Empire

On June 8-10, I attended the Annual Meeting of the Minnesota Conference of the United Church of Christ. The Minnesota Conference has a mission partnership with the United Church of Christ in the Philippines, and so a workshop was offered at the Annual Meeting that focused on updates concerning the partner church in the Philippines. I attended this workshop.

Since I came to the Minnesota Conference, I've become only surface-level familiar with what's going on with the Philippines in general, and with the UCC in the Philippines in particular. There are clearly people with much more knowledge about what's going on and who can better express the issues there. But the more I learn about this topic, the more appalled I am. This workshop was no exception.

Although we don't hear much about it in the media, the Philippines was originally intended to be the other "front" in the "War on Terror," in addition to Afghanistan and Iraq. Due to reported activity by Islamic extremists, U.S. money and aid (and perhaps combat troops?) have gone to the Filipino government to fight terrorism. Unfortunately, this aid is being used to accomplish widespread human rights and environmental abuses, including allowing powerful business interests to rape the land; and the detention (without charges, of course), torture, and assassination of many who have raised their voices in protest against these abuses and tactics.

Journalists, trade unionists, and religious leaders are particularly targeted. Moreover, although Roman Catholicism is the dominant religion in the country, UCC clergy and activists find themselves the victims of human rights violations (mostly "extra-judicial killings") more than any other denomination, by far.

When anyone suffers from human rights abuses, it should be an abomination to us as Christians, as people of faith, and as simply people. But even more so when our tax money as U.S. citizens goes to commit these horrible acts under the fear-inducing banner of the "War on Terror." As a pastor in the UCC (in the United States), I find it even more disheartening that the U.S. is helping to target and murder my fellow UCC sisters and brothers in the Philippines, in particular.

Church and state coming into conflict is no new thing for Christians to wrestle with. I am enraged over what our government is helping to do all over the world. I believe there are times (many, in fact) when our allegiance to the God we know in Jesus Christ cannot be reconciled with any kind of patriotic allegiance. In Nazi Germany, for example, when the Confessing Church (Nazi resistance) declared "Christ is Lord," it was in opposition to the claims Hitler and the State were making. That was also what "Christ is Lord" meant in the ancient Roman Empire in New Testament times. In the way that power and dominance is exercised across the globe, is the American Empire really all that different from the Empire of Rome? What are we called to do about it? At the workshop, they provided letter-writing and talking-point resources for contacting our representatives and senators. But somehow, it just doesn't seem to be enough. What else should we do?

Hell, I don't know...