Michael Butler's Blog

By Rev. J. Edwin Bacon, Jr.
Arlington West Event
February 25, 2006

Welcome peacemakers! Welcome to All Saints Church. We are a peace church and we are very honored that the Arlington West enterprise chose All Saints to be the venue for their event here this evening.

Peacemaking is an intrinsically sacred pursuit. Blessed are the peacemakers. God is not a warmonger nor a fearmongerer. God is a peacemaker. And we at All Saints join our peacemaking partner, Arlington West, tonight in saying that religion must stop blessing war.

The world’s religions share several core values. Tonight we focus on the shared core principles of peace, truth, and love’s power to cast out fear.

By spending more than $5 billion per month on the war in Iraq, the foundation of which is a collection of lies and deception, the Administration of President George W. Bush is killing precious human life, dissipating fragile American democracy, squandering American moral authority, eroding the very security of our country, and violating global norms of justice and human rights. They are justifying it all on a politics of fear and a growing imperial authoritarianism. Fear has become the new American Religion. Its creed is “Be afraid. Be very afraid. And uncritically rely upon us to make you secure.” This has nothing to do with the ways of the living God. This is idolatry. And we gather tonight to say no to that new American Religion of Fear and its creed.

When people become their fears instead of merely having fears, they no longer think, they no longer create, they no longer are citizens. They are subjects. We have gathered together here tonight to claim our citizenship, to claim our courage, and to claim our hope.

God wants peace in the world not war. God wants love in the world not fear. God wants justice in the world not occupation and oppression. God wants truth in the world not lies and deception. God wants compassion on earth not torture. God wants the rule of law on earth not the rule of war. God does not want a clash of civilizations; God wants the human race to become the human family. God does not want us obsessing about trying to get ourselves to heaven. God wants us working to get heaven down to earth.

This past summer, I heard in the depths of my heart an invitation from our keynote speaker to come join her in Crawford, Texas. Three members of this faith community took turns going. I took hundreds of signatures collected here on Sunday before saying we supported camp Casey and that we supported the Rosa Parks of the 21st century, Cindy Sheehan.

Camp Casey was an example of heaven on earth where peacemakers respected not only one another but those who disagreed with us. Camp Casey was a place where the killed were mourned and not hidden from view. Camp Casey was a place of openness not surreptitiousness. The days I spent there were days when Cindy Sheehan needed to be with her mother who was then hospitalized. But the spirit of Cindy and Casey and the entire Gold Star Families for Peace permeated the place and I was grateful to have been touched and transformed by the place. But Camp Casey is not so much a place as a movement. And the peace, respect, healthy grief, and openness of Camp Casey is here tonight.

I could go on and on but we have others from whom we must learn and films by which we must be moved to healing and faithful action. I welcome you all. I welcome my sister peacemaker, Cindy Sheehan. And now I welcome one of the most powerful advocates for justice and peace I have ever known, my personal friend, a friend of this Church, and a friend of every human being, the acting president of the United States, Martin Sheen.