When I first met Tyler Wigg-Stevenson about a year ago, he struck up a conversation with me on a topic that I hadn't discussed, much less though about, in years: nuclear weapons. With strong conservative roots, I believed that possessing nuclear weapons was important for national security. And according to Tyler, it was important ... during the Cold War. But the Cold War has ended and times have changed -- and Tyler convinced me that the possession of nuclear weapons ultimately is detrimental to our country's security, not a deterrent to threats.
Equally importantly for me as a pastor was Tyler's demonstration of how this new perspective on nuclear weapons and the desire to eliminate them aligned with Scripture.
In light of all the news on President Obama's nuclear summit last month and the U.S. signing the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty with Russia, I thought it worthwhile to share what Tyler is continuing to do through his organization, the Two Futures Project.
Q: Over the past year, what major shifts have you seen in your discussions with leaders about the idea of eliminating nuclear weapons?
Tyler: The major shift has been the move from thinking that nuclear weapons keep us safe to the fact that they are the greatest threat to the global public health and our own national security. The Cold War mindset said: "We possessed nuclear weapons so we don't have to use them." But in a post-Cold War and post-9/11 era where there is a real danger that terrorists can acquire nuclear weapons and no place to retaliate against them, the greatest threat to our security is the spread of these weapons. The only way to stop them is to contain the weapons and eventually eliminate them.
Q: What influential people have helped join the chorus of those calling for the end of nuclear weapons?
Tyler: A lot of cold warriors have staked out why this is in the country's national vital interest. That's the biggest paradigm change as we've gone around the country for the past year and be able to talk with people and walk them through why this situation is different and working through it now isn't do-gooderism run amok. It's actually a hardheaded attempt to deal with a crisis before it comes -- and that's stopping the acquisition of weapons by terrorists.
George Shultz, the former U.S. Secretary of State under President Ronald Reagan, has been a key supporter of the Two Futures Project and he's been one of the key conservatives to come forward and call for the end of nuclear weapons.
Q: What has been the general reaction to the latest treaty action on nuclear weapons?
Tyler: One of the items that people have seen in the news lately is the START Treaty with Russia -- and it's a pretty modest and conservative treaty. It is important in our relations and strengthens our hand in fighting terrorists, but it's still somewhat conservative when it comes to reducing nuclear weapons. It has received the support of a number of very conservative individuals from the Bush and Regan administration -- and even they are saying we could go lower in the number of weapons we eliminate. Yet, you're still hearing noise from the U.S. Congress that they may take until 2011 to ratify this thing.
Q: You work with the evangelical community on a regular basis. How are they accepting this call to reduce nuclear arms?
Tyler: From the beginning, I have been pleasantly surprised by the reception from the evangelical community. That's not to say everyone has welcomed us with open arms. We're not about sacrificing security on the altar of principle -- we're about aligning the two. That's something that the American people and Christians support. When it's clear that that's what we support and not something suspicious, we've been able to get support from people all over the political map.
Q: How has all the nuclear treaty news helped the Two Futures Project recently?
Tyler: For the past year, there hasn't been a lot of nuclear news. So, in a certain extent, we've been operating in a vacuum. So we're finding out that people are now starting to talk more about it. While the general sentiment has been positive toward reducing nuclear weapons, frankly some of the comments that are coming out of the mouths of prominent public people is alarming. They have no knowledge about what they're talking about -- and you can't do that when you're firing plutonium bullets.
Q: Where are you headed in helping generate more awareness about the state of affairs when it comes to nuclear weapons?
Tyler: We really want to reach out to leaders in communities. We've received a lot of support nationally from validators and evangelical leaders who have influence. But we want to reach out to pastors and college campuses. We've started a pastors' network and campus network. In the end, what's going to have an impact is something where Christians can share their Christian convictions with elected officials.
Q: How do you avoid political ties when it comes to Two Futures' message?
Tyler: I think it's really important that the people who support the Two Futures Project come from different spots on the political spectrum, even though our organizing outlook is fairly conservative. When people think nuclear weapons, they tend to think it's the liberal movement and that does a lot of political harm. I think it's important for conservatives in the U.S. to be able to stand up and say we're for nuclear security, we don't care what party the person belongs to, and it's too big to be subject to partisan gain. This is not a place where politicians should be trying to score cheap points in an election year.
To learn more, visit 2FP on the Internet at TwoFuturesProject.org, on Facebook at facebook.com/twofuturesproject, or on Twitter at twitter.com/2FP
Follow Tri Robinson on Twitter: www.twitter.com/tri_robinson
Tom Krattenmaker: Q Gathering 2010: Heralding the Arrival of a Post-Christian America
The reason people are worried now is because the Arabs are on our radar, but to trust the safety of nuclear weapons to India is insane! The fact that Pakistan has it now and Iran may be on the way may have brought this back to the forefront, but where were these evangelicals in the 70s and 80s?
Tyler Wigg-Stevenson's organization only began in April 2009, he is not a large voice and he was just as quiet for 30 years.
Armegeddon is their means of denial and excuse for not taking personal responsibility...
John Lennon
However, in a predominately Christian society, I always knew I'd be in for it-- if that was the case.
I ain't the one who's in for a nasty surprise -- IF he comes back and has a look around.
August 2009, marked the 64th anniversary of the most brutal acts of terrorism upon innocent people; America's atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
On Armistice Day, 1948 General Omar Nelson Bradley warned, "We live in a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants, in a world that has achieved brilliance without wisdom, power without conscience. We have solved the mystery of the atom and forgotten the lessons of the Sermon on The Mount. We know more about war than we know about peace, more about dying than we know about living."
In 1995, from Ashkelon Prison, Mordechai Vanunu noted: "A radioactive cloud consumed rubbed out Hiroshima...A live nuclear test sentenced you. A nuclear laboratory…children women trees animals in and under a nuclear mushroom…burning… burned…flattened to ground radioactive ash-Hiroshima...Nuclear weapons gamblers win against you…Hollywood doesn't know you - you are not a Jewish Holocaust."
http://wearewideawake.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1717&Itemid=233
Jesus is also The Prince of PEACE and the gospel/good news, that he preached, was very political and a direct challenge to the politically powerful and the arrogant, self-satisfied, self-righteous teachers of the law.
2,000 years ago the Cross had NO symbolic religious meaning and was not a piece of jewelry. When Jesus said: "Pick up your cross and follow me," everyone back then understood he was issuing a POLITICAL statement, for the main roads in Jerusalem were lined with crucified agitators, rebels, dissidents and any others who disturbed the status quo of the Roman Occupying Forces.
In the latter days of Nero's reign through the domination of Domitian, Christians were persecuted for following the nonviolent, loving and forgiving Jesus. That Jesus was first left behind when Augustine penned the Just War Theory!
Before Emperor Constantine 'legitimized' Christianity, all the early Church Fathers taught that Christians should not serve in the army but instead willingly suffer rather than inflict harm on any other. Augustine was the first Church Father to consider the concept of a Just War and within 100 years after Constantine, the Empire required that all soldiers in the army must be baptized Christians and thus, the decline of Christianity began and WRONG became The Right!
http://www.wearewideawake.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=blogcategory&id=64&Itemid=195
He was already a SHE: Hokema, Holy Wisdom; the Feminine Divinity
Now, isn't that Good News?
The God Head is One Pure Being; as much male as female, as much mommy as daddy. And we are all children of Her Universe; And He is the oldest personality because He is the origin of everything and everything is born of Him.
He is the supreme controller of the universe, the maintainer and instructor of humanity. He is smaller than the smallest.[Bhagavad-Gita]
He indwells the heart of every atom and She is beyond the Universe.
WISDOM is calling, She is rattling your windows and shaking your walls with some more good news of the three witnesses, and three always beats one and not just that, I've got a fourth!
Get out your Good Book sisters and brothers and chew on this: Matthew 12:31-32, Mark 3:28-29, and Luke 12:10 are simpatico with gnostic Thomas saying 44:
Jesus said: "Whoever blasphemes against the father will be forgiven, whoever blasphemes against the son will be forgiven, but whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven either on earth or in heaven."
Get a clue Christian! His ways are not your ways and Her thoughts are not your thoughts.
Dominion never meant to rape and plunder, but to nurture, care and love.
And if you have not love, you have nothing at all!
"Prayer is also the struggle for human justice. It is the fight to remove killing stereotypes, to hurl back ignorance of prejudice, and to protect the holiness of creation. Prayer is the corporate, political act that serves to equalize opportunity so that privileged and underprivileged might have the same chance."
Prior to the NPT conference, leaders from several religious traditions gathered at an interfaith chapel across from the UN to pray for the abolition of all nuclear weapons. Christians, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, and others offered prayers, chants, songs, and special readings:
http://wearewideawake.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1722&Itemid=233
It's time to step out of the box people. Head in the sand Christians have more in common with militant Islamists than you could possibly imagine. Lets look for shared solutions to the worlds problems. And seek real answers that we can touch and feel and measure. Lets stop using fables that aren't even as old as the Greek Myths to run our lives.. My Grandfather left the church when he was a teenager because what they were teaching him and what he observed in the real world didn't match up. Is that so hard to do?
The concept of a physical second coming of JC is debatable-and i speak as a Christian Anarchist, Buddhist with a dose of dervish.
The Bible was NOT faxed in and most church going Christians are clueless that it is only a collection of STORIES told by the ancients as they struggled with The Divine-who is beyond concepts!
During my 2005 conversations with the Whistle Blower of Israel's WMD Facility, I told Mordechai Vanunu:
"Did you know that in America there are Christians who actually want Armageddon? They believe they will escape the nuclear holocaust because they are now the new chosen ones. They think they will be raptured; they think they will be lifted out of the world. They believe a theology of escapism and they ignore that Christ promised that ‘The peacemakers shall be called the children of God’ and that Jesus is the Prince of Peace.â€
Vanunu replied, “The time has come for the United States to see the truth of Zionism. It began as a secular nationalist movement, not a religious one. Then some Christians believed that when Israel became a nation, it was the beginning of the second coming. They are deluded if they believe peace will come through atomic weapons. Atomic weapons are holocaust weapons...America needs to wake up to this fallacy that Jesus will come back by nuclear war. America needs to wake up..."
http://www.wearewideawake.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=940&Itemid=201
So you don't speak for most Christians. The large majority believes in a physical second coming.
"The one thing we can say for sure about Jesus is that he practiced active, public, creative non-violence. He called us to love our neighbors; to show compassion toward everyone; to seek justice for the poor; to forgive everyone; to put down the sword; to take up the cross in the struggle for justice and peace; to lay down our lives, to risk our lives if necessary, in love for all humanity, and most of all, to love our enemies. His last words to the community, to the church, to us, as the soldiers dragged him away, could not be clearer or more to the point: "Put down the sword."
"War can not stop terrorism because war is terrorism. War only sows the seeds for future wars..."
http://www.wearewideawake.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1717&Itemid=233
-Jerry Falwell
The heretical theology Falwell espouses is called Premellenial Dispensation that worships a god of Armageddon and not the God of love, forgiveness and compassion that Jesus/AKA The Prince of Peace modeled even while being nailed to a cross.
The term “Antichrist†only appears five times in the Bible, but a cult not based on sound theology has created an urban legend that seeks Armageddon.
The term “Antichrist†never appears in John’s Revelation or Daniel, two disparate works of literature written three centuries apart and under very different circumstances, yet the Left Behinder’s weave them together-and leave behind the gospel that Jesus taught!
One should wonder what spirit is driving those that want to bomb another, for just who would Jesus bomb? Just who would Jesus torture? NO ONE!
Jesus has been hijacked by the right wing fundamentalists and the time has come to liberate him. Christ was no Christian, that term was not even coined until three decades after he walked the earth. But, Christ was a social justice radical revolutionary Palestinian devout Jewish road warrior who rose up/intifada and challenged the job security of the temple priests by claiming there was no need for ritual baths and animal sacrifice to be OK with God, for God loves all, just as they are!
http://www.wearewideawake.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1593&Itemid=230
Then there's this:
The world has been for a long time engaged in writing lives of Jesus... The library of such books has grown since then. But when we come to examine them, one startling fact confronts us: all of these books relate to a personage concerning whom there does not exist a single scrap of contemporary information -- not one! By accepted tradition he was born in the reign of Augustus, the great literary age of the nation of which he was a subject. In the Augustan age historians flourished; poets, orators, critics and travelers abounded. Yet not one mentions the name of Jesus Christ, much less any incident in his life.
-Moncure D. Conway [1832 - 1907] (Modern Thought)
“Let me explain exactly what an evangelical Christian is to be about. My evangelical roots are connected to the path laid down by evangelicals from the 19th century. They were the first to speak out against slavery and were the first supporters of female suffrage. In fact, the original altar call was the call to stand up against slavery.
“In this century, we are faced with nuclear weapons and the fact that the arms race put the world in grave danger. The world went to sleep, and now we have escalating proliferation, nations, and groups of angry people with nuclear warheads.
“Activists must be contemplatives, and contemplatives must act. The time has come for the Christian Right to meet the right Christians.
“Religion in America has been used and abused to control and manipulate millions of Christians...
“There are over three thousand verses in the Bible referring to the poor; this is the moral issue of our time. There are also the moral issues of poverty, ecology, and war; it is the church’s job to address these moral issues, too. Separation of church and state does not mean the segregation of religion from the human dialogue.
“Our deepest choices are between hope and compassion. Hope is not a feeling or a state of mind, but an abiding choice you make because you have faith..."
http://www.wearewideawake.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1565&Itemid=228
Jesus also explained the law of karma in Luke 6:27-38:
"For with the measure you measure against another, it will be measured back to you."
http://www.wearewideawake.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=blogcategory&id=64&Itemid=195