Zero Nukes, Many Faith Voices
Sunday, President Obama announced a plan for the eventual total elimination of nuclear weapons.
People of faith have been active in the disarmament and nonproliferation movements for decades. Until yesterday, there had been many words, but little action from US presidents.
President Obama’s bold move, and the moral reasoning underpinning it, struck a chord with diverse faith groups.
The Friends Committee on National Legislation started a petition to Congress to support the President Obama’s disarmament agenda. (You can add your name here)
And several other groups came out with statements of support:
Since its earliest days, the Jewish tradition has warned of the dangers of militarism and warfare. From the prophet’s dreams of the time when nations would beat their swords into plowshares to today’s aspirations of a nuclear-weapons-free world, we have sought to avoid armed conflict and not yield to despair in the search for universal peace.
We welcome the President’s commitment to reducing the threat of nuclear weapons. By reducing the role of nuclear weapons in our national security strategy, negotiating a new strategic arms reduction treaty with Russia, ratifying the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, and negotiating a treaty to verifiably end the production of fissile materials, as advocated by President Obama, we can reduce the nuclear danger that every global citizen faces today.
–Rabbi David Saperstein, The Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism
This is an exciting moment, a new moment in the long struggle to bring fundamental change to U.S. nuclear weapons policies and an important first step,” said Dave Robinson, Executive Director of Pax Christi USA, the national Catholic peace movement. “As people of faith, we are particularly heartened by the President’s admission that as the only nation to use nuclear weapons we bear a special moral burden. As we move forward, Pax Christi USA is dedicated to ensuring that this moral commitment is translated into concrete changes in Pentagon strategies and spending priorities.
–Dave Robinson, Pax Cristi USA; see also Pax Christi’s “New Moment for Nuclear Disarmament” campaign.
Past Presidents have taken strides towards disarmament; historians tell us that Reagan was constantly haunted by the threat. I know that President Obama feels a personal burden about the threat that nuclear weapons pose to our world. This is why I hope and pray that the vision he declared without equivocation comes quickly to pass, he said, “So today, I state clearly and with conviction America’s commitment to seek the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons.”
He went on to recognize that we are still a long way off and that, “This goal will not be reached quickly — perhaps not in my lifetime. It will take patience and persistence.” The progress that has already been made through patience and persistence is evident in this young generation that has not grown up with the same prevailing fears that many of us who came to age in the Cold War have. While the fear is not as palpable, the threat is still real and the progress that will be made will greatly depend upon generations uniting to remove this blight from our planet
–Jim Wallis, Sojourners
What a breath of fresh air that President Obama is calling for real change in the stockpiling of nuclear weapons.U.S. leaders’ obsession with the nuclear aspirations of other countries always seemed to miss the reality that we and other nations already have so many weapons that pose real immediate dangers. We are glad that President Obama is engaging our own reality and that of other nuclear nations. Only by engaging all of the nuclear threats in our world (including our own) will we ever be able to create peace. This is a pragmatic military policy, but it is also rooted in a faith response that acknowledges that we are one family on our small planet and that we should do to others as we want done to ourselves.
–Sr. Simone Campbell, NETWORK
Rev. Tyler Wigg-Stevenson, director of the Two Futures Project and policy director at Faithful Security, has an essay in Relevant magazine celebrating Obama’s speech.