Christmas sermons will echo antiwar sentiments, defying Blair’s government

LONDON, December 22 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) – The anti-war movement in Britain will move to the churches as leading bishops plan to preach against a war in Iraq this Christmas, openly defying British Prime Minister Tony Blair’s government, a U.K. newspaper reported Sunday.

The Independent said Christmas sermons will echo the "widespread concerns about the seemingly inevitable push towards war."

The paper quoted Right Reverend Peter Price, the bishop of Bath and Wells, as saying that he will tell worshippers on Christmas Eve that: "The sanctity of life precludes all war and violence. We must be guided by a vision of the world in which nations stop seeking to resolve their problems through violence."

Right Reverend Richrd Lewis, the bishop of Saint Edmundsbury and Ipswich , is expected to warn, in his Christmas message, "against the desire for revenge in the wake of 11 September," the paper said.

"The question for all of us is whether we give in to that knee-jerk need for revenge and respond in that sort of way, or whether we address the essential questions of justice and peace that underlie that need.

"We must not let a desire for revenge affect our relations," the Independent quoted him as saying.

The paper said it conducted a survey among all 44 senior bishops in the Church of England and the 34 who responded to the survey all said that they "were unconditionally opposed to war."

"A further 25 were against war unless military action was sanctioned by the United Nations and even then only as a last resort," said the paper.

It added that several bishops will also warn in their Christmas sermons that racial tensions in the multicultural communities will also be fueled if hostility against Iraq continues.

However, on November 11, the Telegraph reported that the Church of England decided that "British and American plans to attack Iraq if Iraqi President Saddam Hussein breaches the latest United Nations resolution could be justified even without the further backing of the U.N."

The move was described by the paper as an "unexpected rebuff to a number of senior bishops" and added that a move to insist that only the United Nations could permit war was rejected by the Church's General Synod by 141 to 110 votes.

Despite saying that unilateral military action risked the credibility of the U.N., some speakers at the Synod argued that "the Church would display a lack of understanding of international politics if it tried to tie the hands of Western governments," reported the Telegraph.

However, most Christian leaders in the U.K. remained against a war on Iraq .

Just a week before the Church of England made that statement, the coming Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. Rowan Williams, said that a pre-emptive strike on Iraq could "rapidly and uncontrollably spiral down into chaos."

In an article which Williams sent to the Telegraph on November 5, he said that to ignore the fears of people in the area would leave the West open to the criticism that it was behaving like a colonial power.

U.K. officials have been irritated at the "anti-war rhetoric" of the Church of England, the paper said.

Elsewhere in the world, Christian leaders have been outright opposed to a strike against Iraq .

Earlier in November, patriarchs of the eastern Catholic churches came out against a war on Iraq .

"Nothing justifies a war against Iraq , whatever the pretexts and reasons invoked," said the heads of the Maronite, Melchite, Coptic, Chaldean, Latin, Syriac and Armenian churches after a five-day conclave at Raboueh, near Beirut .

"There can be no just war because men have the choice: negotiating and arriving at peaceful solutions or unleashing wholesale destruction," they said in a statement.

On September 18, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops expressed strong opposition to unilateral U.S. military offensive against Iraq in a letter to U.S. President George W. Bush.

Cardinal Camillo Ruini, the head of Italy 's Catholic bishops, said on September 16 that a U.S.-led war against Iraq would have "unacceptable" human consequences and would destabilize the Middle East .

On September 12, the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, Patriarch Alexy II, said he was totally opposed to any attack by the U.S. on Iraq , warning of a "bloodbath" if war went ahead.

Britain 's Catholic leader Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor said on September 5 that war against Iraq could set the Arab world against the West and undermine efforts to secure peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians.

The London Times also reported that George Carey, the since retired archbishop of Canterbury and spiritual leader of the world's Anglicans, had raised his concerns about Iraq in a private letter to Blair.

In September, the World Council of Churches expressed "concern and alarm" over U.S. threats to strike Iraq in the name of overthrowing the present Iraqi government, and called on the United States to cease military threats against Baghdad .

The Geneva-based WCC also urged U.S. allies "to resist pressures to join in pre-emptive military strikes against a sovereign state under the pretext of the 'war on terrorism'."