{"id":3527,"date":"2011-06-22T16:43:16","date_gmt":"2011-06-22T20:43:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/news\/?p=3527"},"modified":"2011-06-22T16:43:16","modified_gmt":"2011-06-22T20:43:16","slug":"churches-call-for-u-s-to-pull-out-of-afghanistan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2011\/06\/churches-call-for-u-s-to-pull-out-of-afghanistan","title":{"rendered":"Churches call for U.S. to pull out of Afghanistan"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>By JACK JENKINS<\/strong><br \/>\n<em>c. 2011 Religion News Service<\/em><\/p>\n<p>WASHINGTON (RNS) As President Obama prepared plans to bring a limited number of U.S. troops home from Afghanistan, a group of 40 religious leaders called for the president to &#8220;bring the war in Afghanistan to an end.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Signers of an open letter, including high-profile religious leaders like Sojourners founder Jim Wallis, expressed frustration over the &#8220;deteriorating&#8221; state of affairs in Afghanistan and the rising military and civilian death toll, saying &#8220;the military situation is at best a stalemate.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The Tuesday (June 21) letter acknowledged that &#8220;legitimate ethical and moral issues are at stake&#8221; in Afghanistan, including U.S. national security and women&#8217;s rights, but said &#8220;there is a better way than war to address these important issues.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Developmental aid provided by nongovernmental organizations was championed as an alternative to war, with the signers saying &#8220;it is time to transition toward a plan that builds up civil society and provides economic alternatives for Afghans.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The letter admitted that some signers initially supported military action in Afghanistan as a &#8220;justified response&#8221; to the 9\/11 terrorist attacks, but said the representatives are now &#8220;united in the belief&#8221; that the war should end.<\/p>\n<p>The letter boasted a number of signers affiliated with the National Council of Churches, including NCC General Secretary Michael Kinnamon. Several leading NCC member churches &#8212; including the Episcopal Church and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America &#8212; were notably absent.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By JACK JENKINS c. 2011 Religion News Service WASHINGTON (RNS) As President Obama prepared plans to bring a limited number of U.S. troops home from Afghanistan, a group of 40 religious leaders called for the president to &#8220;bring the war in Afghanistan to an end.&#8221; Signers of an open letter, including high-profile religious leaders like&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":345,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fbia_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[84,8,9],"tags":[33,2213,2202,948,14],"class_list":["post-3527","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-military","category-news","category-rns","tag-barack-obama","tag-military","tag-rns","tag-troops","tag-war"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Churches call for U.S. to pull out of Afghanistan<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2011\/06\/churches-call-for-u-s-to-pull-out-of-afghanistan\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Churches call for U.S. to pull out of Afghanistan\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"By JACK JENKINS c. 2011 Religion News Service WASHINGTON (RNS) As President Obama prepared plans to bring a limited number of U.S. troops home from Afghanistan, a group of 40 religious leaders called for the president to &#8220;bring the war in Afghanistan to an end.&#8221; Signers of an open letter, including high-profile religious leaders like&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2011\/06\/churches-call-for-u-s-to-pull-out-of-afghanistan\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Beliefnet News\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2011-06-22T20:43:16+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Beliefnet News Editor\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Churches call for U.S. to pull out of Afghanistan","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2011\/06\/churches-call-for-u-s-to-pull-out-of-afghanistan","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Churches call for U.S. to pull out of Afghanistan","og_description":"By JACK JENKINS c. 2011 Religion News Service WASHINGTON (RNS) As President Obama prepared plans to bring a limited number of U.S. troops home from Afghanistan, a group of 40 religious leaders called for the president to &#8220;bring the war in Afghanistan to an end.&#8221; Signers of an open letter, including high-profile religious leaders like&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2011\/06\/churches-call-for-u-s-to-pull-out-of-afghanistan","og_site_name":"Beliefnet News","article_published_time":"2011-06-22T20:43:16+00:00","author":"Beliefnet News Editor","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2011\/06\/churches-call-for-u-s-to-pull-out-of-afghanistan","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2011\/06\/churches-call-for-u-s-to-pull-out-of-afghanistan","name":"Churches call for U.S. to pull out of Afghanistan","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#website"},"datePublished":"2011-06-22T20:43:16+00:00","dateModified":"2011-06-22T20:43:16+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#\/schema\/person\/ff42454e16eda902b675fd206e222124"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2011\/06\/churches-call-for-u-s-to-pull-out-of-afghanistan#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2011\/06\/churches-call-for-u-s-to-pull-out-of-afghanistan"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2011\/06\/churches-call-for-u-s-to-pull-out-of-afghanistan#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Churches call for U.S. to pull out of Afghanistan"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/","name":"Beliefnet News","description":"Top Religious News From Around the World","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#\/schema\/person\/ff42454e16eda902b675fd206e222124","name":"Beliefnet News Editor","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/e30\/e30900503ec90484dcd1469f5ccbd68fx96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/e30\/e30900503ec90484dcd1469f5ccbd68fx96.jpg","caption":"Beliefnet News Editor"},"description":"Top religious news from around the world","sameAs":["http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/news"],"url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/author\/news"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3527","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/345"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3527"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3527\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3529,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3527\/revisions\/3529"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3527"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3527"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3527"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}