Potential nukes for an apocalyptic-minded and rabidly
anti-American (not mention anti-Semitic) Iranian president do not
much interest the National Council of Churches (NCC). So the NCC,
whose board met in late September, is insisting that the U.S.
unilaterally disarm, as an example to others.
According to the NCC, American nukes have “siphoned off
untold billions” away from “more just” causes, “poisoned our air,
our water, and our children,” “produced toxic waste” and
engendered “inordinate pride, much resented by other nations,”
serving to “degrade the status and esteem accorded to the U.S.”
by other nations.
Others might argue that the U.S. nuclear umbrella preserved
Western Civilization, deterred world war, facilitated a growing
global economy generating unprecedented wealth for countless
millions across 6 decades, and deterred countless other less
responsible regimes from contriving their own nukes. But since
the NCC sees the world through a utopian and chronically
anti-American lens, it cannot imagine the likely sinister
consequences if U.S. predominance were replaced by likely
alternatives.
The NCC board’s anti-nuke stance is called “Nuclear
Disarmament: The Time is Now,” and barely registers a quibble
about Iran or North Korea, since it is American nukes that are
the most uniquely threatening to world peace. (Read my associate
Jeff Walton’s on-site account of the NCC board meeting here.)
At least a few on the NCC board tried to amend the 10-page
NCC declaration by citing other nations’ nukes as causes for
concern. “People will get to paragraph 2 [the main anti-U.S.
litany] and roll their eyes saying, ‘there goes the NCC again,’”
cautioned one Greek Orthodox board member. But a member of the
NCC’s Justice and Advocacy Commission countered: “You own your
own stuff before you start pointing fingers at others.” Virtually
the entire board agreed with this version of sandbox justice, and
the near exclusive focus on the U.S. as primary global nuclear
villain remained.
“There’s a sense that this had fallen off the agenda of the
ecumenical movement,” explained NCC General Secretary Michael
Kinnamon about the NCC’s renewed anti-nuke interest, not having
issued a manifesto in over 20 years. During the 1980s, the NCC
naturally joined the Soviet-supported nuclear freeze movement and
condemned President Reagan’s military build-up, especially his
refusal to abandon the Strategic Defense Initiative, or missile
shield. When Reagan refused to abandon missile defense at the
1986 Reykjavik summit with Gorbachev, the NCC predictably
denounced Reagan for not accepting the Soviet chief’s
“compromise,” which would have jettisoned missile defense
altogether. According to the NCC then, Reagan’s “Star Wars/SDI
dream” was the “obstacle which dimmed the bright hopes for
serious arms reduction.” The NCC also nonsensically prophesied
that missile defense would cost up to $2 trillion (in 1980s
dollars), and insisted that many scientists doubted that missile
defense was “technically achievable.”
Ironically, the NCC is very concerned about the
cost-benefit analysis for U.S. nuclear weapons, a preoccupation
not typical towards other more expansive government programs.
“Considering how many trillions of dollar we have spent on
nuclear weapons over the last seven decades, and how little we
have to show for it, these words are sadly prophetic,” the NCC
mourned, citing its own supposedly prescient declaration of 1951,
which warned the U.S. would not inspire the world by “making its
own security its chief end.” By one count, the U.S. spent about
$52 billion on nukes last year, compared to overall federal
spending of nearly $3 trillion, and military spending of over
$600 billion. Whatever their morality or utility, nukes are not
expensive relative to other government spending, especially when
compared to the conventional military forces required to replace
them.
In truth, the NCC, which is virtually pacifist despite the
Just War traditions of nearly all its member denominations, sees
all U.S. defense efforts as wasteful and
immoral. Nukes just make a more convenient target. Claiming that
U.S. military spending, including nukes, played no role in
defeating totalitarianism over the last 70 years and deterring
even greater conflicts, is of course absurd. Even more ridiculous
is the NCC’s expectation that the U.S. will motivate North Korea,
Iran and others to disarm by moral example. “We must rely on the
diplomatic weight of the entire rest of the world coming down on
them, peaceably, in order to induce change,” the church
bureaucrats suggested. Yet the NCC implores that its dreamy
“commitment should not be dismissed merely as a knee-jerk
‘liberal’ reaction to the new of the day,” but is actually “based
on solid theological grounding, which goes back to the earliest
years of the organization.”
For very liberal religious groups like the NCC that aspire
towards but rarely achieve deep political relevance, the
anti-nuke manifesto may seem bracing. But there’s little
“theological grounding” in claims that tyrants and maniacs will
disarm in response to moral example. Maybe the NCC, at least
unconsciously, stopped pronouncing on nukes after the 1980s, at
least until now, because its counsel for unilateral disarmament
during the Cold War’s final acts was so sweepingly rejected and
discredited. Once the premier voice for American mainstream
churches, the declining NCC, amid theological and political
confusion, never recovered from its missteps of 25 years ago.
Fortunately, American leadership, however flawed, has usually
shown more “theological grounding” regarding national defense
than has the NCC.
