The bomb “was God’s judgment and God’s mercy at the same time.”

Bishop Griswold demonstrates what is wrong with liberalism.

The outgoing chief bishop of The Episcopal Church, having presided over that 2 million member denomination’s spiraling schism over homosexuality, squeezed time into his schedule this week for an apologetic visit to Hiroshima.

Presiding Bishop Frank Griswold expressed “repentance” over the U.S. atomic strike on the Japanese city 61 years ago. He is also very worried about current U.S. foreign and military policies, of course.

“I express my own profound sorrow, regret and repentance for the suffering the citizens of this city bore on August 6, 1945, and those in Nagasaki on August 9,” the presiding bishop told worshippers at Hiroshima’s Church of the Resurrection. “I further issue a call to continuing mutual repentance and reconciliation.”

This old timer shows what the Church used to be:

In contrast to the surreal observations of the American bishop, a retired Japanese bishop spoke of Hiroshima with greater historical and spiritual perception. Bishop Joseph Noriaki Iida, as a teen-age naval academy student, was a witness to the atomic blast and understood what caused it.

“At that moment, I felt I deeply understood that we had chosen the way of death three years ago,” when Japan declared war on America, Bishop Iida recalled to the Episcopal News Service. Viewing a charred Hiroshima from atop a hill 61 years ago, he remembered the Scripture: “Today I lay down two ways: the way of life and the way of death; the way of blessing and the way of curse.” The glowing mushroom cloud over Hiroshima also reminded him of the pillars of cloud and fire that protected and guided the Hebrews out of ancient Egypt.

Iida said the atomic blast at Hiroshima was a cause of jubilation for the Koreans, Southeast Asians and American soldiers whom the Japanese were killing. But even for the Japanese themselves, the bombings provided freedom from totalitarianism, militarism, colonialism and racism, he said. The bomb “was God’s judgment and God’s mercy at the same time.”

Remembering a blackened Japanese history textbook at the time, in which only sentence fragments remained, Bishop Iida compared it to his realization that what he had been told about his country by Japan’s militarist dictators was “totally wrong.” After learning of Japan’s atrocities and of the Nazi Holocaust, and absorbing the Japanese Emperor’s denial of his own previously professed deity, Iida considered turning to communism.

Iida read the Bible so that he could refute Christianity. But instead he succumbed to the “love of God.” While communism had urged hatred of the bourgeoisie, he said, the “Bible said unconditional love, love against those who persecuted you, who hate you.” The Japanese bishop concluded: “Christianity is superior. That’s why I became a priest of the Anglican Church.”