Washing my feet of the Iraq war

Tomorrow is Maundy Thursday, the day in the Christian liturgical calendar that commemorates the Last Supper. In the evening, I'll attend a service where people wash one another's feet in memory of Jesus washing the feet of his disciples. The ritual is a reminder that Christians are called to serve others as Christ has served us.

Tonight, too, I'm going to wash my feet, but for a different reason. Tonight, I'm going to wash my feet to protest the war in Iraq, which is five years old today. This footwashing will mark the end of my day-long protest of the war, which has also included fasting and participating in a march.

I'm drawing my inspiration from D&C 84:92-96, which instructs missionaries to wash their feet as a testimony against those who reject their message. This is a variation, of course, on shaking the dust off one's feet, which we read about in the Gospels. The point of the gesture is to say to those who rejected your message: You people are going to be in such big trouble come judgment day, that I don't want so much as a particle of your town clinging to me lest the judgment reserved for you spills over onto me as well. A more modern version of the idiom would be: I want to be as far away from you as possible when the lightning falls.

While this gesture may have helped early missionaries maintain a sense of the rightness of their cause in the face of opposition and rejection, it isn't actually very Christlike, so I'm glad missionaries don't do this anymore. (I hope missionaries don't do this anymore.) I'm using the gesture to mean something rather different. In the initiatory, we receive instructions about becoming "clean from the blood and sins of this generation." I take from that an affirmation that there is such a thing as collective guilt. Applying that principle to the war: Americans, collectively, are responsible for the blood and sins that our government has perpetrated in Iraq in our name. We are, collectively, under judgment.

In washing my feet tonight, I am bearing witness to that collective guilt. I'm not trying to "wash my hands" of the guilt. I'm not disclaiming responsibility. Washing my feet isn't about seeking individual absolution from collective sin; it's about asserting the existence of collective sin and owning my responsibility to do something about it. When I wash my feet tonight, I will be symbolically declaring my conviction that Americans, collectively, need to repent.

We need to stop claiming that this war was justified.
We need to stop talking about "winning the war."
We need to start talking instead about what we can do—hopefully in cooperation with other nations, especially other Middle Eastern nations—to begin to repair the disaster we have inflicted on Iraqis.
We must not allow our government to escalate this war into a confrontation with Iran.
We must not allow our government to set up a permanent military presence in Iraq.
We must repudiate absolutely the doctrine of "pre-emptive strike" that was used to justify this war.
And we ought to repudiate unilateral military strikes period.

So—I'm now going to wash my feet. And then I'll return to the computer and finish with a prayer.

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God of judgment, God of justice—

Through your servant Joseph Smith, you called the Latter-day Saints to renounce war and proclaim peace.
Through your servant Spencer W. Kimball, you chastised Americans for being a warlike people.
You have taught us to envision and work for a world where swords are beaten into plowshares.

I am angry and grieved that my country is still at war in Iraq, a war we were not justified in launching in the first place.
I am angry at the shamelessness with which my country's government has continued to prosecute this war, even after it became clear that the reasons they gave us for needing to go to war were, if not fraudulent, certainly untrue.

I pray for a sea change in public opinion—for a firm will on the part of a solid majority of Americans to repudiate and end this war.
I pray that the coming elections will result in a government able and committed to overturn the current administration's warlike foreign policy.
I pray that the think tanks and media outlets that have promoted this war will become a hiss and a byword.

I know that my praying for this isn't going to make it happen.
Show me what I can do to make a difference.

In Christ's name, amen.