January 13, 2005

PHILADELPHIA, PA - In a recent letter, the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC), a Quaker humanitarian service organization, urged President Bush to heed major U.S. religious leaders - including those in his own denomination, that have expressed concerns about the U.S.-led war with Iraq.

In the 2004 elections voters reportedly cited moral values as the "most important issue." Accordingly the letter penned by Paul Lacey, clerk of the AFSC Board of Directors, questioned why the President recently refused meeting with U.S. church leaders - including bishops from Bush's own United Methodist Church.

"You preside over a nation deeply divided, and the deepest divisions, the deepest distrusts, occur in questions with the most compelling moral resonance," Lacey writes. "We are divided on questions of war and peace, of social and economic justice, of how to combat terror and protect citizens' constitutional rights."

Lacy goes on to write: "The battle lines become so sharply drawn that there is little space for quiet diplomacy. Increasingly, that space between the battle lines will become an intellectual and spiritual ... "no man's land."

"The strong can not expect the weak to placate them and call it healing. If they do not believe they will be heard deeply, the weak and out of power feel they have only stubborn resistance to sustain integrity," Lacey adds.

In February 2003, before the beginning of the Iraq war, 46 U.S. religious leaders representing 11 denominations and 4 organizations asked for a face-to-face meeting with the President. The White House responded Bush did "not foresee an opportunity to add this event to the calendar."

Had Bush agreed to the requested meeting with church leaders, Lacy writes that "a door could also have been opened [and] some common ground [for] shared work uncovered."

Other issues of concern cited in the letter were rising health care costs and widening poverty in a land of plenty, with opportunities for a better life foreclosed by the country's military expenditures.

"These and many more difficult and complex problems are exacerbated by the spirit of fear, suspicion and hatred which dominated the recent election," Lacey concludes, closing the letter "in friendship." Paul Lacey's letter to President Bush can be found in its entirety on the American Friends Service Committee website at http://www.afsc.org/.

The American Friends Service Committee has a long history working for peace and reconciliation in an atmosphere of war. At the request of Herbert Hoover, director of the American Relief Administration, the Service Committee launched massive programs to feed millions of starving children in post-war Germany. On behalf of the United Nations, AFSC administered relief for over 200,000 refugees in the Gaza Strip in the 1940s. During World War II, AFSC provided temporary aid, housing and other assistance to Japanese Americans in efforts to get them out of internment camps.

In 1947, the American Friends Service Committee and its European counterpart, the British Friends Service Council, accepted the Nobel Peace Prize on behalf of Quakers worldwide for humanitarian relief efforts.

American Friends Service Committee