Seeking Spiritual TV Debate on Balkans

Andy Rooney has had it with Sunday morning talk shows, complaining on “60 Minutes” last weekend about “people who don’t know what they’re talking about” insisting that ground troops were needed to undermine and subdue Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic.

Grumbled General Andy: “If we dropped one of our good airborne divisions into Kosovo tomorrow morning, the war would be over by noon. But don’t tell me we can’t win this little war without sending in troops on the ground. Of course we can.”

Buying Rooney’s “little war” hypothesis requires also buying the possibly risky assumption that, unlike those unnamed palookas he criticized, Rooney does know what he’s talking about. In any case, even if his epaulets are askew, why shouldn’t he have his say when just about everyone else is getting gobs of television time to sound off on the Balkans?

Almost everyone else.

Those talk shows that Rooney criticized, for example? Sunday’s guests were Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, British Prime Minister Tony Blair, nine U.S. senators, two congressmen, four Republican presidential hopefuls, two former government officials and three former military leaders.

But typically, no one from the clergy.

Cardinal Roger M. Mahony called the bombing of Serbia and Kosovo a “just war” in a recent interview on National Public Radio. Yet even though the Balkans conflict is seen by many as largely a question of a moral imperative--doing or not doing the right and humane thing--the spiritual perspective has been all but excluded from this debate on television.

One striking exception is “Religion & Ethics Newsweekly,” a PBS magazine series that has covered the bombing story from its inception. Covered the story its way.

“There’s a need for some clarity on this issue and what the religious and moral perspectives are,” said the show’s executive producer, Gerry Solomon, from Washington, D.C.

“Religion & Ethics Newsweekly” has been providing that perspective, devoting last Sunday’s round-table segment, for example, to a discussion of the conflict’s moral underpinnings. Joining host Bob Abernethy were the Rev. Richard John Neuhaus, editor of the Catholic publication Just Things, and Rabbi David Saperstein, who heads the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism in Washington.

The Vatican has not commented specifically on whether it regards NATO attacks on Serbia as just. Yet Neuhaus could not justify the NATO assault on moral terms, he said, because “a just war must be declared by legitimate authority. By what legal and by what moral right does NATO or the U.S. have to intervene in a sovereign country?”

Although concurring that “this particular thing may not work,” Saperstein disagreed with Neuhaus on the more fundamental issue, saying: “The just war theory requires just cause and just means. I can’t think of any clearer just cause than preventing genocidal activity and ethnic cleansing, of protecting innocent civilians in this kind of situation. I can’t think of a more just means than a systematic targeting on military targets.”

Much more was said by both men, of course, in contrast to the sparseness of clerical comment about the Balkans elsewhere on TV.

“The same thing was true of the discussion of Monica Lewinsky, when you rarely got a moral, religious perspective on it,” Solomon said. “Part of the problem in the current situation is that it is very difficult for religious leaders to clarify their thinking on this war. They’re struggling with it.”

Yet in sorting out their own feelings, wouldn’t it be beneficial for viewers to be exposed to that struggle? If not, then talk-show debates over NATO’s and America’s bombing policy will continue to be framed overwhelmingly in terms of national or strategic interests, as if other considerations were irrelevant.

“I agree that it’s a moral issue, and I believe that the rabbis, priests and ministers actually have something to say on the subject,” said Rabbi Bradley Artson, executive vice president of the Southern California Board of Rabbis. “But the truth is, religion isn’t sexy, and religion isn’t newsworthy in the eyes of many who define what newsworthy is.”

The present Balkans violence reflects age-old turbulence in that region, driven largely by religious conflict involving Muslims and separate branches of Christianity. In that regard, here’s a fine suggestion for one of these talk shows from Father Gregory Coiro, spokesman for the Archdiocese of Los Angeles. “It would be interesting,” he said, “to see a Serbian Orthodox representative with somebody representing the Muslim community.”

But would they be sexy enough?

“On television, we rarely see experts who can enlighten about moral issues,” Father Coiro noted.

And when a cleric does get air time to reflect on topical issues, it’s usually Jerry Falwell. He welcomes every rumble he can get into when the subject is homosexuality or the defects of President Clinton, but seems not to have addressed the moral implications of the Balkans conflict, based on a review of topics listed for his weekly “Listen America” TV discussion program.

And what of the influential Trinity Broadcasting Network, where preacher after preacher can be found speaking at length generically about good and evil? On TBN Monday night, there were Jack Van Impe and his wife, Rexella, hosting their “news program analyzing and evaluating world events . . . and late-breaking headlines for millions in 25,000 cities and towns coast to coast in America and Europe, making this the most important newscast today.”

After expressing compassion for refugees and other victims in the Balkans, Rexella asked her husband, who interprets global events according to Scripture, “Where will it all end?”

Urging all religions to turn to “love,” the star of “the most important newscast today” then turned to the nitty-gritty. Van Impe quoted a news report saying “Sudan and Saudi Arabia are manipulating all of this behind the scenes,” and another charging NATO with wanting to be part of a “new world order.” Quoting Scripture, he referred to a “global power that will devour the whole world.”

A rapt Rexella listened to her husband proclaim, “It’s here! It’s here!” Then he added, “Jesus is about to return to stop it all!”

Not here, hardly at all, are clerical voices getting TV time to speak about the Balkans conflict as a moral issue. Well, maybe next war.

* “Religion & Ethics Newsweekly” airs at 10 a.m. Sundays on KCET-TV.