wfn.org | Military, religious leaders call for nuclear disarmament

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June 22, 2000       News media contact: Joretta Purdue ·(202)
546-8722·Washington     10-21-71B{292}

WASHINGTON (UMNS) - Almost 40 military and clergy leaders, including the
president of the United Methodist Church's Council of Bishops, have issued a
call for nuclear reduction and disarmament. They want to make the issue a
national priority.

"National security imperatives and ethical demands have converged to bring
us to the necessity of outlawing and prohibiting nuclear weapons worldwide,"
according to a statement signed by 18 high-ranking U.S. military officials
and 21 national religious leaders.

Nuclear weapons "constitute a threat to the security of our nation, a peril
to world peace, a danger to the whole human family," the leaders said.

The statement is at the heart of the Nuclear Reduction/Disarmament
Initiative, an interfaith project led by the National Cathedral and launched
June 21 with an interfaith service and a press conference.

Bishop William B. Oden, president of the United Methodist Council of
Bishops, was among the six men who presented the statement at a press
conference. He termed nuclear disarmament "an issue for all humanity."

"It is," he said, "an issue in defense of creation," a term United
Methodists may recall as the title of a pastoral letter issued by the
Council of Bishops in 1986.

In the '70s and '80s, a number of religious bodies raised the concern of
nuclear weapons in pastoral letters and other statements, he reported. In
the '90s, military leaders began to speak out on the issue. Now, he said,
religious and military figures are joining together because it is both a
religious and strategic issue.

Stansfield Turner, former director of the CIA and a retired U.S. Navy
admiral, declared that it is impossible to exaggerate the dangers of nuclear
weapons. Most of the more than 30,000 nuclear warheads are in the United
States and Russia, so both countries need to lead the way in disarmament, he
said. "Neither country is doing enough."

As long as the two superpowers are maintaining nuclear arsenals, they cannot
keep other countries from acquiring such weapons, Turner asserted. He urged
the use of "citizen protest" to make the issue a priority with Congress.

Proliferation of nuclear weapons is continuing, and the United States should
take the lead in nuclear disarmament, said retired Gen. Charles A. Horner.
His Air Force career included responsibility for the aerospace defense of
the United States and Canada, and he commanded allied air operations in
Operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm. 

Muzammil H. Siddiqi, president of the Islamic Society of North America,
called the nuclear arms race "a race against the human race." Going beyond
the scope of the statement, he urged a total ban on nuclear weapons and
expressed the hope that all weapons of mass destruction will be eliminated
someday.
 
The cooperative statement cites Albert Einstein's warning that nuclear
weapons have the potential for exterminating all of humanity. It calls on
political and military leaders, faith communities and all concerned citizens
to mobilize in support of nuclear disarmament.

"Let prayers of mosques, synagogues and churches all over our nation rise
up" on behalf of stopping the proliferation of nuclear weapons and reducing
existent stores, Oden urged.

Rabbi David Saperstein, director and counsel of the Religious Action Center
of Reform Judaism, said that the joint initiative continues a tradition,
referred to in the Bible, that before the Israelite army engaged in warfare
the priests would read the rules of what was ethically or religiously
permitted and what was prohibited.

"The Jewish tradition is not a pacifist tradition," Saperstein said. But, he
added, "Jews know, perhaps better than most, the dangers of linking
destructive technology with man's inhumanity to man. We've always had
warfare but not nuclear warfare" with its potential for an end to all
humanity, he remarked.

"We have come together to call on the world to recognize that violence leads
to violence; that nuclear proliferation benefits no one; that we can, we
will and we must find other ways to protect ourselves, our nations and our
future," Saperstein said. "For it is not sufficient to have a temporary
peace in our time, but, instead, we must leave a stable, cooperative
peaceful world to our children."

"This statement brings together two critical components of modern society,"
said Jack Mendelson, executive director of the Lawyers Alliance for World
Security. He has held a variety of positions, including senior
representative of the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency in the U.S.
delegation to START treaty talks and professor of national security affairs
at the U.S. Naval Academy.

Mendelsohn noted that the number of deployed nuclear warheads has been
reduced to about 12,000, and only a handful would suffice to end
civilization. 

Others who signed the statement included the Rev. Bob Edgar, a United
Methodist who heads the staff of the National Council of the Churches of
Christ in the USA, and ecumenical or senior officials of many of the NCC
member communions. Other signers included Monsignor Dennis M. Schnurr,
general secretary of the U.S. Catholic Conference; the Rev. Daniel E. Weiss,
general secretary of the American Baptist Churches USA; and the Rev. Jim
Wallis, editor in chief of Sojourners.

The retired military leaders who signed the statement included Gen. Robert
C. Kingston, Army; Adm. Noel Gayler, Navy; Adm. Stephen T. Quigley, Navy;
Chaplain (Maj. Gen.) Kermit D. Johnson; and other generals and admirals.

In addition to the leadership of the National Cathedral, the interfaith
initiative was developed with the Fourth Freedom Forum, former U.S. Sen.
Alan Cranston and his Global Security Institute, and many religious groups.
Major funding was provided by the Ploughshares Fund, W. Alton Jones
Foundation and the John Merck Fund.

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United Methodist News Service
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