A WEEK ago, the U.S. House of Representatives called for a national day of prayer during which Americans would pray to "secure the blessings and protection of providence for the people of the United States and our armed forces during the conflict in Iraq and under the threat of terrorism at home." The non-binding resolution follows on the heels of a similar resolution passed by the Senate last week. It also echoes theological references in President George W. Bush's recent speeches, as in his State of the Union address, when he talked about his confidence in the loving God that is behind all of history and said, "we go forward with confidence, because this call of history has come to the right country -- may He guide us now."
The decision of both the president and Congress to bring God into the war through their rhetoric and resolutions is extremely unwise given the context of this current war. The Congress' passage of the resolution, in particular, is striking in its disregard for how detrimental it is to infuse the conflict with more of a religious charge than it already possesses.
The resolution notes that days of prayer have been designated in past times of conflict, citing two historical examples. The first was the Continental Congress' call for a day of "humiliation, fasting and prayer" in 1776 in light of the threats being posed to American liberty; Abraham Lincoln also called for such a day in 1863.
Days of prayer may arguably be a part of American wartime tradition, but what may have been appropriate in the past is not appropriate now, in the current situation.
In the Revolutionary War and the Civil War, Americans were fighting people like themselves: predominantly white Christians, different only because of their nationality or because they happened to reside on the other side of the Mason-Dixon line. In the current conflict, by contrast, the countries and peoples fighting each other are different in fundamental ways. A predominantly white Christian country is fighting a predominantly Arab Muslim one.
This war, in other words, is different from past wars in that it can potentially be seen as a clash of civilizations and religions. Congress' injection of God into the situation -- trying to claim that God is "on our side," the Christian side -- further heats up a confrontation that is already teeming with tension.
From a purely tactical perspective, Congress and President Bush should be doing everything they can to draw attention away from America and Iraq's religious differences, not toward them. Not only can this war potentially be seen as a clash of religions, it is being seen and used in that way by Saddam Hussein, in an effort to rally his people and other Arab nations against the United States. Hussein is milking the "holy war" angle for all it's worth. In his address to Iraq a week into the war, he said "an attitude of glory and jihad should be adopted," one that "pleases" God, when "evil comes to [Iraq] wielding its perfidious and destructive weapons" ("Hussein to Iraqis: 'Strike them and strike evil,'" The Baltimore Sun, March 25). Hussein has control over the sermons of all Iraqi clerics and the content of state-run television, and he has been using these venues to present the current war as a holy war, saying that the United States is coming to destroy Muslims and that it is Iraqis' duty to fight for Islam. One Baghdad preacher declared in a sermon: "This is not President Saddam Hussein's war. This is a Muslim war" ("Saddam uses jihad to rally Muslims," Newsday, March 18).
Hussein essentially is using a holy war argument -- that the war to depose him is really a larger war, a war of Christianity versus Islam -- to rally his people around him. He's also using it to generate support from other Muslim nations who fear they may be next on the Coalition's list of countries to invade. The politicized sermons include the idea that Iraq is just the beginning and after it is conquered "other Muslim areas will be attacked
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