how you feel about it,” he said. “Our president and the people who are making those decisions need our prayers now more than ever before.”

Bishop Philip M. Duncan II of the Pensacola, Fla.-based Episcopal Diocese of the Central Gulf Coast encouraged people to take similar action.

“It’s always time to pray for the men and women of the armed forces and to pray for our government,” Duncan said. “One of the things that I think is important to do too is to pray for the leaders in Iraq. They also need our prayer.

“This does not just appear out of nothing,” Duncan said. “There’s a reason for this. Obviously, comments are made and people have other information that we may not be privy to. I hope that with negotiations and a sense of people being able to speak to one another that cooler heads will prevail.”

The Very Rev. Michael L. Farmer, chancellor of the Archdiocese of Mobile, recommended fervent prayers for peace and reconciliation as well. At the same time, Farmer said he thinks President Bush is “doing a prudent thing” by mobilizing U.S. troops.


At this point, Farmer said he didn’t think that the United States could justify an attack on Iraq according to all the criteria included in just war theory, which states that war may be waged only to redress a wrong suffered and as a last resort after exhausting all nonviolent options. But Farmer said he did think that, using just war principles, some of Saddam Hussein’s actions might warrant military action.

The Rev. Jeremy Mount, minister of youth and young adults at Dauphin Way United Methodist Church in Mobile, said he doesn’t believe there has ever been a war that has met all the qualifications that would make it “just.”

Mount, who’s also a chaplain in the Army Reserves, has been wrestling with the ethics of a U.S.-led attack on Iraq. After Mount completes his training in April, he may be activated and sent to minister overseas, he said.

Mount said his faith teaches him that “war is always an unnecessary evil and that which we strive not to engage in.”

But if he’s called, Mount said he “will be honored to go and to wear the uniform, even more so honored that the cross is on my uniform.” As a chaplain, he said he hopes he might be “a voice of grace in the midst of a system that doesn’t really know grace.”

DEA END CAMPBELL

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