A Pastoral Letter on War, Peace and Hope

Dear Friends,

As your pastor here at Princeton I am writing to you today about war and peace and hope.

I know that some of you support the President’s policies with regard to Iraq. I also know that some of you are completely against war of any kind for any reason. And many of you may still be struggling with your thoughts and feelings about this issue.

While I may not agree personally with each one of you on this issue, I do honor and respect each person’s views. But I am not writing to you today to persuade you to adopt one political position or the other. Instead, I am writing to you about the Christian virtue of hope.

Many people throughout the world, irrespective of their political views on war with Iraq, seem to feel that war is inevitable. I perceive a sense of resignation that at the end of the day there will be a war, no matter what else happens. The world seems to have given up hope that peace can prevail.

It is this sense of war’s inevitability, this surrendering of hope that God’s peace will somehow, against all odds, prevail that I am writing to you about. I want to urge you, no matter what your political views are, to pray fervently for peace and never to give up hope that praying for peace might tip the balance toward a peaceful resolution to the current crisis, or any future crisis in which war and peace hang in the balance. We must never allow ourselves to slip into a resigned position in our hearts and minds that war is inevitable. We must, in short, never give up hope – never give up on God.

So let’s keep praying for peace and justice and mutual understanding. Let’s pray for our own country and for our enemies. Let’s pray that Iraq will comply with UN resolutions and disarm. Let’s pray that no Iraqi and no American – that no one anywhere – will be harmed by bullets and bombs and gas.

As for your political positions on this issue, I want to share a bit of an interview conducted last week by the London Telegraph with our new Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams:

Telegraph: So should all good Christians go on the [anti-war] march on Saturday?

Archbishop Williams: No. I think all good Christians should ask themselves why they are going or why they are not going, and have a Christian answer to give.

Above all, let’s not give up hope!

In Christ,

Steve White