God Goes Balistic for NukeTalk
National Religious Partnership Brings Faithful to Nuclear Discussion
Complex 2030 and Reliable Replacement Warhead project provide basis for faithful to discuss nation's and world's nuclear future and its spiritual implications.
The Bush administration is taking proactive steps to technologically upgrade and make more reliable the United States’s nuclear infrastructure under a directive by the Energy Department known as Complex 2030. But such actions are increasingly disaffecting members of the faith community who believe that God has much different ideas for America’s destructive arsenal.
The general idea for this was previously discussed here in a posting called Nuclear Technology Countdown 2030. Now, however, the dispute takes on new levels of participatory involvements as the major collaborative agencies organize a NorCal NukeTalk discussion forum, set for May 10th in Livermore, California. (For specifics on time and speakers, email me at AllanShore@yahoo.com.)
The genesis for this step originated from a small-group discussion augmenting the Ecumenical Advocacy Days meetings in Washington, DC. That gathering of believers of all degrees of faith was similarly coordinated by the National Religious Partnership on Nuclear Weapons Dangers.
Their featured speaker was former Ambassador Thomas Graham, a principle architect/negotiator for much of the Reagan Administration’s nonproliferation treaty talks and deals. He is part of a group of prominent diplomatic, political and business leaders, including Senator Sam Nunn and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, that recently penned a remarkable opinion piece for the Wall Street Journal voicing their vehement disagreement with contemporary nuclear strategies based upon deterrence assumptions--a statement so profound as to have already been introduced into Congress for consideration as a guiding resolution.
What fired up the attendees was the ambassador’s blatant comments that he now believes that even his past assumptions were wrong. Even those which helped direct President Reagan away from his heartfelt confidence that the US and Russia should have jointly reduced their stockpiles to zero in the 1970s and 1980s.
“I fear more now than I ever have that a nuclear incident will occur within my life and definitely for my children,” he said, simply because this country continues to make the world less safe for any of these weapons in the time of terrorism.
The National Council of Churches, the California Council of Churches/IMPACT and many dozens of other groups are helping to coordinate the Northern California NukeTalk forum because they believe it will add significantly to their belief that the direction of America’s weapons future should be toward rather than against peacemaking.
“The Ambassador’s truthfulness is something desperately needed in politics and particularly in war politics,” said Libby Sholes, the California Council’s Public Policy Director. “We hope to explore with the public the power of this reality for others of faith who may not know what the government has in mind.”
The NukeTalk forum will provide a tremendous amount of information that many are most likely unfamiliar with. And there could well be preliminary discussions about coffeehouse empowerment strategies that may well take the nation’s grassroots organizing efforts to a new level of faith.
