Christians: Excommunicate Bush

[Doc Martin]

"If your brother does something wrong, go and have it out with him alone, between your two selves. If he listens to you, you have won back your brother. If he does not listen, take one or two others along with you: the evidence of two or three witnesses is required to sustain any change. But if he refuses to listen to these, report it to the community; and if he refuses to listen to the community, treat him like a pagan or a tax collector." Matthew 18: 15-17

It is time for Christians to treat George Bush as an outcast, to tell the world that he is no longer in our community.

Virtually every Christian church, with the exception of the Southern Baptist church, has condemned the occupation of Iraq.

Mr. Bush isn’t even willing to listen to the Christian communities. He believes all of them are misguided and is confident that God speaks to him.

He has us set aside international agreements about crimes against humanity; the US knows best.

How many Christian communities would approve of water-boarding, or other forms of torture, under any set of circumstances?

If we associate with George Bush, we are telling the world that this is how Christians treat other human beings and that any measure, including crimes against humanity, is acceptable to protect us from even the most remote possibility of harm. Our lives matter most.

Maybe as citizens, we can’t impeach him; but those of us who come from the various denominations in Christianity can condemn his actions by refusing to meet him or be associated with him. We can one by one publicly declare: we disassociate ourselves from him.

There is great diversity among the Christian churches; there is a lot we cannot agree upon but the Sermon on the Mount and “whatever you do to the least of these…” seem to be central to the faith we share, beyond debate. When Christ spoke of visiting those in prison, might the innocent at Guantanamo
be among those he had in mind?

We look back and wonder why very few German Christians were willing to condemn horrendous crimes against human beings. Six million Jews were the victims of inaction by earlier generations of Christians. How many in Islam, and how many of our own fellow citizens, will have to die before we speak up and say: Stop.

Mr. Bush, in the name of Jesus Christ, stop the killing for oil.

And to the world say, we are modeling what we are asking from Islamic leaders, we condemn this violence and its perpetrators. Please don’t judge our religion by the actions of this man, we have no traffic with him. He is now an outcast. See how he stands alone.