Remarks at the US Capitol for a Prayer Vigil Against the War in Iran

The American Secretary of War, Pete Hegseth, announced that American and Israeli warplanes would soon gain total control of Iranian airspace allowing them to deliver “death and destruction from the sky all day long.” Think about it–that is what America will mean to the people of Iran—as it already means to Afghanistan, Libya, and Iraq–“death and destruction from the sky all day long.” Do we want our country to strike fear in the people of the world? Where is our vaunted Christian faith? Where is our humanity?

When I think of America today, I think of an engraving by Pablo Picasso. It depicts a great monster, the Minotaur, attacking a city. The scene is chaotic, with a woman being carried off, a man climbing a ladder to escape over the city wall and a family looking fearfully through the windows of their house. In the midst of the tumult is a little girl holding a candle. She is the one who confronts the monster and seems to be keeping it at bay.

Picasso made this engraving in 1935—when Fascism had taken over in Germany and Italy and was on the rise in other European countries. With his archetypal imagery, he seems to be saying that the light in us is the only thing that can overcome the monsters. It’s only the light of conscience that recognizes the monsters—greed, demonization of the other, and the lust for power. And it’s only the light of the indwelling Spirit, I would say, that gives us the courage to face them.

St. Paul reminds us, “We are not fighting against flesh and blood, but against the principalities and powers of this world of darkness.” Today, the powers of darkness seem to be triumphant. Sovereign countries have been attacked; school girls have been killed; in Gaza the cities are rubble and the people are homeless. What can we do but call on each other and all our compatriots, to be guided by the inner light? Right now, we call specifically on the members of Congress to approve the War Powers Act which limits the President’s authority to wage war and to deny any further funding for his aggressions. How can anyone’s conscience be reconciled with the spectacle the Defense Secretary, no the Secretary of War, describes?

But we must do more than call on Congress to act. We must find ways to interrupt the war machine. Boycotting complicit companies, divesting from the arms manufacturers—there are many ways to name and face the evils of our time. More than 100 members of the US military have already lodged complaints against Pete Hegseth’s framing of the war in Iran as a “Christian” operation. When we are led by the light within, we show the world what Christian discipleship really means.

Are we tempted to despair? I am. Are we tempted to ask, how can God allow such suffering and still be a God of love? Again, yes. But at times like these, I think of Etty Hillesum, who was a radiant presence in the concentration camps. In her diary she wrote, “If God does not help me to go on, then I shall have to help God.” That’s what we must do today—help God and help one another by honoring and acting upon the light within us. This is the only way, I believe, to counter death and destruction. This is the only way that love and not war will have the last word.

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