Jesus Knew Power and He Knew It Could Be Used for Justice or for Conquest.  Over and Over, Jesus Blessed His Followers with Peace and Urged Them to Peace.  Following His Example, We Call for Restraint - Not Aggression - in the Exercise of Our Nation's Power.

In the Gospels, the story of the wrong use of power is central. The stories tell us that two thousand years ago, the most famous and powerful of all empires executed a Jewish carpenter because his teachings were disruptive to its national interests.

In Christianity today, there is diversity of opinion about the use of force. The views follow two main lines of thought. The oldest is the pacifist, or non-violent resistance tradition, which was the position of all Christians prior to the fourth century. In recent times its most notable proponent was the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. during the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s. Most Christians around the world, however, including many of those in the US, adhere to the principles of Just War.  These Christians believe that there are certain situations in which force can and must be used by people of faith in order to restrain evil. However, both pacifists and Just War adherents agree that proactively seeking war is an illegitimate use of power and is contrary to Christian morality.

There are no more powerful leaders in the world than the leaders of the United States. Therefore, our leaders have the strongest responsibility to use power rightly. When these leaders ask for war and put American men and women in the line of fire, they have an obligation to know the reasons, understand the risks, and have a strategy for bringing the war to an end. In the Iraq war, these obligations were not met. By rushing to war and having no plan for peace, our leaders used their power irresponsibly and betrayed America's trust.

In the Iraq war, "the least of these" - America's citizen soldiers and Iraqi civilians are paying the ultimate price for our leaders' irresponsible use of power. Justice demands that our leaders seek the quickest possible way to bring our soldiers home and work to get international assistance in restoring the people of Iraq to a peaceful existence.