AMY GOODMAN: We turn now to a man who fought for social, racial, economic justice in this country and around the world his entire life of 83 years. He was Bishop Paul Moore, the retired Episcopal bishop of New York. He died at his home in Greenwich Village on May 1st. In recent months, he was suffering from brain cancer and lung cancer.

Bishop Moore spoke out against corporate greed, racism, military spending, and for more assistance to the nation’s poor. He was an early advocate of women’s ordination and in 1977 was the first Episcopal bishop to ordain a lesbian as an Episcopalian priest. Moore was born to a wealthy family in Morristown, New York, graduated from Yale, served as a Marine captain during World War II, wounded in the Battle of Guadalcanal and received the Navy Cross, the Silver Star and the Purple Heart. During his tenure as the Episcopal bishop, Bishop Moore transformed the seat of the diocese, the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, from a moribund backwater church to a place where peacocks roamed, elephants lumbered, orchestras performed, inner-city youth found jobs, and the homeless slept in supervised shelters. He opened the cathedral for rallies against racism and on behalf of nuclear disarmament. When criticized that he was using the church for political purposes, Bishop Moore said religion and progressive social policies were inexorably linked. He took on the cause of the East Timorese and traveled there several times during the Indonesian occupation of Timor.

This Saturday, I went to St. John the Divine, where a mass funeral was held for the former bishop. Thousands of people turned out. Today we thought we’d play a speech that Bishop Moore gave last Christmas, along with other religious people, against an invasion of Iraq. This is what Bishop Moore had to say.

BISHOP PAUL MOORE JR.: In 1942, I was a Marine lieutenant leading a rifle platoon in the attack of the Marines on Guadalcanal. I was there for three months, and then I was shot, through here. I had 38 kids with me. And by the time we were through, there were only seven that were left. The other had been wounded or had been killed. And I held some of them in my arms, saw the blood. I saw beautiful American kids killed, Japanese soldiers killed. And we’d open their tunic, and there would be a picture of them in their kimono with their children and their wife. And we had killed them like shooting rabbits. I remember that. And that really is the reason that I was so deeply strong for peace in Vietnam.

The only person in the leadership of this country who has seen war is Colin Powell. And he’s the one person who’s trying to keep us from doing something rash. The other guys, they’ve never seen it. They talk about war as if it was a chess board. “Maybe we’ll do this. Maybe we’ll do” — they don’t know that people are dying. Sometimes I think the best way we could get on the media, if we were allowed to be on the media, would be to take a baby in our arms and say, “Do you want to kill this baby?” I don’t think there’s one person in the United States who would say, “Yes, I want to kill that baby.” But if we go to Iraq, we’ll be killing thousands of babies. So, first of all, I’m against war, period. OK.

Now, the second thing I’d like to say is the way to deal with a fight between individuals, husbands and wives, or nations is not to give each one of them a club to hit the other. Now, if you have a little boy who gets in a fight with the kid next door, and they’re, you know, hitting each other and throwing mud at each other, what do you do? Do you go down and give your kid a bigger club, a bigger baseball bat, to hit the other kid? No. You say, “Hey, wait a minute, boys. What’s the problem? Who hit who first? Or who insulted your sister?” Whatever.

So, what I’m trying to say is the only way we can become peaceful in this world is to get at the roots of the anger. The roots of the anger against America is that in many parts of the world, for millions of people, we are the terrorists. It used to be — it used to be that there was respect and even affection for the United States — let’s say, in the early ’50s with the Peace Corps and the Marshall Plan. And they believed that we were indeed a compassionate democracy. But now in those same countries — Africa, Asia, the rest, Central America — no longer. Now it is not a nation for whom they feel affection and respect, but fear. And we will never have peace until we are a nation that is loved and respected, rather than a nation that is feared.

And the third thing I’d like to say — and I’m preaching to the choir here, thank God — it’s a very big choir — is this, that this Iraq situation is not — is only a symptom of something that goes much deeper into the soul of America. It’s a symptom of our disease, by which our leadership, not the people of the country, I know and feel — our leadership solves problems by power and force. What do they do if a kid has a drug problem? Lock him up, throw him in prison, throw away the key. And usually he’s either Black or Latino. We know that. That’s part of the same thing. What do they do about the drug — so-called drug war? Do they give rehab centers all over the cities of the United States and in the rural districts? No, they bomb poppy fields in Colombia and put peasants into a starvation situation. So, you see, it’s the same thing.

I believe — and this is my final, final thought — I believe that, really, ultimately, it is the religious people of the United States — the Christians, the Jews, the Muslims, the other people of goodwill of other religions — who have deep in their heart a love of God and a love, a love, of their fellow human beings, anywhere in the world. And I think that most Americans, if you would sit down with them, that’s the kind of people they are. And to have our nation, a nation that is feared, a nation that solves problems by bombing, is not the kind of people we are. We have to somehow, as religious leaders, so called, rally the people of the United States to be who they are: loving, compassionate, decent people. And only then, when we root out the roots of the anger against us by outreach and compassion to the world, will we solve what’s before us tonight.

AMY GOODMAN: And that was the Right Reverend Paul Moore, the 13th bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of New York. He died on May 1st after suffering from lung and brain cancer. He was 83 years old, born November 15th, 1919, died May 1st, 2003. Thousands came out to his funeral at his church, St. John the Divine, in New York this past Saturday. And by the way, if you’d like a copy of today’s show, you can call 1-800-881-2359. That’s 1-800-881-2359. Back in a minute.