September 23, 2005
Coach Bill McCartney, Founder
Promise Keepers, Men of Integrity
Boulder Colorado
SUBJECT: The Strait Gate Vigil:
Project Strait Gate s vigil was held today at the wide gates of the Promise Keepers Pastors and Leadership Conference in Phoenix, AZ.
Dear Coach McCartney:
Coach McCartney, I am familiar with your family story and your history as a “pro-life” example. I was there in Colorado when you once spoke at a rally of Operation Rescue. May God bless you for your public choice for “life.” You truly feel for the unborn and unprotected.
But why is it any different if the child is a five year old in Palestine or Iraq? Is his life less valuable in God s eye than our own flesh and blood? Salday, Promise Keepers is an enabler in destroying them because it does nothing and says nothing to stop the carnage. Please help us to change this while we can.
You were a presenter at the Pastors and Leadership Conference two years ago entitled: “COME NEAR TO ME” in Phoenix, Arizona.
As you may have observed, a Strait Gate Vigil was held outside this conference. Our volunteers provided literature and talked to your attendees outside Bank One Ballpark as they came and went. We saw and tried to talk to thousands of church leaders. Our purpose there was to influence Christ-followers among those attending to oppose the continuous slaughter in the Middle East and its impending bombing of Iraq, as well as other US financed bombings, such as in Palestine. We let them know that we blame Christian leaders for the destruction of innocent Iraqis and Palestinians unless they take a New Testament stand for peace. We correctly blame you too.
Did not God make it known that He, the Almighty, holds each of us accountable? We Hold These Truths wants you to know we see the blood on your hands right up to your elbows because of what is not said in your conferences, and we want you to see it too, before it is too late to cleanse yourself. Each of us shares in that guilt to the extent we, too, have failed to stand in times past.
Prayers for peace do not take the place of telling President Bush you will hold him responsible for unjust executions in the name of “war;” that you know this “war” is not just; and that you will help “pray” him and all who support him out of office, if he does not stop his irrational Warmaker demands to pour the blood of another innocent population on the hands of the American people. And visions do not take the place of deliberate pursuit of this fact.
We asked many of your attendees the following question, both with signs and vocally:
“IRAQ?” “WWJD?” (“What would Jesus do?”)
Coach McCartney, what would He do?
Most pastors who walked by saw our signs but they deliberately turned away and ignored the question. Their actions and body language indicated someone had sold them on bombing Iraq. Occasionally a pastor or leader would let us know he resented us and that he simply did not care what Jesus would do, his mind was made up.
Some few showed temper and replied with rhetorical questions like: “So you like Sadam Hussein?” and “Would you trust Sadam to baby sit your children?” (These statements by persons who told me they were pastors.)
Occasionally an attendee would answer sincerely, “I don t know.” Most of these honest leaders seem confused by the requirement to be a peacemaker, yet to also comply with the demand that they support the so-called “born again” President s demand for the annihilation of Iraq. Only in those few did we find hope for American churches at the Promise Keeper Conference.
One of the signs held by a Strait Gate volunteer flushes out a giant oxymoron in Judeo-Christian teachings. It reads:
“CHOOSE
LIFE”
“NOT
WAR”
Most of your attendees, like you, who consider themselves pro-life, initial body language is often positive when they read the first two words “CHOOSE LIFE”. One could detect the start of a smile or a nod.
But once the last phrase on the sign, “NOT WAR” was read, the response changed in a blink. The smile evaporated, and often the head quickly turned away. The walk stiffened and the pastor passed by pretending not to see. There was a mixture of embarrassment and hostility, which told us this pastor had hardened to bombing Arabs (Muslims) wherever they are found. Few said anything and most emphatically refused any written information.
Jesus said his kingdom knows no race, no hate, no male or female. But this pastor is rejecting what He says for a form of virulent racism: The “right to life” does not include Arabs and Muslims because it is committed to political Israel. Its Called Christian-Zionism.
Where do you stand on the lives of the innocent Iraqi children like a little Iraqi girl, Teaba Ahmad, whose face is on our bookmark that we gave your attendees?
Where do you stand on the daily murder of Palestinian children with US tanks and missiles? Do you turn your head away from them because they are Arabs, or because their parents or leaders are in conflict with the “Chosen People?” Is it on account of their race or their parents religion that they are not deserving of life? If either is true, their blood is on your hands.
Anti-war demonstrations are blossoming in record numbers all over the USA and the world. Most are at government buildings, offices, and political meetings, some of which while President Bush is visiting. Unfortunately, these rallies are not reaching the people who can stop the bombing, those who Christ calls to be Peacemakers, but who are failing to stand up for peace. They are in church.
Our own reports, The Source Of Our War Problems: Why Judeo-Christians Do Not Demand Peace, and SHERRY S WAR reveal the terrible truth. We pray that you will read them. Many of America s Christian leaders have become facilitators of “Serial Wars.” Our nation is now an addicted serial killer. Coach, if you do not know why, you should read our site on the Internet.
We are committed to ending Serial Wars before America is destroyed from within. And we are committed to doing this by raising the conscious level of The Church That Fails To Stand For Peace.
You have staged a Million Man March for life, but a million or more innocent persons have already been destroyed in these wars during the life history of Promise Keepers. This is a fact no one can deny or rationalize. The fact that those killed are a long ways away does not make it less indecent. Killing is killing, be it an Afghan family, an Iraqi mother, or a Palestinian child, Christian or Muslim. Jesus was clear on this, was He not?
The enabler of Serial Wars is equally guilty whether he openly supports the bombing, or supports it by knowingly failing to oppose it. We all know what it means to say: “We support President Bush on this.” It is a vote for death. And one is just as guilty if he supports a foreign government, such as the State of Israel, that is conducting serial assassinations in Gaza and the West Bank.
The Crusades lasted 318 years, and the only logical explanation is that they were wars fought over territory and to establish a world church power. The present crusade is being used to establish a world political power. The victims stand in its way.
Our beloved country is acting as the new Rome, trying to marshal forces for a final crusade. This war will cost but a few American lives compared to the terrible toll on the children of Iraq. It is not a democratic war, it is forced upon the unwilling world and may take with it all of our cherished freedoms.
America s churches and organizations like Promise Keepers have been maneuvered into the role of cheerleaders for this Final Crusade. The ostensible victims are the 1.2 billon Muslims of many countries, beginning with Palestine and Iraq. Many of our churches now lead this ugly form of racism and brutality.
Promise Keepers makes a giant issue of condemning anti-Jewish and anti-black racism. But have you condemned this racism against Muslims and Arabs? Why not? WWJD? No, you have actually joined in it!
We repeat, pastors who claim to be pro-life and at the same time fail to oppose military aid for Israel have blood on their hands. The USA s almost unlimited military support and aid for Israel casts every American in the role of a facilitator in the death of the Palestinian children killed by the thousands by Israeli soldiers.
Pastors must be assumed to know because they received ample evidence they refuse to see.
The murders we speak of are not always invisible, but are admitted to by the perpetrators own words. For instance, the abortion policy of Israel requires that the government itself runs the abortion clinics where they have killed over 16,000 unborn children in each of the most recent years reported. That is more lives each year than the Israelis have lost in battle at the hands of the Philistines in 54 years. And if anything could be worse, we Americans pay for the shedding of the innocent blood of the unborn Israeli babies. It should be no surprise that the abortion rate in Israel is higher than in the USA.
Coach McCartney, it is time your followers know the truth. Lack of knowledge is not forgivable in the information age.
One can just imagine Charlton Heston s God booming out “You say you did not know about the killing of children; why do you think I gave you the internet?”
It is the organized force of the evangelical Christian Churches that constitutes voting block of some 20% of all Americans. Celebrity Christian leaders have openly boasted they provide the grass roots muscle that keeps the Administration s Iraq and Israel policy alive. The silent dissenting members of American congregations are being used to facilitate war. You could have a We Hold These Truths speaker at your rallies to explain this. There is no shortage of knowledge.
Jesus said: “For as much as you have done to the least of these (brothers) you have done to me” and “suffer the little children to come to me,” and, of course, the great and humble Beatitude, “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the sons of God.”
Please, Coach McCartney, show us where Jesus ever made a statement that allowed a Christian to take the life of a Palestinian or an Iraqi child. It is Jesus himself who tells us the blood is on the hands of those who stand silent!
Americans are awakening with or without the leadership of our churches. Righteousness should start with church leaders, but instead it is starting in the street. In no country in the world is the evangelical church so influential as here. You “leaders” will decide the fate of tens of thousands.
Promise Keepers did not take a stand for or against the Bombing of Iraq? What do you tell the churches that will not take a stand? What will you do now that you know? We Hold These Truths Advisors and I will be pleased to meet with you.
Toward the strait gate,
Charles E. Carlson
PROJECT STRAIT GATE
( www.whtt.org/straitgate )
P.O. Box 14491
Scottsdale, AZ 85267
480 947 3329 (cecarl@whtt.org)
