English blood, English heart

Andrew Sullivan is asking people to suggest sermons or homilies for him to excerpt; he's even offering to do it each Sunday, perhaps setting the stage for the blogging high-jinks equivalent of the Vicar of Dibley. So anyway, we have a submission. George Bell, Bishop of Chichester, in November 1939, from a pamphlet (that we believe, but can't verify on the web, he delivered as a homily) said that the [Anglican] Church in wartime should not hesitate:

... to condemn the infliction of reprisals, or the bombing of civilian populations, by the military forces of its own nation. It should set itself against the propaganda of lies and hatred. It should be ready to encourage the resumption of friendly relations with the enemy nation. It should set its face against any war of extermination or enslavement, and any measures directly aimed to destroy the morale of a population.

Consider all the elements of the Bushes-at-war, from the Powell doctrine, to shock-and-awe, to Gitmo, Abu Ghraib, Bagram, renditions, the nod-and-wink approach to Islamaphobia, the flattening of Fallujah -- and remember a time when a bishop was brave enough to speak up in a country in mortal danger about the moral obligations of wartime conduct. And now consider their modern equivalents, who only want to talk about how Terri Schiavo was just a solid meal away from being a normal person.