Robert Turk

I appreciate your magazine. It helps me not feel alone in a state that isn’t often sympathetic to your stance on many issues. But as a retired pastor and a retired U.S. Air Force pilot with combat experience, I cannot let go of the articles by Karen Swallow Prior (“Nukes and the Pro-Life Christian,” August 2015) and Atsuyoshi Fujiwara (“A Love That Disarms”).

History seems to tell us using these arms was the right thing to do to end (probably) the most justified war in humankind’s long exposure to armed conflict. The use of such weapons was thought moral by Niebuhr and others theologically thinking their way through the evils of the time. Prior, quoting R. Albert Mohler Jr., highlights the need for Christians “to struggle with the morality of our atomic age.” People who have not experienced combat can only judge those making decisions in combat after struggling with what it was like to make those decisions.

Robert Turk
Ft. Worth, Texas