My girlfriend works at a group home for teenage girls, and the weekend before July 4th, two of the girls she works with were scheduled to be baptized in a Baptist church in downtown Phoenix. Partially because I wanted to meet the girls I've heard so much about and partially because I've been slacking on church attendance myself, I decided to accompany her to the big city that Sunday morning.
The church sat humbly in between a strip mall and a residential neighborhood, looking worn-in and inviting. After almost accidentally attending a service for the hearing impaired in the church's school house, we found our way into the chapel, where we were met with friendly handshakes and welcoming smiles. After the service, we were invited to take part in a celebratory pot luck lunch, which we'd come prepared for with homemade sugar cookies.
There was just one thing about the day that sent a cold chill down my spine and almost made me want to get as far away as possible from the otherwise comforting atmosphere.
Before the service began, a montage of patriotic images was displayed, starting out with the obvious Fourth of July references - waving flags, exploding fireworks and barbequing families. While this seemed a little out of place to me during a church service, what made me bite my tongue was a part of the presentation which featured stealth bombers zooming by and footage from the bombing of Baghdad.
The line between church and state in our country is almost always listed as one of our nation's defining characteristics, and issues like prayer in schools bring the fact that the confusion surrounding where that line should be drawn is still present many generations after the Bill of Rights was passed.
Similar scrutiny is rarely applied in reverse, however. That is to say - many of those within the religious community don't seem to really think about what they are supporting with near-jingoistic levels of nationalism.
For example - since the advent of so-called "modern warfare," a new element was added to military strategy - the calculation of collateral damage. Collateral damage is a nice way to refer to lives lost by accident - civilians caught in the line of fire, when bombs miss their target and hit houses instead of barracks.
Calculations of collateral damage are what told us it was okay to napalm villages in Vietnam and drop the atomic bomb in Japan. Collateral damage is what has led the pope to declare all modern warfare "unjust."
Especially during this time of year, we often lift up our soldiers who have willingly sacrificed their lives while believing that they were fighting for values like freedom and equality. But who will lift up those who never signed up for a war? What about those who don't care about anything beyond feeding and clothing their families and end up dead anyway? Who will build a memorial in their honor?
Even if you support the war in Iraq, the question we must begin to ask ourselves is this: should we really be rejoicing in our ability to kill indiscriminately?
Reach the reporter at bdhorowitz@gmail.com.
