The
Silence Of Clergy Today Versus Rev. King's "Silence Is Betrayal!"
By Jay Janson
17 May, 2007
Countercurrents.org
"For the sake of the hundreds
of thousands trembling under our violence, I cannot be silent."--
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., who followed these words with a description
of U.S. crimes against humanity.
At the polls, citizens have
finally expressed themselves against the war in Iraq. Candidates and
incumbents feel the need to call for an end to the war. But we rarely
hear even a peep from Clergy. Is this for its observing the doctrine
of ‘Separation of Church and State’ or because the Church
has become BOUND to the State and SEPARATED from its faith?
Our ordained professional
guidance counselors, the priests, ministers and rabbis, the stewards
of personal morality, are by and large without complaint or even suggestion
regarding the wars of occupation in Iraq, Afghanistan and Somalia. Except
for the usual time honored exhortations to pray for the dead, the dying
and those doing the killing, and an infrequent academic discussion of
what constitutes ‘just war’ and ‘just killing’,
the senior leaders of the various religions are MUTE.
But, Martin Luther King Jr.
thundered, “For the sake of the hundreds of thousands trembling
under our violence, I cannot be SILENT!”
Collective guilt, collective
accountability and responsibilities are very rarely, if ever, addressed
from the pulpits of American churches and synagogues. There is an eerie
canonical absolving of personal responsibility for crimes against humanity
committed ‘under orders’, (curiously, Adolph Eichman’s
defense at his trial in Israel).
The clergy even in largely
progressive cities generally feels constrained to speak against the
policies and actions of State, as if it were against the law. They deem
to ‘respect’ a quite back-assward interpretation of “Separation
of Church and State”, pretending that Church be not meant not
to denounce the crimes of State, even while highest officials of State
often clothe themselves with a vestment of Church dogma, respecting
the assumptions and superstitions, often speaking as subjects of a church
or as its representatives and protectors.
In a sermon outline, a young
King wrote, “We may well be ashamed of much that is associated
with the history of organized Christianity and with much of what goes
on in the churches today.”
This off and on weak failing
of faithful ministry is a far-flung tradition that predates the American
experience. There were priests and ministers in Nazi Germany who blessed
the soldiers of the Wehrmacht as they left to invade neighboring nations
even after Hitler began to crush the Church. In fascist satellite nations
the history of an open collaboration of the Church with the Nazis was
even more flagrant. Christianity and its complicity vis-à-vis
the Holocaust is well known, though there were heroic renegade exceptions.
But there is a history of
successful ministry of faith as well. Alongside the black popes, the
inquisition and massacres in the religious wars of the Middle Ages,
one can counterpoise the earlier church as sanctuary and protector of
the persecuted and patron of literature and the fine arts and the many
brave orders, even of today, within the movement in Latin America called
Liberation Theology, unsupported by the pope. The history of Islam is
similarly complicated.
It would seem that given
King’s example, mainstream clergy in America has a clear choice.
Continue to be silent, copying the shameful role of the Church during
the Vietnam War almost to the end, or quote the documented words of
a martyred giant the establishment has felt forced to honor with national
holiday.
No church is going to lose
its tax status for quoting a fellow Reverend Doctor with unassailable
national recognition no less! MLK is an icon. King has stature. His
words bite true! Only to put King’s words in Sunday sermons now
in the nation’s and the world’s hour of need.
King cried, “The greatest
purveyor of violence in the world today [is] my own government!"
King would not have believed that al Qaida is primary and the world’s
single superpower must forever invade other countries, creating more
and more al Qaidas, for he warned, “Violence is impractical because
it is a descending spiral ending in destruction for all. It is immoral
because it seeks to humiliate the opponent rather than win his understanding;
it seeks to annihilate rather than to convert. Violence is immoral because
it thrives on hatred rather than love."
And, "We in the churches
and synagogues have a continuing task while we urge our government to
disengage itself from a disgraceful commitment. We must continue to
raise our voices and our lives if our nation persists in its perverse
ways ..."
And, "Somehow this madness
must cease. We must stop now. I speak as a child of God and brother
to the suffering poor of (Substitute Iraq and Afghanistan for) Vietnam"
If this writer were clergy,
what with the spate of books and TV programs challenging religions for
breeding violence, I would be galvanized to step up and say SOMETHING
about the present U.S. wars. The critics of those, who profess moral
leadership in the name of interpreting the Unknown within an organized
religion as their sustainer, are lining up like never before: Christopher
Hitchens’,’ best seller “God is Not Great”;
a schedule of debates between Christians and Atheists during NBC prime
time; “A Brief History of Disbelief”, TV series by Jonathan
Miller introduced on NPR’s Bill Moyer Journal show. These bold
confrontations appeared just within the week.
Judged by, and held to, the
standards of both their kindest teachings and many of the more useful
and intelligent taboos of their own faiths, the vast majority of organized
religions’ leaders are being accused of being apostates to their
faiths, for not respecting their very own teachings, scriptures, blessed
exhortations and proscribed injunctions; apostates for their silence,
acquiescence, consent, approval, or support of war and its slaughter.
All these critics go rather easy on organized religion, considering
the horrendous amount of genocide and disgustingly ignorant and brutal
behavior of millions of their followers recorded throughout the history
of these three otherwise great religions of the Middle East.
If the astounding and miraculous
achievements of musicians, poets, philosophers, architects, artists
and sculptors, in praise of an Almighty Supreme Intelligence can inspire
at least some clergy to redeem these three-millennia-old traditions
of holding to socially organized ancient beliefs, then one would expect
that now is a propitious time to act and prove to society their merit
and efficacy in the space age.
If it ever made sense to
limit one’s ministry to getting people into heaven one by one,
as individuals, separate and divorced from the social obligations to
one another taught in each one of these three religions, it certainly
is not working in today’s world of gangs all around us at every
level. Clergy has little chance to ‘save’ people from ‘going
to hell’, separately, one by one, while commercial conglomerate
TV herds them en masse from childhood on, in the opposite direction,
arming them with ignorant, arrogant, desperately selfish and violent
minds.
Among those who have educated
themselves to the famous ‘sacred’ writings of the Middle
East as a world literary heritage, some are Chinese, with their own
heritage of Taoist bowing to Nature, Confucian bowing to ancestors and
each other, and Buddhist seeing the inscrutable, unfathomable, inexpressible,
joyful mystery of existence everywhere, above all in all living creatures,
- well, apparently they rather enjoy going about pitching in and trying
to make a secular and democratic heaven on earth, but with that deep
respect for each other which is a mark of Islam, with the caring for
each other of Jesus, with the awareness of the sacredness of life of
the Hebrews, and with the worship of the ‘Great Spirit’
of Native Americans, and animists in Africa and Oceania.
Martin Luther King Jr. preached
and acted to save the State from ‘going to hell’, from making
a hell on earth for the majority, through the criminal insanity of a
criminally insane racist power elite, whom King believed could be cured
by kind, but firm, Christian action in the name of truth and happiness.
King had to face the collusion
between the power elites of Church and State – a collusion still
masked in pseudo-separation. The military-industrial complex, currently
dominant within a corporate governance that exercises control over the
three branches of the federal government, and is symbiotic with a conglomerate
owned media reaching into school, university, church and home. It is
never too late to speak out, and never mind feeling bad for having waited.
King himself said he was ashamed of his silence prior to his condemnation
of the war in Vietnam, but his anguish made him stronger.
Everyone can have profound
appreciation of all the exceptionally wonderful clergy who, like Martin
Luther King Jr., when they become aware of the clergy leadership status
quo herein described, turn away from its death and hypocrisy, and lead
us confidently into the light, in truthfulness and celebration of life.
One can recommend Rev. Simon Harak as just such a person. One can also
enjoy reading the peace proposals of the orthodox Neturei Karta regarding
Palestine.
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