The arms race has become such an integral and pervasive part of our national life that most U.S. residents now live in the vicinity of a nuclear weapons facility. While it is true that every person on the earth is threatened by the dark cloud of impending nuclear horror, we in the United States are in a distinct position to know firsthand both its danger and its physical reality. This is the case because of the wide geographical diversity and multifaceted nature of the nuclear weapons process.
The nuclear tentacles reach into every possible aspect of our business, labor, science, and religion as well as the military. Each of the government, scientific, industrial, and military facilities that are a part of the nuclear weapons process is a deadly link in a chain of events and a way of life that undermine life itself.
Some of us in the United States live near the scientific installations where the horrendous but intellectually captivating ideas are hatched. These laboratories and research institutes, sometimes on university campuses, design and develop the nuclear weapons systems.
Then there are the places where the political ideas and ideologies are constructed to justify and legitimate the never-ending flow of new weapons technologies: the think tanks and university departments of strategic studies.
Perhaps the most visible and culpable elements of the arms race are the institutions and locations of political decision-making, where official policy is set and money is appropriated to pay for nuclear weapons. Included in this list are the Congress, the White House, federal buildings, local congressional offices, and political party headquarters. The political decisions are executed by government agencies like the Department of Defense (Army, Navy, and Air Force) and the Department of Energy, which have countless branches and installations.
The nuclear fuel cycle entails numerous steps, including uranium mining and milling, fuel processing, fabrication, reprocessing, waste management and storage, and transportation. It involves many different plants and locations spread all over the country.
The production of the nuclear weapons themselves is a gigantic and tremendously profitable enterprise that involves many companies. They contract with the government to provide materials and services that make the construction of nuclear bombs and their delivery systems possible. Their profits often furnish the incentive for new steps in the arms race. Both corporate offices and production sites should be regarded as primary nuclear facilities.
The most obvious points of the nuclear weapons cycle are the actual installations where the warheads are deployed or stored. These include missile sites, bomber bases, and submarine ports as well as various arsenals around the country. At such places the missiles actually stand poised ready to unleash almost instantaneous death.
There are a number of nuclear weapons testing facilities currently in operation without which new weapons systems could not be deployed. And not to be forgotten are the places where nuclear weapons are displayed and promoted, such as arms bazaars, air shows, and museums.
Churches and Christian groups are taking a stand against nuclear weapons in increasing numbers. A ministry of witness at nuclear weapons facilities could be one very important way for Christians to express that conviction.
Already people around the country are witnessing at nuclear facilities. Some of the most notable actions have been at Rocky Flats, Trident installations, and the Pentagon. But demonstrations of Christian concern are springing up with increasing frequency at many other places as well.
A Georgia newspaper, the Augusta Chronicle, recently reported, "For the third time this year members of a Columbia, South Carolina-based religious group gave out leaflets to workers at the Savannah River plant asking them to think about the destruction caused by nuclear weapons." The Savannah River plant is located in a rural area near Aiken, South Carolina. It makes the plutonium buttons that trigger hydrogen bombs and is operated by the Department of Energy.
The group mentioned is a fellowship of Christians from South Carolina and Georgia, made up of Roman Catholics, Episcopalians, Presbyterians, Baptists, and Quakers. John Brown, one of its members, explained, "We often go to the plant on special days like Good Friday and the anniversary of Hiroshima to witness to the reconciling nature of the gospel."
Public demonstrations at the Savannah River nuclear site have included marches, liturgies, prayer vigils, an "Easter drama," and civil disobedience. The group has made special efforts to communicate with plant employees. Some workers have resigned, saying that the Christian witness had focused for them the moral issues involved in making nuclear weapons.
In Pittsburgh a group called Christian Peacemakers has been witnessing at the international headquarters of the Rockwell Corporation for almost five years. Rockwell, one of this country's best known military contractors, produces major components for both the M-X and Trident systems and operates the plutonium reprocessing plant in Rocky Flats, Colorado.
Christian Peacemakers has consistently done leafletting, vigiling, drama, and other symbolic actions, including civil disobedience, on the sidewalk in front of the office entrance. The group observes many of the events on the liturgical calendar by going to Rockwell.
For 40 consecutive days in October and November of 1980, a prayer vigil was held during the lunch hour at the federal building in Salt Lake City. The witness was sponsored by Utah Clergy and Laity Concerned About the M-X. The group's purposes for gathering were to pray for peace, make a Christian call for a nuclear arms moratorium, call for economic conversion, and help stop the M-X from being deployed in Utah and Nevada.
Pastor Stephen Sidorak, formerly of the Centenary United Methodist Church in Salt Lake City and organizer of the vigil, stated that there was ample biblical precedent for using the "40-days" imagery, including the temptation of Jesus in the desert and Noah's 40 days in the ark while the flood destroyed all life from the earth. Pastor Sidorak said that by being in front of the federal building, Christians were able to remind passers-by that the world is only 30 minutes away from destruction in the event of a nuclear war and that there is no security in nuclear weapons.
Our own church's practical experience with public witness has confirmed our theological and political understanding of it. A recent incident illustrates this point. Members of our congregation had gathered at a nuclear facility in Washington. There were about 60 of us standing two and three abreast in a semicircle around a small table which held a loaf of bread and a cup of wine. Above our heads was a large banner that asked, "What does it mean to follow Christ?" We held a dozen signs that quoted scripture verses like "Love your enemies" and "Be not conformed to this world." Two additional signs read "Nuclear weapons betray Christ" and "Stop the arms race."
A crowd soon gathered, curious to see what we were up to. We sang and read Scripture. We took time to focus on remembering the death of Jesus in the breaking of the bread and sharing the cup and invited all who would follow Jesus and seek his way of peace to join us. After the worship we remained standing for a silent vigil.
During our witness a man from the crowd approached us, intently reading each of our signs. Finally he walked up to one of our members and declared that he agreed with all the signs that quoted Scripture but not with the two that referred to nuclear weapons and the arms race. Those, he said, were untrue and had no business being held by people who preach the gospel.
This incident emphasizes the importance of witnessing to our faith in public situations. The man's comment reminded us that, for many, Jesus is acceptable as long as he is separated from history. His life and teachings in abstraction are palatable to most people. But Jesus in the midst of history is still an offense. The man who approached us apparently agreed with Jesus that we should love our enemies but rejected the application of that commandment to the particulars of our historical situation.
To many the admonition to love our enemies is believable only as long as the enemies are general and unspecified. But when the enemies are identified as Russians, Iranians, Cubans, or whomever the government names as its adversaries, the statement becomes outrageous. "Love your enemies" is admired as the word of the Lord until it is suggested that it means you can't simultaneously love your enemies and plot their annihilation with nuclear weapons.
Witnessing at a nuclear facility is one way of insisting that the gospel is neither an abstraction nor historically irrelevant.
Whether at the gate of a bomber base, at a submarine station, or in front of a congressional office, being at a nuclear facility can provide Christians with the occasion to share the power and meaning of early apostolic faith. It is rather like the street preaching of the first century in downtown Rome. We can once again see that the routine proclamation of faith in Jesus, the simple theological affirmation of his lordship, is pregnant with political meaning.
The early Christians were keenly aware of the way Jesus died. Many of them had experienced firsthand the suspicious and hostile environment that surrounded his death. They were well aware of the public perception that he was killed as a result of conflict with the ruling authorities. So when these early followers made a commitment to share in the Lord's life, they knew that the conflict between the way of Jesus and the way of the world would become their struggle too.
Going to nuclear weapons facilities is one important way for our churches to break out of their comfortable social and political environment to know firsthand the struggle of faith that engages the world.
Jesus was attacked and persecuted because he was viewed as a threat to the very heart of political and economic power. By calling on people to transfer their primary loyalty to his kingdom, Jesus was competing with Rome and Jerusalem for the hearts and minds of the people. He was challenging normal political authority by calling into question the most basic of its assumptions.
The affirmation that Jesus is Lord will always take place in the context of rival lords and competing saviors, who contend for our loyalty by offering what appear to be attractive arrangements to guarantee security and well-being. In the present environment of disintegrating political patterns and personal anxiety, no offer seems more persuasive or enticing than the "protection" of nuclear weapons. Thus, lordship and idolatry can be seen to be parallel subjects that by nature must be addressed simultaneously. We need to push these twin issues beyond seminary classrooms and church discussion groups into the public arena.
By worshiping Christ at nuclear installations, Christians can assert their faith in the Lord Christ in the presence of his most seductive rival. We clearly say whom we will worship and whom we will not worship. We declare that the false god's claim of nuclear protection is a cruel hoax, both politically and spiritually. Nuclear weapons, exposed by the light of the Word of God and the lessons of history, can be seen to offer only impinging death. In public worship Christians can dethrone the major pretender to Jesus' position as both Lord and Savior. The visible display of faith under the very shadow of nuclear weapons is a witness to the presence of God in the specifics of our history.
The gospel is a testimony of God's bodily intervention in history. God in Christ offered his life into the concrete reality of human life and events. By being physically present wherever nuclear weapons are represented, we can continue and count on God's intervention in even the worst of human situations. God placed Jesus in the very midst of humanity's broken and sinful places. Today we can carry on that Christian tradition of intervention by symbolically and physically placing ourselves between the bombs and their intended victims.
These nuclear facilities are our Auschwitz and our Dachau. While millions of innocent people were murdered at Auschwitz and Dachau, the death of many millions more is being prepared for by the production and deployment of U.S. nuclear weapons. If we had lived in Hitler's Germany, how would we have responded to the extermination policies and the ovens of Auschwitz? The contemporary counterpart to that faith question is how we will respond to the present nuclear crisis. Would we have intervened at Auschwitz crying, "No, this can't go on!"? Will we interrupt business as usual at Rocky Flats, missile sites, or federal buildings crying, "In the name of God, stop!"?
Christians should go to nuclear weapons facilities simply because it is right and follows from our faith. But politically and economically the effect could also be cumulatively substantial. What if all over the country groups began to show up at places associated in any way with the bomb--each week a few more until the nation really began to notice?
Such visible and mounting opposition could add potent fuel to a vibrant social movement that demands disarmament and economic conversion. For disarmament will begin only if a substantial segment of the population makes clear its active support for it and brings the necessary pressure to bear on the political process. Acts of public witness could be a sign of this beginning and a call to involvement by increasing numbers of people.
Courageous people must lead this country to withdraw its support from the arms race and thus undermine the whole nuclear weapons system. By adding a strong dose of biblical peace, justice, and social vision to the political environment, Christians can make a vital contribution.
Mernie King was a member of Sojourners Fellowship and worked full time in its peace ministry when this article appeared. This article also appeared in A Matter of Faith, the nuclear arms race study guide for churches that was published by Sojourners earlier this year.
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