We – members of the Mickleton Monthly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends – ask all who read this to take a fresh, fundamental look at nuclear weapons, in their individual and collective capacity for incredible death and destruction. We ask that you regard them, not as powerful expressions of national resolve, nor as impressive technical achievements, but as a societal sin, a wrong beyond justification, a mistake never to be repeated. We ask you to abhor nuclear weapons, to work towards their elimination.
We ask you to consider nuclear weapons as taboo.
We ask this as Quakers, as Americans, and as brethren in humanity.
Quakers have long professed what is known as the peace testimony: that all people belong to God and partake of God, and we do not have the right to disrupt that relationship. Rather, we are called to appreciate that which is uniquely of God in each of us, in all of us. In simpler times, war primarily killed soldiers, and that in itself was horrible enough that Quakers were led to condemn all war. Nuclear weapons, however, are a case of special magnitude. As the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki have demonstrated, one atomic bomb can instantly kill thousands of people, permanently scar the bodies of thousands more, erase the homes and heritage of thousands of families, and shadow the lives of thousands of survivors with the unending possibilities of cancer and genetic damage. As the Cold War has demonstrated, the mere presence of an atomic arsenal murders the security and hope of an entire generation that knows there is always the possibility - greater or lesser, but never gone - that the future can disappear in a flash of heat and radiation. A full-scale nuclear conflict is as close as humans can come to undoing Creation on Earth, and that cannot be tolerated.
Americans have a distinct role in the history of nuclear weapons. We have been the first to create them. We alone have used them in war to kill other people. We, along with a few others, have used the threat of their use to diplomatic advantage. So long as we keep the Bomb, we will be regarded as a people who may use it again. So long as we keep the Bomb, others will have that much more reason to covet it. Yet, Americans have recognized their errors in other matters and renounced them effectively. Americans once held slaves. In the 19th Century, America waged wars of conquest to spread across the continent. Americans now loathe the idea of slavery. America has fought in the 20th Century not to conquer but to resist conquerors. When this has not been clear, as in Vietnam, our conscience has prodded us and we have responded. America has helped awaken the world to a conscience that cannot tolerate enslavement or conquest. Now, our conscience demands that the catastrophic destruction inherent in nuclear arsenals must become intolerable.
Individual persons may think they have no control, no voice, no responsibility in the choices that govern our nuclear arsenals. However, there are moments when we have some measure of choice, for which we may or may not be prepared: the new job or new client in the nuclear industry, the referendum on radioactive waste disposal, the random call in a public opinion poll, the choice of candidate on an election ballot. And there are the moments we make: writing to representatives, calling radio talk shows, debating with friends, teaching children. Whether we use them or not, we all have control, voice, and responsibility.
During the Cold War, the nuclear nations came to fear the consequences of their arsenals so much that there evolved a political taboo against their use. A political taboo is only as strong as the political advantage of the moment; however, a truly moral taboo can sustain a sense of justice, of civility, of rightness, beyond the arguments of short-term advantage. We call upon all people to think and pray upon the lessons of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the lessons of the Cold War. We ask you to heed your conscience and be ready to help prepare the day when the world's conscience will abhor nuclear weapons. In that day, we will have true disarmament, not because it is practical or expedient, but because it is right.
Copyright ©
1998, Mickleton Monthly Meeting. |
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