From American Baptists to Zoroastrians, Jews to Sikhs to Muslims, hundreds of thousands of Chicago-area worshipers will take a moment this weekend to pray for an end to the carnage caused around the world by land mines.
The effort is timed to coincide with an international ban on the production and use of land mines, the Ottawa treaty, which took effect March 1. The U.S. has not signed the treaty.
Interfaith cooperation is increasingly common here. But the Chicago Interreligious Campaign to Ban Land Mines is likely the first religious upwelling engineered by a foreign diplomat.
Late last year Chris Poole, the Canadian consul general in Chicago, set aside the more mundane duties of trade promotion to devote himself to the cause of land mines. He researched Chicago’s religious scene, contacted leaders of major faiths and persuaded them to come together for a unified statement against land mines.
His efforts bore fruit Wednesday when more than 100 people gathered at the Chicago Temple First United Methodist Church for a prayer breakfast at which 16 different religious leaders stood up to speak out against land mines.
“I am able to state categorically that the use of land mines is a bad choice,” said Rohinton Rivetna, founding president of the Federation of Zoroastrian Associations of North America. “We must not only shun evil, but actively subdue evil.”
Rev. Maxine Washington of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America said that she discovered the gravity of the problem while visiting South Africa, when she went for a walk outside a church following a dinner meeting.
“To this day I can remember the fright in my host’s eyes as he ran forward and begged me, please, not to walk in the area because somebody had been injured there just the week before,” Washington said.
The Armenian Orthodox Churches of the Midwest have agreed to hold a requiem service for land mine victims this weekend, while Buddhists will gather to discuss the issue. Episcopal and Catholic churches will encourage parishioners to contact their congressional representatives and urge that the United States sign the global ban negotiated in Ottawa in 1997.
One hundred thirty-five nations have signed onto the ban, but the United States, China and Russia have refused.
Poole said that his decision to spearhead the land mine campaign in Chicago came from his own experiences as a diplomat in countries where land mines kill and maim thousands.
“My next step will be to see if we can do this in Wisconsin and Missouri,” Poole said.
