Reality of War Takes a Place at Churches, Synagogues, Mosques : Religion: Compassion was the watchword for worshipers. But it was sometimes mixed with support of U.S. troops and fear of computer weapons’ allure.

War’s emotions tramped across the faces of youngsters in Joey Baughman’s Sunday School class at Holy Cross Catholic Church here as the fifth-graders wrestled with pain, fear and uncertainty, praying for peace and dreading the prospect of continuing conflict.

“I’m sick of it,” said Amanda Barbano, quietly, passionately. The usually reticent 11-year-old continued, her words spilling over one another as she told her 16 classmates about someone she knows who is in Saudi Arabia, someone who is “about to die” because he is “on the front line.”

Other children in the classroom, where a U.S. flag and a green crayon drawing of a peace symbol share part of a wall, voiced other fears and feelings--including the frightening realization that even prayer might not be able to stop the deadly march of combat. Still, at the end of the hourlong class, they prayed for peace, holding hands in a circle.

Similar scenes were repeated across the nation during the weekend as children and adults, in churches, synagogues and mosques, sought spiritual help and emotional release in their efforts to cope with war in the Persian Gulf. On the first weekend since the fighting began, it became clear that war has stormed these sanctuaries. It hovered over every service.

Leaders of religious gatherings across the country either dedicated their talks to war and peace or delivered abbreviated addresses and then invited comments on events in the Middle East. Some listed the names of church members serving in the Persian Gulf, urging prayers and mail for them. Many worried that the glitter of a high-technology war, with its computers and videotaped bombing raids, so resembled a computerized football game for some people that they fail to see the human losses.

“With technology, the war has become almost like a sporting event,” said the Rev. Jack Gloverland, pastor of Unity Church of Boulder, Colo., adding that “many people have allowed the excitement and the idea of winning . . . to override the more subtle, more truthful emotion of compassion.”

Compassion was a word heard often during the weekend--compassion for those on both sides of the conflict.

Baughman, the Sunday school teacher, feared that her young students might “see it like a Nintendo game. I want to get away from that. I want them to have some compassion for the people involved.”

On Saturday in Detroit, about 40 people in Congregation T’chiyal drew together, sharing news and feelings about Iraq’s shelling of Israel, while in nearby Dearborn, 200 men knelt in prayer at the Muslim Mosque. The two congregations, so long symbols of Jewish-Arab conflict, now are united in their prayers for peace.

“It’s very easy in a war to characterize the other side as non-people,” said Ellen Dannin, who shared a Hebrew prayer book with her daughter. “But what would it be like to be a mother there?” The thought of a child in a war-torn land broke her voice.

War weighed heavily at Houston’s B’rith Shalom Synagogue, as well. While the sanctuary was flooded with peaceful sunlight streaming through stained glass windows, Rabbi Shaul Osadchey’s sermon title painted another picture. The topic: “War and Peace in the Persian Gulf.”

At many black churches across the nation, annual services honoring murdered civil rights activist Martin Luther King Jr. provided an especially poignant counterpoint to the Persian Gulf conflict. King’s birthday will be celebrated as a federal holiday today.

In Brooklyn, N.Y., the Rev. Arlee Griffin Jr., the young, bearded pastor of Berean Missionary Baptist Church, spoke in the rolling cadences of generations of Baptist preachers, urging his congregation to “remember this man of peace for our age.”

During prayers, Griffin said: “Let us not forget the men and women on the battlefield. Let us not forget the families who have lost loved ones in other wars.”

Praying for those who bear arms: It is a practice as old as time itself, but the irony is always fresh. Throughout the country, people in religious services confronted the contradiction of war and religion, many torn between their spiritual inclination to press for peace and their natural desire to wish the best for those fighting in the Middle East.

As one seventh-grade Sunday school student in Chamblee, Ga., put it: “It’s kinda weird. You want peace, but you want to support the troops.”

The question nagged many religious gatherings across the nation: Should America be fighting in the Persian Gulf?

In Bellevue, Wash., Thomas Kidd, pastor of St. Luke’s Lutheran Church, noting a “nagging ambivalence” on the question, said that although “Christians believe war is wrong . . . they may secretly want someone to off this Saddam Hussein character.”

Kidd’s response to such feelings is to pray for “everyone on either side of that line drawn in the sand. . . .”

There are other responses in the religious community.

At Holy Angels Church in Chicago, Father George Clements, known throughout the city as a warrior against drugs, did battle with the Bush Administration, shouting: “I defy all of you. You are evil and wrong when you send people out to kill and die. You are wrong!” He received a standing ovation.

But Frank Harrington, pastor of Peachtree Presbyterian Church in Atlanta, was just as adamant in his support of Bush. Pointing to the U.S. flag on his right and the church flag on his left, he told the 2,200 people in the massive building that “Our country marches under the flag of Christ.”

Not far away, in Chamblee, the fifth-graders were praying as hard as they could to stop the march of combat.

Each wrote a prayer on a piece of paper and handed it to Baughman. Most asked for a speedy end to the hostilities.

One said:

“Dear, God,

“I don’t like the idea about war. It gets me scared. I feel sorry for all of the people that are going to die. Even though I don’t know some of them, I still think it’s sad and unfair. Please help all of these people through the war.

“Thanks.”

Contributing to this story were Times staff writer David Treadwell in New York and researchers Doug Conner in Seattle, Lynette Ferdinand in New York, Amy Harmon in Detroit, Lianne Hart in Houston, Ann Rovin in Denver, Tracy Shryer in Chicago and Edith Stanley in Atlanta.