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- March 19
March 19
Hans Küng and the anniversary of the War in Iraq.
David Barnhart
March 19, 2025
Portstewart, Ireland. 2024. Own photo.
Twenty years ago, on this day in 2003, President George W. Bush ordered the U.S. military to begin air strikes on Baghdad. This war was justified in the media to the citizens of the United States on the false pretense that Saddam Hussein was pursuing the manufacture of weapons of mass destruction. The war would go on to cost $2.4 trillion, and around a quarter million Iraqi lives. Twenty years later, many Americans still believe the false narrative about weapons of mass destruction. In 2006, the North Alabama Conference of the United Methodist Church, when presented with a resolution calling for peace, changed the resolution into a declaration of support for the Iraq War, in violation of the Social Principles. In 2019, when presented with an opportunity to repudiate their earlier support, a majority of the North Alabama Conference reaffirmed its support for the Iraq War and the lies upon which it was perpetrated.
In 2009, the Pentagon estimated that as many as 360,000 U.S. veterans of the Iraq War may have had traumatic brain injuries, and a 2020 report estimates deaths by suicide among veterans in the post 9-11 wars to be 30,177.
Today marks the birthday, in 1928, of Hans Küng, a German Roman Catholic theologian who nonetheless was a vocal critic of the Roman Catholic church. He was very active in ecumenical conversation across denominations and religions.
March 19 or 20 is also the Feast Day of Saint Joseph, and in Spain it is celebrated as Father’s Day, since Joseph of Nazareth is a model of fatherhood.
Reflection:
Frederick Buechner wrote this about war:
Can there be any doubt that if the fighting were left to the leaders themselves, the story would be a very different one? …One pictures them in their business suits and long dresses, their burnooses and caftans and saris, as they head off to do it armed with weapons they have no idea how to use and ultimatums, principles, and slogans that suddenly seem equally useless, and with their hearts in their mouths. Can there be any question as to how long it would take them to turn around and go home? …Can there be any doubt that Jesus was speaking only a simple truth when he said that those who live by the sword will die by the sword? (Beyond Words, 2004).
Hans Küng wrote of church history after Constantine:
What a revolution! In less than a century the persecuted church had become a persecuting church. Its enemies, the “heretics” (those who “selected” from the totality of the Catholic faith), were now also the enemies of the empire and were punished accordingly. For the first time now Christians killed other Christians because of differences in their views of the faith.
He also wrote:
If you cannot see that divinity includes male and female characteristics and at the same time transcends them, you have bad consequences. Rome and Cardinal O'Connor base the exclusion of women priests on the idea that God is the Father and Jesus is His Son, there were only male disciples, etc. They are defending a patriarchal Church with a patriarchal God. We must fight the patriarchal misunderstanding of God.
Prayer: Spirit of Peace, our religion has embraced a god of violence and war, of domination with which it enforces patriarchy, capitalism, and a theology of deserving. Give us, instead, the faith of Christ. Amen.