By Rev. Mark H. Creech
March 26, 2003

(AgapePress) - According to a March 23 article ("Clergy Stay Neutral on Topic of War") by Yonat Shimron, a religion reporter for the Raleigh News and Observer, leaders of churches in the Raleigh, Durham, and Chapel Hill area are steering far clear of the subject of war. She says clergy in the Triangle are "sticking to the eternal themes of peace and love, saying the politics of war have no place in the pulpit." I feel certain that most religious leaders around the country share that sentiment.

This reminds me of a point Tom Minnery makes in his book, Why You Can't Stay Silent. In the book, Minnery recounts a visit he made to the Central American country of Nicaragua.

He says for most of the twentieth century, a puppet government of the Somoza family that was riddled with corruption led Nicaragua. By the early 1970s, the infant mortality rate was nine times that of the United States. Eighty percent of all Nicaraguans had no running water, there were 20,000 cases of advanced tuberculosis, life expectancy was only 50 years, illiteracy was at 50%, and only one in ten Nicaraguans finished elementary school.

On top of all this, two days before Christmas in 1972, Managua was violently shaken by a massive earthquake that killed nearly 10,000 people and left a quarter of a million homeless. Nearly $200 million in foreign aid was sent to Nicaragua, but the relief flowed through Somoza's regime and a year later the capital city was still in rubble and its people without the care they needed.

The social injustice sparked a Civil War between Somoza's army and the leftist Sandinista guerillas that by the summer of 1979 left Nicaragua with a death toll five times the number killed by the earthquake.

In 1974, two years after the earthquake and still five years away from the end of the bloody Civil War, some 300 Protestant evangelical pastors gathered at a retreat to reflect on whether they should have done something to stand up to Somoza's corrupt government before things got so bad. Yes, they decided at the retreat, they should have done something.

Rodolfo Fonseca, a Church of God pastor in Managua said, "It is not revolution that should teach us social responsibility; it is the Bible .... It is that kind of Christianity [emphasizing only spiritual matters] that our missionaries with blonde hair and blue eyes and the fragrance of heaven taught us."

Pastor Nicanor Mariena joined in the discussion: "I was educated under the control of the North Americans. They prohibited us from politics. I accepted that. But after three years of the revolution, I have become convinced of the opposite."

These pastors came to believe that the gospel of Jesus Christ had a dimension not taught by the American missionaries. Minnery said, "It was a dimension of earthly justice for this life, not just heavenly salvation for the next." He added that Nicaragua was a strange place to learn a lesson about the American church and social issues, but it was a lesson he has never forgotten.

It deeply troubles me that most American pastors today don't understand the urgency of taking up social issues from the pulpit, especially something as vital as the Scripture's teaching concerning a just war! But I believe the rank and file church member is starving for this kind of teaching. Yes, some will become angry and offended. Most, however, will greatly appreciate and benefit from it. It can also provide a wonderful opportunity, quite like no other, for presenting the gospel of Christ and other great eternal truths. Moreover, God is willing to bless and use it to preserve, protect, and profit a needy world.

America needs more preachers like those of her past. On January 21, 1776, Rev. John Muhlenburg delivered a sermon to his Virginia congregation from Ecclesiastes chapter 3 -- the passage that speaks of a season and a time to every purpose under heaven. He cited verse 8 of the text, which says that there is a time for war and a time for peace. He then noted that the tyranny and oppression from the British Crown in America was a time calling for war and not peace. Concluding with prayer and standing in full view of his congregation, Muhlenburg removed his clerical robes to reveal that beneath them he was wearing the uniform of an officer in the Continental army! He walked to the back of the church, ordered the drum to beat for recruits -- and over three hundred men joined him, becoming the Eighth Virginia Brigade. Similar examples of ministers serving during America's Revolutionary, Civil, and World War eras could be noted.

Say, what was that again? Did I hear clergymen saying we ought not to talk about political matters from the pulpit, especially something as controversial as the politics of war? Granted, that may be the popular view. But if that view continues and prevails, our nation -- as well as most of the world -- will ultimately be steeped in poverty and somebody's slave.