The famed Chautauqua Institution devoted this entire week to the theme of nuclear disarmament. It is a sign of the times. Chautauqua has often been known for sensing the nation's pulse and what is on the cutting edge of its thinking. And after becoming a dormant public issue since the end of the Cold War, the threat of nuclear weapons has again created a new movement toward the goal of a world without them.
One important sign of a shifting mindset came in 2007 when four of America's preeminent Cold Warriors -- George Shultz, Sam Nunn, William Perry, and Henry Kissinger -- made headlines by co-authoring an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal saying, "The world is now on the precipice of a new and dangerous nuclear era." One year later, they wrote another WSJ column that began with the sentence, "The accelerating spread of nuclear weapons, nuclear know-how, and nuclear material has brought us to a nuclear tipping point."
Former Senator Sam Nunn, a consistent hawk who always talked about "political realism" when he represented Georgia in the U.S. Senate, was a speaker at Chautauqua on Monday and got a standing ovation when he called for a "world free of nuclear weapons." That, according to Nunn and his fellow four horsemen, is the only realistic way to security now. As the men have warned, "The likelihood that non-state terrorists will get their hands on nuclear weaponry is increasing ... We face a very real possibility that the deadliest weapons ever invented could fall into dangerous hands."
In fact, nuclear weapons in any human hands have always been dangerous. The failure of the United States and Russia to disarm their largest nuclear arsenals after the Cold War is a principle cause of the threat of the proliferation of nuclear weapons to more countries, failed states, and even terrorist organizations.
And now, we have a president who cares about nuclear disarmament. In the spring of 2009, in his first major speech in Europe -- in Prague -- Barack Obama affirmed his commitment. He pledged that "as the only nuclear power to have used a nuclear weapon, the United States has a moral responsibility to act. We cannot succeed in this endeavor alone, but we can lead it, we can start it. So today, I state clearly and with conviction America's commitment to seek the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons." I am told that this is something that keeps Obama up at night.
But for me, perhaps the most important sign of the times is a new generation of young Christian leaders who have identified nuclear weapons as an issue of faith -- much as we did as young Christian activists in the 1980s. Their commitment is best exemplified by Tyler Wigg-Stevenson and his Two Futures Project, which calls itself "a movement of American Christians for the abolition of all nuclear weapons. We believe that we face two futures and one choice: a world without nuclear weapons or a world ruined by them. We support the multilateral, global, irreversible, and verifiable elimination of nuclear weapons, as a biblically grounded mandate and as a contemporary security imperative."
Tyler gave an amazing speech at Chautauqua this week, and was down in front when I spoke yesterday. Sojourners was a leader in the movement to abolish nuclear weapons in the 1970s and '80s, and I described that history -- how the faith community was the animating core of that initiative for peace in the midst of the Cold War. I told the audience that when Tyler first called me about a new statement of Christian leaders that he had initiated and asked if I would sign it, I wept after putting down the phone. A new generation had decided to pick up the nuclear challenge once again, and would now be an intellectual and spiritual force for the disarmament that is now so crucial to the security of the world and of my two boys. Spending the day with Tyler and his wife Natalie was the highlight of my visit to Chautauqua.
To reverse the habits of the heart -- the assumptions and policies that have dominated U.S. national security policy for more than 60 years -- will be a monumental achievement. And the pressures against that happening will be enormous. Indeed, this is a job for faith -- and for the kind of social movements that faith at its best has always inspired. The energetic commitment of a new generation of believers in accomplishing this magnificent goal will be absolutely crucial. Perhaps after all the years of struggle on the huge theological and political issues surrounding nuclear weapons, the time for a new beginning has finally come. It's time to end the nuclear threat to our world, our humanity, and our faith.
The response of the people at Chautauqua to that call this week gave me a new sense of hope.
Jim Wallis is the author of Rediscovering Values: On Wall Street, Main Street, and Your Street -- A Moral Compass for the New Economy, and CEO of Sojourners. He blogs at www.godspolitics.com.
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Tom Krattenmaker: Nuclear Disarmament and 'End Time' Theology
The MillionPleas.com campaign, an initiative of ICAN, aims to be the world’s longest video chain letter. It is addressed to the 9 countries that still have nuclear weapons.
ICAN is asking people from all over the globe to upload a video clip of themselves saying the word “please”. The “pleases” will then be edited into a long virtual chain letter, which will act as a petition to abolish nuclear weapons, worldwide.
The Million Pleas campaign marks the 65th anniversary of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki
Signed, an innocent someone who has been attack with those weapons right here in the USA who would never commit treason but is interested in moving to a neutral country far away.
The weak get trampled. The strong should put up a good fight or die trying.
Now, that is far more dangerous than any n00ks.
First, such religious supremacy/big0try should not be preached from any pulpit.
There's just one problem. There are about 500 people in the world who are opposed to this idea. 400 of them already have such weapons, and are either concerned about the other 100 who want such weapons and don't have them, or they see the same 100 wannabe nuke owners as possible buyers for such weapons.
That said, do you really think it's a good idea to get rid of all WMDs, knowing a select few extremely greedy, extremely dishonest tyrants in the world will not play by our rules and use our rules against us in an effort to control and dominate us?
As sick as it sounds, the only reason the USA is the only nation to have used a nuclear weapon in war is that they were the only ones with such a weapon at that time and they knew no one could retaliate in kind. Mutual Assured Destruction is what has prevented the world from being destroyed any sooner.
America needs nuclear weapons so (oddly enough) they don't have to use them.
Russian defence system in 1983 and who identified a false alarm of a nuclear attack
on the Soviet Union correctly and thus prevented the total nuclear disaster.
The world was pretty close to nuclear extinction for about twenty minutes or so.
The man has intestingly some faith too. A cynic in his position for instance would
likely have reacted completely different.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanislav_Petrov
And it makes economic sense for the US too -- our aging nuclear weapons need maintenance and some of the older ones may even be duds. In the meantime, Mutually assured Destruction can safely be replaced with Mutually Assured Defense as the world slowly reduces their stockpiles in lockstep with one another. It may not be the end of nuclear weapons, but the world will be a much safer place.
As far as religion leading the way, there is way too much animosity between religions to have a Christian organization shouting bible verses at Muslims. If you can bring the religions together and talk as a single force, maybe there's a chance, but hell, I was raised Christian and I certainly don't trust Christian motives, so why should Muslims, Hindus, Jews, and Buddhists?
I'm a fan of Jeff and Glenn Beck. (I even like Becks beer!)
But I don't think Obama will unilaterally disarm (Did I pass the fool test?) :->
Methinx you are placing way too much faith and trust in your fellow man. You know; the self righteous, self serving, lazy, greedy, lustfull humans that we are? You trust these people???
I don't. That's why I trust Jesus. I don't trust Christian motives, just Christ. You can do that, you know. Christians are no better than anyone else...many can be pretty awful. But Christians (the real ones, mind you) know they're messups, and thank Jesus every day for being forgiven.
Forget Obama, Forget Bush. Our leaders will always fail us. Jesus won't.