Faith in Resistance:
What religious leaders say about nuclear disarmament?
Since the creation of nuclear weapons, there has been resistance represented by the faith community and religious clergy across the spectrum. Whether it was printing and passing out leaflets expressing the dangers of nuclear war or across the line at the Nevada Test Site, these courageous figure (or more) vocalized the dangers and evils that presented itself after the first detonation.
Pictured on the left is A.J. Muste and Dorothy Day, who were both inspirational pacifists and activists. During their demonstration together at Union Square in 1965, she advocated that: And the word of God is the new commandment he gave us–to love our enemies, to overcome evil with good, to love others as he loved us–that is, to lay down our lives for our brothers throughout the world, not to take the lives of men, women, and children, young and old, by bombs and napalm and all the other instruments of war. To look at a more in-depth history of resistance, take a look at:
|
Pope FrancisA vocal advocate for peace and justice for all people, Pope Francis spoke firmly about the harms of a world with nuclear weapons. Francis spoke on the side of the poor seeing inequality and this issue intertwined. "Spending on nuclear weapons squanders the wealth of nations." He continued by saying, “To prioritize such spending is a mistake and a misallocation of resources which would be far better invested in the areas of integral human development, education, health and the fight against extreme poverty. When these resources are squandered, the poor and the weak living on the margins of society pay the price.”
|
Martin Luther King, Jr."When scientific power outruns spiritual power, we end up with guided missiles and misguided men."
MLK, Jr. voiced the need for an alternative to war and the need for nonviolence and peace. During his Nobel Peace Prize Speech in 1964, he spook firmly about the evils that war produces in society, especially what the weapons of mass destruction. He argued that human beings need to look at the negative impacts, rather than rejecting the truth of nuclear weapons. He stated, " So if modern man continues to flirt unhesitatingly with war, he will transform his earthly habitat into an inferno such as even the mind of Dante could not imagine." |
His Holiness the XVIth Dalai Lama"By far the greatest single danger facing human-kind, in fact, all living beings on our planet - is the threat of nuclear destruction. I would like to appeal to all the leaders of the nuclear powers who literally have the future of the world in their hands, to the scientists and technicians who continue to create these awesome weapons of destruction, and to all the people at large who are in a position to influence their leaders, I appeal to them to exercise their sanity and begin to work at dismantling and destroying all nuclear weapons. We know that in the event of a nuclear war there will be no victors, because there will be no survivors."
|
Thich Nhat Hahn"When you drop bombs on the enemy, you drop those same bombs on yourself, your own country.”
"[Nuclear Weapons] reflects the fear, anger, and suspicion in us. If we don’t have anger or fear, we wouldn’t be building nuclear weapons," |
Mahatma Gandhi“So far as I can see, the atomic bomb has deadened the finest feeling that has sustained for ages. There used to be so-called laws of war, which made it tolerable. Now we know the truth. War knows no law except that of might. The atomic bomb brought an empty victory but it resulted for the time being in destroying the soul of Japan. What has happened to the soul of the destroying nation is yet too early to see....”
|
Rabbi David Saperstein“At this crucial crossroads of history, we join to call on the world to recognize that violence begets 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: for it is not sufficient to have peace in our time, but, instead, we must leave a peaceful world to our children.”
|