wfn.org | NCC On Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty

[CAROL_FOUKE.parti@ecunet.org (CAROL FOUKE)]

National Council of the Churches of Christ in the USA
Email: news@ncccusa.org  Web: www.ncccusa.org

Contact: NCC News, 212-870-2227

111NCC10/7/99
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

NCC HEAD URGES SENATE TO RATIFY COMPREHENSIVE TEST BAN TREATY

 October 7, 1999, WASHINGTON, D.C. - National Council of Churches General
Secret ary Joan B. Campbell joined her voice with those of other U.S.
religious leaders at a news conference at the White House today to urge the
Senate to ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty.  The Rev. Dr.
Campbell's statement follows:

 "When the United States dropped the atomic bomb on Japan in 1945, most
people in the U.S. and in many other countries understood that we had used
a weapon that must never be used again.  Churches and church people across
America have been saying this repeatedly for over fifty years.

 "For over fifty years we have been in a long and painstaking journey to
contain these weapons of mass destruction.  And we have developed some
historic landmarks along this journey.  The Partial Test Ban Treaty in 1963
was one essential and historic step.  Achieving a Nuclear Non-Proliferation
Treaty is a further essential and historic step.

 "It has taken us 54 years in this journey to place before the Senate the
Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty.  All of us should be filled with pride that
the Senate is about to vote on this historic Treaty which churches and
church people have so long advocated.  Just eight months ago churches in
practically every state were conducting yet one more petition drive to pass
this treaty.  We should be filled with pride.

 "Instead, we are filled with horror, as we watch a determined Senate
Majority Leader and a determined Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chair
using the powers of their offices to put pressure on the Republican
Senators to turn this bi-partisan issue into a partisan issue in order to
prevent taking this historic and essential step.

 "Churches across America and around the world should be using this week to
prep are celebrations and ring church bells at the passage of the Treaty.
Instead, we are filled with horror.  Instead, people of faith are having to
mobilize yet o ne more time to make this step in the long journey toward
insuring that nuclear weapons are never used again, that they are banned
from our precious earth forever, that we can show God that we can be
responsible stewards, caring for God's creation.  God has set before the
Senate the ways of Life and Death.  We need not choose Death.  We can still
choose Life."

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