In the name of God, let us abolish nuclear weapons now.

Faith in God, and in the sanctity of God's creation, is dynamic. It must be demonstrated in each historical moment and respond to each crisis in human history. We must search for ways to relate our scriptures and our faith to the immediate needs of our own situation, both as individuals and as members of the human family. And faith in God must be the supreme moral guide that shows us what social values and social systems we should embrace, and which ones we must reject.

A century ago, thousands of Christians, joined by others of diverse spiritual traditions, came to see that slavery was an evil that challenged the very integrity of their faith. They believed that for any person to claim the ownership of another human being mocked the transcendent spiritual fact that each person is loved by God and made in God's image. These conscience-driven souls preached that to follow the God of Peace meant to turn away from the institution of slavery, to refuse to cooperate with it, and to work for its abolition. Though such a major transformation seemed like an absurd, unattainable goal, they insisted that God required nothing less. They came to be called abolitionists.

In the fall of 1981, a group of people of the Christian faith gathered to discern an appropriate response to the nuclear arms race. The result was a "New Abolitionist Covenant." The Covenant made clear that the only appropriate response for people of faith was an unequivocal rejection of the nuclear arms race and the dangerous and blasphemous assumptions on which it relied. It noted that

Some historical issues stand out as particularly urgent among the Church's fundamental concerns. These overarching moral questions intrude upon the routine of the churches' life and plead for the compassion and courage of God's people everywhere.

Slavery was such a question in the nineteenth century for Christians, Unitarians, Jews, and other people of faith who opposed and resisted it, including Muslims-who comprised, by some estimates, as many as twenty percent of the Africans brought in captivity to the New World.

The existence of nuclear weapons poses a similar question.

For the world interfaith community on the brink of the twenty-first century, the global context is significantly different from what it was in 198 1. The Soviet Union no longer exists. It was ended not by weapons of mass destruction, but by the unstoppable aspirations of its own people and the people of Eastern Europe to be free. The nonviolent revolutions of 1988-89 released the creative forces of millions of people to determine their own futures, and brought down the Berlin Wall through "people power" rather than nuclear confrontation.

With the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the United States has emerged as the only global superpower. Yet both the United States and Russia still possess thousands of nuclear weapons pointed at each other, maintained on Cold War levels of alert. Thousands of the most destructive weapons ever created remain ready to be launched within minutes. The threat of global nuclear conflict has even been increased, by the proliferation of nuclear weapons in India and Pakistan. Whether these weapons are used intentionally or by accident, humanity's future-and indeed, all of God's creation-remains under constant threat of annihilation.

The continued reliance on nuclear weapons today has brought us to a crisis similar to that faced by earlier abolitionists. The existence and spread of nuclear weapons is not just a political issue, any more than slavery was. It is a moral question that challenges our worship of God and our commitment to prophetic witness. In other words, the threat of nuclear catastrophe, either by accident or by design, presents us with more than a challenge to survival: it confronts us with a test of faith.

We believe that the continued possession and development of nuclear arms does not resemble other issues of public policy. We believe that the wholesale destruction threatened by these weapons makes their possession and use an offense against God and humanity, no matter what the provocation or political justification. Through deliberation and prayer we have become convinced that the sacred call to peacemaking urgently needs to be renewed in our religious communities. It must be made specific by a commitment to abolishing nuclear weapons and to finding a new basis for the security of humanity and all creation.

We are not alone in this conviction. In 1981, the New Abolitionist Covenant stated a minority position. Today, world opinion has coalesced around the concrete effort to outlaw nuclear weapons, just as it has with biological weapons, chemical weapons, and antipersonnel landmines. More than at any previous time, there exists today an unprecedented opportunity to make nuclear abolition a reality. Unfortunately, the monumental political changes that have occurred in the wake of the Cold War have not been accompanied by similar far-reaching changes in defense planning. But this continued development, testing, and reliance upon nuclear weapons in the name of national security is an evil we do not accept. At stake is whether we trust in God or the bomb. We can no longer confess belief in our God, our prophetic traditions, and the sanctity of humankind and still depend on nuclear weapons to save us.

The maintenance and development of nuclear arsenals is a sin against God, God's creatures, and God's creation. There is no theology or doctrine or spiritual tradition that could ever justify the use or the threat of nuclear weapons. Whether one begins with nonviolence or with the just war doctrine, nuclear weapons are morally unacceptable.

The God of All Life, who is revealed through holy scriptures and the wonder of creation, loves the poor and demands justice for the oppressed. To continue to spend tens of billions of dollars on nuclear weapons every year while millions go hungry is a grievous failure of compassion and an affront to God. But by God's grace our hearts can be softened. It is time for all religious traditions to bear witness to the nonviolent and benevolent essence of all faith which is finally our only hope.

Now, a decade after the Cold War, we find ourselves faced with another moment of truth. Yet this moment could be more than a reaction to crisis based upon fear of looming nuclear war. It could be an historic moment of transformation, of opportunity and hope.

We believe that humanity has come to a threshold. In time past, people of faith from many traditions joined together to oppose social sin and to point the way to change. We believe the continued existence and spread of nuclear weapons now calls for a broad-based, united, interfaith response. Today, we find an urgency of opportunity that must guide our actions. Through the grace of God, we have survived the most dangerous moment in history. We have been given a precious gift, a gift of time. We are compelled to respond to this gift.

That response begins with repentance for more than half a century of accepting nuclear weapons. Repentance in a nuclear age means noncooperation with the continued reliance on nuclear weapons and the turning of our lives toward a culture of peace and nonviolence. Whatever we say to the government must be based first on what we have publicly committed ourselves to do. The fruits of our repentance will be made visible in our active witness and leadership for the abolition of nuclear weapons.

No longer trusting in nuclear weapons, we refuse to cooperate with preparations for their use or threatened use. Trusting anew in God, we will begin cooperating with one another in preparations for peace. We covenant to work together for peace and join with one another to make these vital commitments:

1. Prayer

We covenant together to pray, which is at the heart of all peacemaking. Prayer can change us and our relationships. Through prayer the victory of faith over nuclear madness can be established in our lives and in the world, and free us to act in God's name for peace, justice, and reconciliation in the world.

2. Education

We covenant together to learn. Our ignorance and passivity must be transformed into awareness and responsibility. We must act together to dispel our blindness and hardness of heart. We will ground ourselves in the best of the teachings of our faiths, and in our own traditions of nonviolence and peacemaking. We will become thoroughly and deeply informed about the dangers and costs-human, financial, and ecological - of nuclear weapons and the steps to be taken toward their abolition.

3. Spiritual Examination

We covenant together to examine ourselves in the light of the moral teachings of our faiths, and to shed the light of faith and reason on the issue of nuclear weapons. We will examine the basic decisions of our personal lives in regard to our jobs, lifestyles, taxes, and relationships, to see where and how we are supporting reliance on a security system based on weapons of mass destruction. Religious bodies and faith communities should be concerned with the spiritual well-being of their members whose livelihoods are now dependent on the production and maintenance of nuclear weapons. We will undertake a thorough evaluation of the life of our congregations in all these matters.

4. Public Witness

We covenant together to bear public witness. Our opposition to nuclear weapons, and the imperative of peace, will be taken into the public arena: to our workplaces, to our community and civic organizations, to people of our own and other faith traditions, to the media, to our governmental bodies, to the streets, and to the nuclear weapons facilities themselves.

A prayerful presence for peace needs to be established at all those places where nuclear weapons are researched, produced, sorted, tested, and deployed, and where decisions are made on these issues.

The gatherings, events, and institutions of religious bodies will also become important places for our public witness. We will make our convictions known at all these places, especially on significant dates in our religious calendars and on August 6 and 9, the anniversaries of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

5. Nuclear Abolition

We covenant together to work to abolish nuclear weapons. We will publicly advocate abolition and will act in our local communities to place the call for that goal on the public agenda. We will pressure our government and other nuclear powers to halt all further testing, production, and deployment of nuclear weapons and take immediate steps to move steadily and rapidly to eliminate them completely.

This updated New Abolitionist Covenant was developed by representatives of the Fellowship of Reconciliation, the New Call to Peacemaking, Pax Christi USA, Sojourners, World Peace Makers, and others at the Kirkridge Retreat Center November 16-18, 1998. This inclusive version is Proposed for reflection and response by the wider religious community.

©2001 Fellowship of Reconciliation