U.S. religious leaders apologize for Iraqis abuse in TV ads

by Chris Herlinger
Ecumenical News International

NEW YORK — The U.S. National Council of Churches (NCC) is promoting an advertisement it hopes to run on Arab television networks in which U.S. religious leaders apologize for the abuse of Iraqi prisoners by U.S. troops.

      The advertisements are promoted by FaithfulAmerica.org, a “progressive faith movement” project that the NCC is supporting along with two social advocacy groups, True Majority and Res Publica.

      In the spots, four U.S. religious leaders — Donald Shriver (Protestant), Imam Feisal Abdur Rauf (Muslim), Sister Betty Obal (Roman Catholic) and Rabbi Arthur Waskow (Jewish) — appear in succession.

      After the greeting, “A Salaam A’alaykum” (“Peace be with you” in Arabic), there is a message condemning abuses that were committed against Iraqi prisoners being held by U.S. forces. The narration reads: “As Americans of faith, we express our deep sorrow at abuses committed in Iraqi prisons ¼ We condemn the sinful and systemic abuses committed in our name, and pledge to work to right these wrongs. This message was endorsed and paid for by thousands of Americans.”

      The advertisement is now on the FaithfulAmerica.org Web site before appearing on Arab television.

      FaithfulAmerica says it “aspires to be an online wing of a powerful, new progressive faith movement, like the ones that fought for independence, abolition and civil rights.” Its honorary chairman is William Sloane Coffin, an activist, former chaplain at Yale University and a former minister at New York City’s Riverside Church.

      The Institute on Religion and Democracy, a long-time critic of the NCC, has, however, said it believes the council is trying to influence the 2004 presidential elections by aligning itself with groups opposed to the Republican Party of President George W. Bush.

      FaithfulAmerica has said it accepts “the separation of church and state, but not the separation of moral principles from politics.”

      Narrator Shriver, a Presbyterian minister and former president of New York’s Union Theological Seminary, told Ecumenical News International he expected some people would label the ads as unpatriotic. “Honest American patriotism requires us to affirm the highest ideals of the nation,” he said, noting that “when those ideals are violated,” it is necessary “to acknowledge that fact and apologize to those who were victims of the violation.”

      Columnist Tom Blackburn raised the same issue in a column in the June 22 edition of the Detroit Free Press newspaper headlined: “Why is sorry OK from Bush but not from religious left?” He wrote, “What the speakers are doing is little more than President George W. Bush did when he went before Arabic television cameras to say he’s sorry.”