Episcopal Pastor Calls for Stand Against U.S. Role in Gulf : Politics: The Pasadena minister doesn’t rule out civil disobedience if needed. Many churches are urging a negotiated solution instead of combat.

The pastor of the largest Episcopal parish on the West Coast has called on churches to “stand against (our) nation going to war” with demonstrations and civil disobedience if necessary.

Although the Rev. George Regas, rector of the 3,000-member All Saints Episcopal Church in Pasadena, agrees with overwhelming religious sentiment that Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait was villainous, he told his congregation last Sunday that “war is no longer a viable option in 1990. War is always tragic.”

Most Christian leaders have urged the United States to negotiate a solution to the crisis and have questioned President Bush’s reference in early August to preserving the American “way of life” as he dispatched armed forces to oil-rich Saudi Arabia.

And, most recently, evangelical activist-editor Jim Wallis has urged U.S. troop withdrawal and Regas’ own bishop, the Right Rev. Frederick Borsch, has pointed to troublesome ironies in the American moves.

The Sisters of Mercy, a 7,000-member, nationwide Catholic religious order based in Louisville, Ky., this week opposed the U.S. military response and urged a peaceful resolution. “We oppose any invasion or bombing of Iraq,” said the organization’s statement.

But few, if any, religious figures have signaled clearly that they would stage protests against American military action. “We must go to jail, we must do anything to stand in the name of God against another monstrous war,” Regas exhorted from his pulpit.

Parishioners at All Saints probably weren’t surprised at Regas’ comments during his sermon and a forum on the Persian Gulf crisis that followed.

Many times before, the impassioned liberal priest had condemned nuclear weapons, U.S. policy in Nicaragua or increases in military spending. And the church became the first Episcopal sanctuary for Central American refugees in Southern California.

Recalling “severe” criticism that he and All Saints received for opposing the Vietnam War in the late 1960s and early 1970s, Regas said that people asked then how the church dared not to support the President at a critical time.

The parish also stirred some controversy during the 1980s when it helped to found and then housed the Interfaith Center to Stop the Arms Race. As contributions dried up late last year when the Cold War ended, the center moved out and is debating its future.

Regas, whose parish delves into social-political subjects like few other congregations, said the spirit of God was calling the churches to declare that war would be “preposterous” at a time when prospects for world peace and a “peace dividend” of anti-poverty money looked so promising.

“The church must stop blessing war. . . . War lays hold of the noblest elements in the human character, with which we could make heaven on Earth, and uses them to make hell on Earth,” Regas said.

“There is no question that (Iraqi President) Saddam Hussein is an unwholesome character,” Regas said. “I don’t want to give any support to him.”

He added that Americans are right to support President Bush and pray for him. “We ought to love the soldiers who have gone there because the country asked them to go,” Regas said.

Churches as varied as Angelus Temple in Los Angeles and St. Thomas More Catholic Church in Rialto have made special prayers for U.S. soldiers and for a peaceful solution to the crisis. Greek Orthodox Archbishop Iakovos of New York asked western hemisphere parishes last Sunday to join in a national prayer for peace in the Middle East.

Members of the San Luis Rey United Methodist Church and Temple Etz Chaim in Thousand Oaks have mailed letters and cards to troops.

The 151,000-member Church of the Brethren, a pacifist denomination based in Elgin, Ill., has joined with several Mennonite bodies to declare an “oil-free Sunday” on Oct. 21. Church members will be asked to curtail their normal use of gasoline and oil that day to illustrate “that our nation is willing to go to war to keep the oil flowing.”

Economic reasons for stationing American troops in Saudi Arabia disturbed church leaders and groups such as the National Baptist Convention U.S.A., Inc., which passed a resolution this month in Los Angeles to oppose spilling American blood for oil.

The evangelical magazine Sojourners, published in Washington, decrying the “distinctly low profile” taken by American churches on the issue, says in its October issue that Hussein must be opposed, but by regional or U.N.-supervised forces.

The predominant U.S. military presence on the side of Kuwait seems directed toward “making the world safe more for feudalism and gas guzzling than for democracy,” wrote Wallis, the editor. “Are we prepared to bomb the children of Baghdad, if necessary, to protect ‘our oil’?” he asked.

A cautious statement was issued by the National Council of Churches’ Executive Coordinating Committee in mid-September. The growing American military forces and “apparent open-ended nature of the U.S. involvement in the region give rise to serious questions which we believe the churches should consider with care,” said the committee.

Likewise, the Rev. Teruo Kawata, interim United Church of Christ executive for Southern California, said in a regional newsletter to 140 congregations this month that he “would not presume to second-guess the President” in the difficult crisis, but he urged prayers that Bush and Hussein “not act out of pride and anger.”

Borsch, writing in his diocesan newspaper to church members in six counties, said there were plenty of tactical and moral questions to ask. Without swift containment of Hussein, the Iraqi leader could have been emboldened to swallow up more neighboring countries, Borsch suggested. “And what of the day when Hussein may have nuclear weapons?” the Los Angeles bishop wrote.

Yet, Borsch said things rarely turn out the way planners plan.

“No matter our intentions, our long-term military presence may make matters worse for everyone but a few oligarchies that do not exactly represent American ideas of democracy,” he said.

“The pressures on our own already weakened economy grow. It would be, at the least, ironic if, in seeking to keep our economic lifestyle, we should lose it.”