Cindy Sheehan

I've been kind of following the Cindy Sheehan story for a week or so now. (If you've been living in a cave and haven't seen it, here ya go.)

I'm a bit conflicted about this. I'm usually not a big fan of protesting. It seems to me that most protests are about far too little, far too distant—the protest is about something that probably doesn't really matter, it rarely accomplishes much, and it is far too far away from something we really care about. Put another way, most protesters seem to me to protest for the sake of protesting.

On the other hand, I'm not thinking that this is the case with Cindy Sheehan. What could be closer and more personal than the loss of one's son? I don't get the sense that she's on a power trip, but that she is acting out of her own deeply felt sense of loss. Put another way, love is what's making this protest happen.

One reservation I still hold is that I am genuinely unsure what to do with Iraq at this point. "You break it, you bought it." Can the U.S. really pull itself out of Iraq entirely at this time? Wouldn't that be an even deeper violation of Shalom that staying? I am simply not convinced that the continued presence of U.S. troops is what's causing the violence in Iraq at this point. I'm afraid that a too-fast U.S. withdrawal will cause much greater suffering than not. The U.S. never should've gone there in the first place, but now that they're there, it seems to me they have to finish the job.

Aggravation

I have to confess that I'm growing increasingly frustrated with the state of the "peace scene." It seems that every organization or fellowship even considering the issue of peace is doing so from an unabashedly liberal perspective, and I'm just not that liberal. I don't think "justice" will automatically lead to peace, and I'm convinced that justice, whether "restorative" or "retributive" is a piss-poor standard to work for.

At the same time, I have no home in the church. The church I pastor is one where, too often, I am asked to pray for "our" troops who are risking their lives for "us". This is civic religion at its worst: we are so identified with the nation-state that we cannot conceive of a different. Liberal churches are no better. They too confuse the church with the society at large, and I simply can't enjoy their style of biblical interpretation.

So... where do I find a home? I've thought about starting an "evangelical peace fellowship" or somesuch, but I have to suspect that no one will come. Am I the only evangelical out here who thinks that Jesus meant it when he told us to forgive and turn the other cheeck?