Evangelicals: Against abortion, and now war
More Christians who backed Bush are rethinking their support
Tuesday, March 13, 2007 in The Oregonian
JULIE SULLIVAN

Suzanne Brownlow shivers on the Interstate 205 overpass as a cutting wind whips her sign: “Honk to End the War.” Her weekly demonstration is the latest turn in a fractious journey that has taken the evangelical Christian mother from protesting abortion clinics to protesting the war in Iraq.

“I feel like at least we are doing something,” Suzanne Brownlow says, waving with her husband, Dave, and two youngest children near Clackamas Town Center.

No polling data conclusively demonstrate that opinion among the broad national base of conservative evangelicals has shifted. But some prominent national evangelical leaders say that debate about — and, in some cases, outright opposition to — the war is breaking out among Christian conservatives whose support was key to President Bush’s election victories. For those evangelicals, they say, frustration from the Republicans’ failure to overturn abortion rights has fueled their skepticism. Others decry the war’s human toll and financial cost, and they’re concerned about any use of torture.

“This war has challenged their confidence in the party,” says Tony Campolo, an evangelical Baptist minister who lectures across the country on social issues. “Add to that that they feel the Republicans have betrayed them on the abortion issue,” says the prolific author and frequent talk-show guest, “and you are beginning to see signs of a rebellion.”

On Sunday, the National Association of Evangelicals, which says it represents 45,000 evangelical churches, endorsed an anti-torture statement saying the United States has crossed “boundaries of what is legally and morally permissible” in its treatment of detainees and war prisoners in the fight against terror.

The Brownlows voted for Bush in 2000 because of his more conservative views. But a month before the 2003 invasion, the Damascus couple began campaigning against his Iraq policies. Dave Brownlow ran for Congress three times, twice on an anti-war ticket for the Constitution Party. Since November, the couple have lobbied lawmakers in Washington, D.C., and Salem to bring the troops home. Last month, they founded Believers Against the War to influence other evangelical Christians.

On a recent Saturday, a motorcyclist, sleek in black leather, spotted the Brownlows’ banners, raised his gloved fist and flipped an obscene gesture. The Brownlows smiled, because many others were honking their support. Then a woman driver slowed and screamed, “Get over it.”

Suzanne Brownlow’s serenity finally broke. While the Brownlows’ views on the war were evolving, their eldest son, Jared, graduated from high school and joined the Army. Now he’s serving near Baghdad.

“How can I get over it?” she said. “My son is in Iraq.”

To be sure, many mainline Christian churches and at least 50 prominent evangelicals, Christians who believe in Scripture as the ultimate authority and as divinely revealed text, opposed the war from the beginning. Others were ambivalent.

But since 2003, polls showed that a higher rate of conservative Christians than other Americans favored military action. The head of the 16 million-member Southern Baptist Convention issued important early support, saying the president’s response to the Iraqi threat was justified. The National Association of Evangelicals, the same group that last weekend condemned torture tactics, even linked evangelical “prayer warriors” to the successful killing of Saddam Hussein’s sons, noting in a statement that they fell in “one of the most heavily targeted areas by praying Christians using . . . a global prayer effort.”

Daniel Heimbach, professor of Christian ethics at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary in Wake Forest, N.C., supported the war and the president’s recent troop increase. Heimbach said that unlike pacifists who believe that war is never moral, or crusaders who believe that war is the ultimate means to bring about God’s kingdom on Earth, the dominant view among some Christians for centuries has been that war can be justified under certain conditions.

Heimbach, who as a White House staff member described the “just war” moral framework for the first President Bush during the Persian Gulf War, supported the 2003 invasion of Iraq as a continuation of the first war because Saddam failed to comply with the surrender terms. Other prominent evangelicals expanded the “just war” principles, arguing that if Iraq had nuclear weapons it would be catastrophic.

Now the debate has shifted to whether the United States should stay. Heimbach says he is not convinced that the situation is hopeless or that the cost of remaining is too high.

But Campolo, the Baptist minister, has appeared on TV programs from “Nightline” to “The Colbert Report” to deny the perception that the word “evangelical” automatically means “pro-war” and “pro-Republican.”

Daniel R. Lockwood, president of Multnomah Bible College and Biblical Seminary in Portland, says he has seen a “sea change” among his students, who are looking beyond traditional conservative issues such as abortion and homosexuality to the environment, children with HIV/AIDS and the poor.

“More and more, students are very interested in social justice and issues often associated with the middle and the left,” Lockwood says, “and the war is a piece of that.”

Before the war in Iraq, the Brownlows were concerned about issues that at the time were often linked with the religious right.

Suzanne and Dave Brownlow met at a church singles group in Houston 26 years ago. As born-again Christians, they vowed their marriage, like their faith, would be politically active. He picketed Planned Parenthood clinics; she organized for the Concerned Women for America.

They had Jared, now 20; Desi, 19; Jace, 15; and Sierra, 12, and moved to Oregon in 1990 for Dave’s job in industrial design and marketing. They home-schooled their children, were foster parents for three medically fragile youths for Heal the Children and housed eight foreign-exchange students. They say those experiences “made the world smaller for them.”

They campaigned on behalf of Republican Sen. Gordon Smith and then-Rep. Jim Bunn of Oregon and citizen-activist Lon Mabon. In 2001, Suzanne Brownlow won the Concerned Women for America’s National “Diligence” award.

But by 2002, troubled by the lack of progress on the anti-abortion front and the legality of the president’s war powers, they joined the Constitution Party. Soon after the invasion, Dave Brownlow began writing articles opposing the war.

Meanwhile, Jared Brownlow — long fascinated by military histories, movies and photos of his grandfather, a World War II tail gunner — joined the Army.

Since their son deployed last fall to Iraq, his parents say he has not objected to their anti-war efforts.

Suzanne Brownlow says she had no choice. Increasingly overcome with worry, she has trouble eating and dreams of helicopters landing in her yard. Her husband starts every day clicking onto casualty Web sites. The couple keep two clocks in their living room, one for Oregon and one for Iraq.

Although many churchgoers are active against the war, the Brownlows say they still feel self-conscious sharing their views with their Christian friends, or even praying at their Damascus church for their son’s platoon. People have told them that freedom isn’t free or that they must support the troops.

“As if to say that by allowing our sons and daughters to languish in a vast Iraqi shooting gallery,” Dave Brownlow says, “we are somehow supporting them.”

“We really don’t fit anywhere,” Suzanne Brownlow says. “All our friends are pro-war and think we are heretics for talking against the president.”

She discovered Military Families Speak Out Oregon Chapter. She immediately began corresponding and found another mother whose son is in the same platoon as Jared. Both are serving with the 3rd Battalion, 509th Infantry Regiment Airborne, 4th Brigade Combat Team, 25th Infantry Division, out of Fort Richardson, Alaska. The connection has helped, she says, but “I am still looking for Christians to pray with to end the war.”

The Brownlows also made a few signs and began demonstrating.

On Dec. 9, they were standing on the Sunnyside Road overpass near Clackamas Town Center with their youngest daughter, Sierra, who was wearing a Santa hat. According to a suit filed in federal court, state Trooper Ken Moore told them they were “breaking the law,” grabbed their 10-foot banner from their hands, “crushed the banner and threw it into his vehicle.” After some heated words, they were allowed to leave with the banner. The family filed a $1 million lawsuit for what they saw as a violation of civil rights. The case is pending.

Heimbach says the evangelicals should welcome debate over the war. “Debate means people see it as relevant and affecting their lives, and we need to examine and question and hold our leaders accountable.”

For the Brownlows, though, opposing the war has led to some surreal moments, such as standing alongside Susan Sarandon and Jane Fonda at a national march. She and her husband recall looking at each other and saying, “I can’t believe we’re doing this.”

Dave Brownlow was recently asked to speak at a meeting of 9/11 conspiracy theorists. ” I was sitting with people with nose rings and tattoos, and it was kind of cool,” he says. “They heard a little of the Gospel — and it wasn’t done in any way that would offend anybody — and it was a good thing.”

Jace Brownlow, 15, who wears a “My Brother Wears Combat Boots” T-shirt, protests with his parents. He thinks of his brother often.

“What gets me is, nowhere is safe in Iraq. My friends don’t want to talk about the war. But it’s important.”

Originally in The Oregonian