The nation's largest association of mainline Protestant and Orthodox Christian churches said Tuesday that U.S. policy in Iraq has become so destructive the United Nations should take over.
Separately, bishops of the United Methodist Church, which claims President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney as members, said the war has led to the "denigration of human dignity."
As the furor grows over photos of American soldiers mistreating Iraqi detainees, the National Council of Churches said in a pastoral letter that giving control to the U.N. was the only way to create "lasting peace." The council represents 36 denominations and has been highly critical of the Iraq war.
"Many people see our policy as one based on protection of our country's economic interests narrowly defined, rather than on principles of human rights and justice that would serve our nation's interests," said the letter, which the council hopes will be read in churches nationwide. "We are convinced that current policy is dangerous for America and the world and will only lead to further violence."
The Methodist Council of Bishops said it "laments the continued warfare by the United States and coalition forces" and said the U.S. premises for the war – alleged Iraqi links with al-Qaeda and a buildup of weapons of mass destruction – "have not been verified."
"The cycle of violence in which the United States is engaged has created a context for the denigration of human dignity and gross violations of human rights of Iraqi prisoners of war," the bishops said in their resolution. They also demanded a greater U.N. role in rebuilding Iraq. The 8.3 million-member church is the third-largest in the nation.
The Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano took aim at the now infamous photo of a soldier holding a prisoner by a leash. In an editorial Monday, the newspaper said the soldier's goal was to dehumanize the prisoner, but that the image achieved the opposite effect.
"On the contrary, it is the torturer who with her leash stifles within herself any residue of humanity," it said.
Roman Catholic Archbishop Edwin F. O'Brien, head of the U.S. military archdiocese, has called the maltreatment of prisoners "outrageous" and said it must be "condemned without equivocation."
The Council on American-Islamic Relations, a civil rights group based in Washington, has demanded that Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and his top advisers step down, saying "no other action" could restore the image of the United States.
However, Richard Land, head of the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, the public policy arm of the Southern Baptist Convention, said that based on the information disclosed so far, Rumsfeld should stay.
Land, who backed the war, contended the soldiers' actions reflected a broad lack of moral values in the culture at large.
"This is not a breakdown in the system. This reflects a breakdown in society," Land said. "These people's moral compass didn't work for some reason. My guess is because they've been infected with relativism."
Rabbi David Saperstein, director of the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism, the movement's public policy arm, called the prisoner mistreatment "a disgrace to the international rule of law, the ideals for which our country stands and the values we are trying to inculcate in a new Iraq."
The Reform movement is the largest branch of American Judaism, with about 920 synagogues, and its leaders were divided over the war.
"Jewish law taught 3,000 years ago that in times of war no less than in times of peace, maintaining that dignity of all people, which flows from being created in God's image, is incumbent upon each of us," said Saperstein, who commended Bush for his apology for prisoner mistreatment.