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Hoosier United Methodist News Archives
| Hoosier United Methodists together |
January 2004 |
Religion leaders encourage Bush in Middle East peace efforts
By Erik Alsgaard
WASHINGTON (UMNS) -- As Bishop Sharon Zimmerman Rader rode in a taxi from Reagan National Airport to the heart of the nation's capital, she heard a story on the radio that was all too familiar.
A 9-year-old child was killed in the ongoing conflict between Israelis and Palestinians.
"There should be no more of this killing," she said.
That message was at the heart of a gathering of 32 prominent interfaith leaders who, during a press conference at the National Press Club, encouraged President Bush to continue his efforts at building peace in the Middle East.
Rader, United Methodist bishop of the Wisconsin Area and secretary of the denomination's Council of Bishops, represented the council at the meeting.
"The significant thing about this group is that it involves Jews, Muslims and Christians together," Rader said. "It involves not only Protestant Christians but Roman Catholic Christians, evangelical Christians as well as mainline, and that's very significant."
The delegation urged Bush to immediately reactivate the call in his "road map to peace" for ending all violence between Israelis and Palestinians and to work to achieve a ceasefire agreement between the two sides.
In a document titled "Twelve Urgent Steps for Peace," the delegation also called for the return of the special presidential envoy to the region, a determination of specific steps that the two sides could take simultaneously towards peace, and benchmark principles for mutually acceptable solutions.
"The first and foremost step is to encourage the president to take up once again the initiative that he established in the road map to peace and to begin to move that forward -- most specifically, to call for an end to the violence there," Rader said.
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"The first and foremost step is to encourage the president to take up once again the initiative that he established in the road map to peace ..." Bishop Sharon Rader |
The delegation is seeking to meet with Bush, and it sent a letter to the White House. According to Bishop Mark S. Hanson of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, the delegation has yet to meet with the president, but the members remain hopeful.
"We have a commonality with Bush on this issue," Hanson said. "We're with him on this issue."
Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, founder of the American Sufi Muslim Association, an organization that seeks to build bridges between Muslim Americans and society, admitted that getting together this many religious leaders -- and their firmly held beliefs -- wasn't easy.
"We've come to affirm the value of dialogue," he said. "We believe that 100 more years of suicide bombings will never drive Israel into the sea. Most Muslims believe that the path to peace runs through Washington. We also affirm that Islamic teachings support our efforts for peace."
Rabbi Paul Menitoff, executive vice president of the Central Conference of American Rabbis, said the delegation represented an effort to mobilize moderate voices for peace. "We ask, on the backs of how many more dead Israelis and Palestinians will peace by achieved?"
Rader and other speakers were strong in their encouragement to the president, saying the United States must take leadership on this issue and do all it can to achieve peace.
Alsgaard co-directs communications in the Baltimore-Washington Conference.
Last updated on 02/09/2004