Nuclear Disarmament: Are the Churches the Key?

I came back from the Peace and Planet conference last weekend in New York City with several big takeaways.

Perhaps top of mind was the impression made by the massive turnout by people from all over to Japan to say: "Hello? United States? Nuclear weapons still? What the hell?"  (See "Two nuclear weapons hit our country in 1945. It is not necessary" on the Chicago Nuclear Injury Action Group website.)

Representatives of Zenkyo (All-Japan Federation of Teachers’
and Staff Unions) and Gensuikyo (Japan Council Against the
Atomic and Hydrogen Bombs) with their banners at the Peace
and Planet rally in Union Square on April 26.

But perhaps the deepest and most encouraging part of the weekend was a meeting of "church people."


Pope Francis

Pope Francis: "Nuclear deterrence and the threat of
mutually assured destruction cannot be the basis for
an ethics of fraternity and peaceful coexistence
among peoples and states."

The big breakthrough came in December at the time of the Vienna conference on the Humanitarian Consequences of Nuclear Weapons. Pope Francis issued a message to the conference that is a clear call for nuclear disarmament.

This was discussed at length at the Peace and Planet conference by the Rev. Paul Lansu, representing Pax Christi International. 

Particularly important: the Pope takes the position that it is not just the use of nuclear weapons that is intolerable; it is also the threat of their use, and therefore their existence.

See the full statement of Pope Francis on nuclear disarmament.

So . . . 1.214 billion Roman Catholics worldwide (17.5% of the world population) saying "It's time for the elimination of nuclear weapons . . . " ?


Oikoumene ("Habitable World")

Jonathan Frerichs from the World Council of Churches provided information on the way many other Christian denominations have long-standing social statements that oppose nuclear weapons.

The question now is whether these denominations will put nuclear disarmament on the front burner, where it belongs.

(For more on the World Council of Churches, see oikoumene.org. Wikipedia explains that "the ecumene (US) or oecumene (UK; Greek: οἰκουμένη, oikouménē, lit. "inhabited") was an ancient Greek term for the known world, the inhabited world, or the habitable world.)


Reconciliation

The Rev. Kristin Stoneking from Fellowship of Reconciliation spoke about the need to broaden our way of talking about how people conceive themselves and the process of getting into right relationship with God and the world. There are differences in the way major faith traditions talk about this.

Imagine how productive it could be for faith leaders from the Islamic, Jewish, Christian, and other faith traditions to sit down together and talk openly about whether, in fact, nuclear weapons are tolerable to their followers. (I'd watch that on Youtube!)


Owning It

These signs of progress are hopeful. They are needed. But I am afraid they are not sufficient.

Marc Chagall, Noah lets go the dove through 
the window of the Ark (Genesis VIII, 6 9)

The question that I asked in this meeting was: "I wonder if people of faith will only really be able to become a force for the elimination of nuclear weapons when their respective religions accept -- "own" -- the role that religion itself has played in bringing about the situation in which nuclear weapons exist today."

One of the things I was thinking of was the efforts of Christian denominations to work for peace and justice in the Israel/Palestine, and the way that only becomes possible when the Church (and the West) "own" their centuries of colonization (geographic and conceptual) of the Holy Land. (See "The churches provide the software" on the Faith in the Face of Empire website.)

I was also thinking of the way in which, during the period of rapid increase in popular awareness of the extent of the climate crisis during the past few years, faith leaders have stepped up and "owned" the role of the church in fostering ideas of "man's dominion over creation" that have laid the foundation for disaster. (See "The disappearance of dominion thinking in the Christian climate change debate")

So: what will it take for faith traditions to "own" their role in bringing us to the nuclear precipice?


TAKE ACTION

Go to your 

pastor/rabbi/imam/priest/etc.

and ask:

"What will it take

for our community

to work 

for nuclear disarmament

as if we really knew

it's up to us

to save the world?"

Related posts

Is it possible that we will only truly understand God's promise to humanity once we understand that there are some outcomes that would make a mockery of God's forgiveness, and that God has empowered us to prevent those outcomes, and that it's now up to us to do so.

(See ATOMIC HUBRIS: Are There Some Things That Won't Be Forgiven? )

We have to learn from our mistakes, and we get to try to do better next time after we learn our lessons; but the threat posed by nuclear weapons is an exception, because there will be no second chance.

(See Why I'll Be in NYC for Peace and Planet April 24-26)















One of the really interesting things about looking at how Rachel Carson used her writing to wake the world up -- particularly with her prophetic Silent Spring -- is that we can then go back to some of the earliest parts of the Bible and see them as living and urgent. And reading Silent Spring as well as Biblical stories like the account of The Flood points to the urgency of changes that need to be made here and now in the way we all live our lives.

(See Looking at Rachel Carson (at St. Luke's "School for Prophets") )








I'm marveling at the adjacency of a piece of public art -- one with a very clear message about the risk of human ambition and self-absorption and heedlessness -- to the center of political power in the city of Chicago.

(See NUCLEAR WEAPONS: Who will bring us down to earth? )









Don't we need to talk more about what we really mean by "injustice", "suffering:, and "violence"? (I wonder if the outrage that many Muslims seem to feel at the suffering of other Muslims doesn't put us Christians to shame.)

(See Fighting Back: It's alright as long as you're a Christian, right? )










Do we have a way to immerse ourselves in the experience of what the use of those nuclear weapons would really mean -- prospectively -- so that we can truly cause ourselves to confront our own inaction?

(See Stop engaging in risky behavior )

Hundreds gathered in Chicago on Good Friday 2015 to say to the victims of the US atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, "We can hear you are in pain. We can smell your injuries. We don't have the power to restore your health. But we will NOT forget you."

(See "People Will Find the Way to Eliminate Nuclear Injury")