“Terrible Cost of War”
Nov 2nd, 2006 by jeremy
Gordon B. Hinckley (President of the LDS church) recently spoke at a BYU devotional. There is a nice write-up of the even here at By Common Consent.
The church has to try and stay politically nuetral, I understand that. I wish my church was a leader at being a social conscience and that they spoke out more against the current war, but anything seen as leaning one way or the other could be risky. Still I appreciated a few of the things he said concerning war in general, and choose to apply them to our current-day problems.
“As I have visited these various cemeteries, I have reflected first on the terrible cost of war,” Hinckley, the 96-year-old leader of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, said in a devotional address before more than 20,000 BYU students gathered at the Marriott Center on the Provo campus. “What a fruitless thing it so often is, and what a terrible price it exacts.”
Hinckley, then a church apostle, arrived in Vietnam in 1966 as the war was raging. He had to sign a release form absolving the U.S. government of any responsibility for him, then flew to Da Nang, where he attended a Mormon service for soldiers who had been killed. After the meeting, he was taken by Army ambulance to stay the night in an unfinished field hospital. All night long, fighter jets were flying north and he wondered how many of them would return.
This last one isn’t a quote from Hinckley, but instead from Mike Wallace during a 2005 Salt lake Tribune interview
LDS Church President Gordon B. Hinckley “was not and is not happy with the war in Iraq,” CBS newsman Mike Wallace said Friday. “He deplores what’s going on there.”
The longtime reporter, who interviewed Hinckley for “60 Minutes” in 1995, was in Utah to participate in Hinckley’s 95th birthday gala at the LDS Conference Center in downtown Salt Lake City.
“It wasn’t an interview situation, so I didn’t press’’ Hinckley, Wallace told a half-dozen or so reporters. “But I was sorry I didn’t have a camera.”
I think the reason the church doesn’t speak out more is because tithing would come into jeapardy if they took sides. Much in the same way they can’t come out and say “Vote for Hatch”. The IRS would be on top of them in a minute because they aren’t staying neutral.
Did the church ever come out in support of WWII in the 1940’s? I wonder if it makes a difference what the war is about and why our country is in it. I suppose not. I guess the day that the church comes out strongly in support of a war, we will know that it is Armaggedon. I hate war. Just having a friend over in Iraq is really hard.
Dustin is correct, though I don’t believe tithing would come into jeopardy simply because the church took sides. It would not longer be tax deductible if the church looses its tax exempt status.
The following is from the IRS website “In 1954, Congress approved an amendment by Sen. Lyndon Johnson to prohibit 501(c)(3) organizations, which includes charities and churches, from engaging in any political campaign activity. To the extent Congress has revisited the ban over the years, it has in fact strengthened the ban. The most recent change came in 1987 when Congress amended the language to clarify that the prohibition also applies to statements opposing candidates.” I am certain this is the reason that the church has the political neutrality statement read over the pulpit each year at about this time.
I am sure that President Hinkley deplores the reasons for war as much as the war. World War II stopped senseless torture against various religious and political groups. Did it serve a purpose? A good question. It certainly did to those who were freed from concentration camps. The world paid a terrible price. My mother lost a brother during the war. Wikipedia (a questionable source?) lists the total military deaths during WWII as over 26 million. Also, there were over 5.7 millions deaths in the Holocaust. What a revolting set of statistics. It would be interesting to hear what my parents’ generation has to say about the current war in which we are involved.
Personally, I don’t think the Church’s political neutrality has much to do with formal law. Yes, they have to comply with the Congressional prohibition in order to maintain a non-profit status, but even if they didn’t, I believe we would still hear a statement from the pulpit expressing political neutrality. We’ve been taught correct principles and we are expected to govern ourselves. Just like there isn’t one “right” person to marry, I don’t believe there is one “right” candidate for office. Anyway, there’s my two cents.