Journey to Belgrade

Christian Century, May 19, 1999 by Joan Brow Campbell, Leonid Kishkovsky

Jesse Jackson would be the first to say that the religious leaders who accompanied him to Belgrade in late April were not just his props. While the media coverage didn't show the extraordinary breadth of our 15-member interfaith delegation, that breadth was our strength. And the key to the mission's success lay precisely in the solidarity that we - Christians, Muslims and Jews - shared with each other and especially with our Yugoslav counterparts, who had asked us urgently to come to Belgrade. By going, by putting ourselves ever so briefly under the same bombing they endure night after night, we believe we helped to strengthen their witness for peace.

We went because people in that country needed our support. We responded as we had responded to Desmond Tutu in South Africa and to other partners in other places. We stepped forward from our position of power and safety in order to give some strength to religious leaders in a difficult situation. Because communities of faith have ties that cross the boundaries of nation-states, we can still talk with each other even when our nations are at war with each other. There is a unique role that people of faith can play.

We rejoice in having won the three captured U.S. soldiers' freedom. We believe that their freedom opens a small window of opportunity for peace. We pray that the window will remain open long enough to give peace a chance.

The delegation that left for Belgrade on April 28 and returned to the U.S. on May 3 included Protestant, Roman Catholic and Orthodox Christians, along with Rabbi Steven Bennett Jacobs and Dr. Nazir Uddin Khaja, M.D., board chairman and president of the American Muslim Council. It was crucial that this be an interfaith delegation, and especially that it include a Muslim, given that so many of the Albanians are Muslims. With two exceptions, this was a delegation of clergy.

Our capacity as the National Council of Churches to organize a very effective interfaith delegation with a man of Jesse Jackson's stature gave heart to Orthodox member churches that their concerns, and the part of the world they come from, could get front-and-center attention from the NCC.

We went to Yugoslavia as partners of the extraordinarily diverse religious communities there - Serbian Orthodox, Roman Catholic, Protestant, Muslim and Jewish. It was especially Patriarch Pavle, head of the Serbian Orthodox Church, who had pressed us to come, emphasizing the importance of such a visit for all people caught in the conflict over Kosovo - Albanians and Serbs as well as members of the many ethnic, cultural and religious minorities in Yugoslavia.

It is not well known in the U.S. that Patriarch Pavle, together with the bishops of his church, has called for the cessation of violence in Kosovo, the protection and safety of all who live in Kosovo - Serb and Albanian alike - the end of the bombing in Yugoslavia and the release of the three captured U.S. soldiers. He was making these points well before our delegation arrived.

The witness for peace and justice given by Patriarch Pavle, a man of prayer, spiritual integrity and moral vision, is a profile in spiritual courage. His witness against violence has been consistent from the beginning of the violent dissolution of Yugoslavia, through the war in Bosnia, and now in conjunction with the conflict over Kosovo.

It is also not well known in the U.S. that the Serbian Orthodox bishop in Kosovo, Artemije, has for several years insisted that the conflict in Kosovo can be resolved only through free and honest dialogue between the ethnic communities in conflict. And this, he warned, has been impossible because the government in Belgrade, as a dictatorship, has blocked democracy and freedom in Yugoslavia, while in Kosovo acts of terrorism and a culture of violence have set the stage for escalating violence. Bishop Artemije is a man of Christian faith and ministry, a bishop and pastor, not a man of political calculation.

Our delegation visited Patriarch Pavle at the Serbian Orthodox Patriarchate in Belgrade. We also met with other representatives of the various religious communities in Yugoslavia. At this encounter we saw our American religious pluralism mirrored by the religious pluralism of Yugoslavia. The Christian, Jewish and Muslim voices at this meeting expressed the dismay and agony the religious communities experience in the midst of the suffering of their land and people. It was again Patriarch Pavle who spoke of the suffering in Kosovo and the suffering in all of Yugoslavia as a result of the bombing campaign, and who called for an end to violence.

Our delegation, which defined itself as a religious delegation coming to Yugoslavia to make a humanitarian appeal, also met with Yugoslav political leaders - the foreign minister, the president of parliament and President Slobodan Milosevic.

We spoke an honest word to Milosevic; we spoke truth to power. We were not negotiating for our government - that was clear. In fact, the U.S. government had warned us that it could not guarantee our safety. We went with a very specific request to Milosevic to free the three Americans held in Yugoslavia - that is something a religious group can do on a humanitarian basis.