Justice Issues

At General Synod, many important justice issues came up as a part of our ongoing conversation about God's vision of justice for the world.

I met a Mennonite lawyer who works for peace in Colombia. Columbia has been experiencing horrifying civil war for many wars, fueled to a fever pitch by the influx of drug money and American military support. The war on drugs, in other words, is actually being waged and paid for in blood in Colombia, not the US.

One resolution supported Hawaiian prisoners in a privately-owned prison in Oklahoma whose religious leaders have been kept from seeing them. Not only is this an abuse of those particular prisoners, but it points to the growing need for prison reform in the US, as we continue to incarcerate at rates much, much higher than other developed nations, and as we continue to disproportionately incarcerate minorities and the poor.

A grassroots group handed out fliers on Darfur where refugee displacement and possible genocide continue with little interference from the outside. The information on what's happening there also seems scanty thanks to a less-than-forthcoming national government.

We also discussed how we would support peace in Israel/Palestine. The relationship between Israelis and Palestinians may be at an important turning point now, but there is a history of destructive violence on both sides. Israel's illegal occupation and day-to-day restriction of the freedom of the Palestinians is counterbalanced by a history of suicide bombings and other violence by Palestinians. And the whole thing seems to be a place where a volatile Middle East focuses its frustration and where extremist jihadists turn when fanning the flames of Anti-Semitic terror. We saw in London yesterday that those extremists are no longer limiting themselves to Middle Eastern nations.

Although it didn't come up directly at Synod this year, the war on Iraq was in the background for all of us. I don't think anybody really knows what to do with Iraq.

And then a slower-burning crisis: there are over a billion people in the world who eke out an existence on less than $1 per day. These people generally don't have access to clean water, enough to eat, health care, or any kind of fall-back in case of the crises that life often deals out.

What was heartening about General Synod is that people of faith came together to speak out for healing and transformation in these situations. It's easy in the face of so many wrongs to give up in despair. And these problems are all complicated and tightly woven into the world's power structures, but I think that if we have any hope it's because we are not alone in facing them. If we were then it would be a hopeless situation.

But God is with us. Will we be with God?