I went to my parents’ Church today, since it was easter and we don’t excatly have a Church we’re all gung ho about, (I like Glendale a lot, but its a long haul and I still want to find a Youth Program where there are school friends for my son, and the pickin’s seem awfully slim out our way.

What I forgot to factor in today , on Easter Sunday, is what kind of “praise worship” stuff I was likely to get at this mega-Southern Baptist Church. Even though it does not have one of those pastors who goes along with the intimidation tactics the convention practices on people and groups who espouse or exhibit “questionable theology”, or rail against liberals, he is nonetheless also not disposed to bring the issue of the rightness or wrongness of war.

In the Southern Baptist Convention, if you speak the “wrong views” (namely, the US is not the good guy here, or the US is not exactly practicing the observance of “What would Jesus do?” here), then you may be in deep trouble. On the other hand, there’s no flag waving like there is in some SBC churches.

The worship leader , during an opening prayer, asked that God be with our troops and those serving our country, and for the leaders of our nation that they be guided, and for those things happening that we don’t understand — which seems like a somewhat veiled reference to those concerned first and foremost for the victims of this war rather than for the “swiftness” (often translated “effectiveness”) of the campaign— no asking for help and for God’s blessing on the victims of this mess; that is all too often taken as oppostion (and God forbid that anybody place the welfare of innocents above the “expediencies” and “effectiveness” of war)

The pastor pointed out that early Christians need only say “Caesar is Lord” and be spared from persecution. Ironic, today, that this is whjat most Christians are doing with their jumping on the bandwagon of glee over the “swift success”, and counting the thousands of casualties as “well worth it”. Yeah, people, like you’d be thinking that if it were YOUR city, your homes, your firends, your family.

The golden rule has no relevance to these folks in this context. I’ve heard people protest the asking of the question “Would Jesus bomb Iraq?” with , “that’s not a fair question” as if it were impossible to comprehend. To those to whom the teachings of Jesus have no apparent relevance ot the lives of real humans – especially those outside of “our way of life”, the question doesn’t seem logical. But that’s the denial of the Christian Right’s accomodation of the war propaganda machine, and pulling out some hybrid nationalistic theism on the other side (sounds an awful lot like the process that Al-Quida radical Muslims use to arrive at their twisted notion of Jihad.)

These same people people denying the legitimacy of the quesiton are often apt to use the Jesus saying” render unto Caesar the things that are Ceasar’s , and unto God the things that are God’s” as legitimitizing the full-fledged, unquestioned support of whatever Bush wants. That doesn;t quitre work when one asks how that would apply to the responsibility of the German Church to oppose Hitler. Well, that’s obvious , you say.

But the point is, we ALWAYS have the responsibility to resist the notion that OUR country’s leaders cannot be wrong if they “plege allegiance” to a notion that “God will guide us” as if that were assurance that God is able to truly get through our ideas of what we need to do, especially if we’ve already made up our minds (like the War Council Bush had on Sept. 15, 2001, concerning plans to invade Iraq)