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DR. ROBIN MEYERS' SPEECH DURING THE 11/04/04 PEACE RALLY AT OKLAHOMA UNIVERSITY

As some of you know, I am minister of Mayflower Congregational Church inOklahoma City, an Open and Affirming, Peace and Justice church in northwestOklahoma City, and professor of Rhetoric at Oklahoma City University. But you wouldmost likely have encountered me on the pages of the Oklahoma Gazette, where Ihave been a columnist for six years, and hold the record for the most numberof angry letters to the editor.Tonight, I join ranks of those who are angry, because I have watched as thefaith I love has been taken over by fundamentalists who claim to speak forJesus, but whose actions are anything but Christian.We've heard a lot lately about so-called "moral values" as having swung theelection to President Bush. Well, I'm a great believer in moral values, but weneed to have a discussion, all over this country, about exactly whatconstitutes a moral value-- I mean what are we talking about? Because we don't get to make them up as we go along, especially not if we are people of faith. We have an inheritedtradition of what is right and wrong, and moral is as moral does.Let me give you just a few of the reasons why I take issue with those inpower who claim moral values are on their side:* When you start a war on false pretenses, and then act as if your deceptionsare justified because you are doing God's will, and that your critics areeither unpatriotic or lacking in faith, there are some of us who have given ourlives to teaching and preaching the faith who believe that this is not only notmoral, but immoral.* When you live in a country that has established international rules forwaging a just war, build the United Nations on your own soil to enforce them, andthen arrogantly break the very rules you set down for the rest of the world,you are doing something immoral.* When you claim that Jesus is the Lord of your life, and yet fail toacknowledge that your policies ignore his essential teaching, or turn them on theirhead (you know, Sermon on the Mount stuff like that we must never returnviolence for violence and that those who live by the sword will die by the sword),you are doing something immoral.* When you act as if the lives of Iraqi civilians are not as important as thelives of American soldiers, and refuse to even count them, you are doingsomething immoral.* When you find a way to avoid combat in Vietnam, and then question thepatriotism of someone who volunteered to fight, and came home a hero, you are doingsomething immoral.* When you ignore the fundamental teachings of the gospel, which says thatthe way the strong treat the weak is the ultimate ethical test, by giving taxbreaks to the wealthiest among us so the strong will get stronger and the weakwill get weaker, you are doing something immoral.* When you wink at the torture of prisoners, and deprive so-called "enemycombatants" of the rules of the Geneva convention, which your own country helpedto establish and insists that other countries follow, you are doing somethingimmoral.* When you claim that the world can be divided up into the good guys and theevil doers, slice up your own nation into those who are with you, or with theterrorists -- and then launch a war which enriches your own friends and seizescontrol of the oil to which we are addicted, instead of helping us to kickthe habit, you are doing something immoral.* When you fail to veto a single spending bill, but ask us to pay for a warwith no exit strategy and no end in sight, creating an enormous deficit thathangs like a great millstone around the necks of our children, you are doingsomething immoral.* When you cause most of the rest of the world to hate a country that wasonce the most loved country in the world, and act like it doesn't matter whatothers think of us, only what God thinks of you, you have done something immoral.* When you use hatred of homosexuals as a wedge issue to turn out recordnumbers of evangelical voters, and use the Constitution as a tool ofdiscrimination, you are doing something immoral.* When you favor the death penalty, and yet claim to be a follower of Jesus,who said an eye for an eye was the old way, not the way of the kingdom, youare doing something immoral.* When you dismantle countless environmental laws designed to protect theearth which is God's gift to us all, so that the corporations that bought you andpaid for your favors will make higher profits while our children breathedirty air and live in a toxic world, you have done something immoral. The earthbelongs to the Lord, not Halliburton.* When you claim that our God is bigger than their God, and that our killingis righteous, while theirs is evil, we have begun to resemble the enemy weclaim to be fighting, and that is immoral. We have met the enemy, and the enemyis us.* When you tell people that you intend to run and govern as a "compassionateconservative," using the word which is the essence of all religiousfaith-compassion, and then show no compassion for anyone who disagrees with you, and nopatience with those who cry to you for help, you are doing something immoral.* When you talk about Jesus constantly, who was a healer of the sick, but donothing to make sure that anyone who is sick can go to see a doctor, even ifshe doesn't have a penny in her pocket, you are doing something immoral.* When you put judges on the bench who are racist, and will set women back ahundred years, and when you surround yourself with preachers who say gaysought to be killed, you are doing something immoral.I'm tired of people thinking that because I'm a Christian, I must be asupporter of President Bush, or that because I favor civil rights and gay rights Imust not be a person of faith. I'm tired of people saying that I can't supportthe troops but oppose the war.I heard that when I was your age--when the Vietnam war was raging, we knewthat that war was wrong, and you know that this war is wrong--the only questionis how many people are going to die before these make-believe Christians areremoved from power?This country is bankrupt. The war is morally bankrupt. The claim of thisadministration to be Christian is bankrupt. And the only people who can turnthings around are people like you--young people who are just beginning to wake upto what is happening to them.~ It's your country to take back. It's your faithto take back. It's your future to take back.Don't be afraid to speak out. Don't back down when your friends begin to tellyou that the cause is righteous and that the flag should be wrapped aroundthe cross, while the rest of us keep our mouths shut. Real Christians takechances for peace. So do real Jews, and real Muslims, and real Hindus, and realBuddhists--so do all the faith traditions of the world as their heart believeone thing: life is precious.Every human being is precious. Arrogance is the opposite of faith. Greed isthe opposite of charity. And believing that one has never made a mistake is the mark of a deluded man, not a man of faith.And war -- war is the greatest failure of the human race -- and thus thegreatest failure of faith. There's an old rock and roll song, whose lyrics say itall: War, what is it good for? Absolutely nothing.And what is the dream of the prophets? That we should study war no more, thatwe should beat our swords into plowshares and our spears into pruning hooks.Who would Jesus bomb, indeed? How many wars does it take to know that too manypeople have died? What if they gave a war and nobody came? Maybe one day wewill find out.

PEACE