Colorado Springs faith communities pray for immediate, sustained bilateral ceasefire in Middle East

The chaos in the Middle East weighed heavily on the hearts of Christians and people of other faith traditions who gathered in Colorado Springs on Monday to pray for “an immediate and sustained bilateral cease-fire in the Middle East.”

“Violence in the world is doing untold harm to an untold amount of people,” Josh Rumple, director of youth and pastoral care at First Congregational United Church of Christ, said in his opening prayer to a crowd of about 60.

“As we lament together, as we hope together, as we plea for peace in the world … we believe change is possible,” he said.

The Sisters of Benet Hill Monastery, a contemporary Roman Catholic Benedictine monastery in Black Forest, and First Congregational Church, self-described as "an Open and Affirming Just Peace congregation," convened "The Service of Lament, Hope and Action."

The event included interfaith readings, songs, the reverberating note of a singing bowl and silent reflection in between.

Presenters called on the strength of religious peacemakers as they read the words of the Christian savior, Jesus Christ; the prophet Muhammad, the founder of Islam; the Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh; and Rabbi Irwin Keller, spiritual leader of Congregation Ner Shalom in California.

“Don’t ask me to take a side, unless it is the side of peace,” Keller has said, which Sister Marie Therese Summers, prioress of the Benet Hill monastery, read aloud.

Yet "the name of peace has barely been spoken in this winnerless war,” Keller said, adding that he “will call for de-escalation, even though I want nothing more than to get even.”

The prayer service was planned before this past weekend's heightened violence, when a barrage of cruise missiles, drones and ballistic missiles were fired toward Israel, primarily from Iran, which according to news reports came as retaliation for a recent Israeli strike on Damascus that killed seven officers from Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. 

Domestically in recent days, a man took the microphone at a public pro-Palestine protest in Dearborn, Mich., to chant, "Death to Israel" and "Death to America."

Both the Benet Hill nuns and the United Church of Christ denomination have endorsed the Christians for Ceasefire Campaign of the Franciscan Action Network.

Every Wednesday, the sisters at the Monastery pray for peace in all countries experiencing violence, Summers said, so it seemed a natural progression for the congregation to join the national movement.

“We firmly believe that neither war nor other forms of retribution will yield the accountability that is needed for healing and reconciliation. We seek a new way, modeled on the nonviolent teachings of Jesus,” the nuns’ endorsement states.

Organizations supporting the campaign “acknowledge that both Hamas and Israel have committed horrible violence,” according to the campaign’s website.

They subscribe to the belief that “the focus must shift to diplomacy, accountability mechanisms and strategic nonviolent peacemaking, and that neither war nor retribution is accountability.”

“What do we do as a people of faith? We must not be silent,” Ruth Roland, director of mission advancement at the monastery, said at the prayer service.

Organizers of the event did not choose April 15 — tax day in America — by accident, she said.

The day is significant, Roland said, because taxpayer dollars are used to build weaponry that the United States provides to various countries through the Foreign Military Sales program.

Attendees were encouraged to contact elected leaders, including President Joe Biden, to voice their desire for peaceful solutions.

Roland said faith communities also have been asked to work with the Colorado Springs Peoples Coalition and the Pikes Peak Justice and Peace Commission to advocate to City Council for a permanent bilateral cease-fire in the Middle East.

The shift from calling for a cease-fire only by Israel to a bilateral cease-fire is necessary because both Israelis and Palestinians have engaged in injustices, Roland said.

“Something has to change," she said.

Roland quoted a Franciscan nun, Sister Mary Thea Bowman, who pioneered the rights of Black Catholics and who once said to Mike Wallace on the "60 Minutes" television program that the difference between her and some people is that she’s content to do her little bit.

“Sometimes people think they have to do big things in order to make change,” Bowman said. “But if each one would light a candle we'd have a tremendous light.”

Said Summers, the Benet Hill prioress: “We can’t accomplish anything through war, only death.”