wfn.org | Ecumenical leaders call for disarmament

["NewsDesk" <NewsDesk@UMCOM.ORG>]

March 9, 2004	News media contact: Linda Bloom7(646)369-37597New York7
E-mail: newsdesk@umcom.org 7 ALL-I{098}

NOTE: Head-and-shoulders photographs of the Rev. Robert Edgar, the Rev. R.
Randy Day and James Winkler are available at umns.umc.org.

By United Methodist News Service*

Ecumenical leaders, including United Methodists, are issuing new calls for
global nuclear disarmament.

The calls came both at a March 8 event in Washington and a March 1
commemoration of the 50th anniversary of an H-bomb test in the Marshall
Islands.

In Washington, the Rev. Robert Edgar, a United Methodist and chief executive
of the National Council of Churches, joined with others in the religious,
scientific and medical communities to call for a halt to the post-Cold War
nuclear arms race.  

"As people of faith, who care deeply for God's creation ... we call on our
government and the Bush administration to take leadership in global nuclear
disarmament," Edgar said. "We must ask ourselves why we continue to construct
weapons that have the power to destroy us, rather than build systems and
structures that will save lives and help all persons reach the potential for
which God created them."

Helen Caldicott of the Nuclear Policy Research Institute and Howard Hallman
of Methodists United for Peace with Justice also participated in the
Washington event.

Edgar, the Rev. R. Randy Day, chief executive of the United Methodist Board
of Global Ministries, and James Winkler, chief executive of the United
Methodist Board of Church and Society, were among those who traveled to the
Marshall Islands in the Pacific. The islands are in Micronesia, a group of
coral atolls and islands about half way between Hawaii and Papua New Guinea.

The delegation to the Marshall Islands listened to the survivors of Operation
Bravo, the March 1, 1954, atmospheric test of the H-bomb on Bikini Atoll. The
U.S. government also carried out 66 other nuclear tests between 1946 and 1958
in the Pacific Islands.

"The results of these blasts have been death, cancer, disease and
dislocation," the church leaders said in a statement. "What has been done
cannot be undone, but our churches have long been pledged to work for justice
for the people of the Republic of the Marshall Islands so that they may be
compensated for the personal and property loss they have experienced these
many years."

The statement urged Congress to hold public hearings as soon as possible "to
consider the changed circumstances that warrant continued federal action" on
behalf of those affected by the tests.

Church leaders acknowledged representatives of the people of Hawaii, Japan
and the Puerto Rican island of Vieques who attended the commemoration "and
who themselves have experienced conventional and nuclear bombing by the
United States."

The statement asked the U.S. government "to halt production of our weapons of
mass destruction as an example of leadership for the entire world."

Day said he thought it appropriate that the 50th anniversary occurred during
the season of Lent. "This tragic event calls us to serious reflection on the
sin of war and the sin of developing weapons of mass destruction," he added.
"It challenges us to find ways to change our behavior and show genuine sorrow
for our military and scientific misdeeds."

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*The National Council of Churches' communications department contributed to
this report.

 
 

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United Methodist News Service
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