For us, and for many of our readers, it has become a tradition to mark the August 6 and 9 anniversaries of the atomic bombings in Japan with public prayers and protest.
Columns
Joyce Hollyday 8-01-1986
A nationwide rise in vindictive activity toward death row prisoners and their advocates seems to confirm a trend of opinion about the death penalty in the last two decades.
Joe Roos 8-01-1986
The eight-day crusade, attended by more than 150,000 people and involving 630 churches from Washington, D.C, Maryland, and Virginia, took place in late April and early May. Nearly one-third of those attending came from Washington's black community.
Joyce Hollyday 7-01-1986
The city was still blanketed in early-morning drowsiness. The sun, an orange glint on the eastern horizon, shone through broad-leafed trees. A stooped man in a gray uniform swept discarded candy wrappers and crushed soda cans into a container.
I imagined it was like the start of every other day on Capitol Hill, though I wasn't sure. I had never been there before at dawn.
Some of our small group had spent all night on the east steps of the Capitol. Others arrived at various hours throughout the night to take part in a round-the-clock vigil during the days preceding the second contra aid vote in the House of Representatives.
There was less attention than usual paid to a group of Christians praying for the people of Nicaragua and lifting up the names of the victims of the contra war. As the president had hoped, America's attention was focused elsewhere. It was April 15—the day after the U.S. air strike on Libya.
We were told that the attack was intended to put an end to terrorism. But even the president himself seemed not to believe his words. During the night huge dump trucks were parked across the entrance roads to the Capitol. The orange and white trucks dotted our view and stood as a last line of defense against potential retaliatory suicide-bombing missions on the Capitol by angry Libyans. As the usual flood of tour buses began to enter the Capitol plaza, German shepherds were guided out of police wagons bearing the K-9 insignia and set loose to sniff at luggage compartments for bombs.
Vicki Kemper 7-01-1986
Throughout the long sanctuary trial, a black banner hung in the sanctuary movement's media office in downtown Tucson. "The Truth Will Set You Free," it said in big letters cut from colorful cloth. On the end of it someone had tacked a piece of computer paper with the handwritten word, "Eventually."
The humorous afterthought referred, no doubt, to the seemingly endless nature of the trial. But now, after eight sanctuary workers have been found guilty by a federal jury and face possible prison terms of up to 25 years, the one-word footnote offers bittersweet comfort and profound theological insight.
For in the end, the sanctuary trial was less about the issues of sanctuary than it was about control of the truth. It had less to do with U.S. immigration law than it did with selective prosecution and selective presentation of evidence and law. It was more about faith than about crime. It represented injustice rather than justice. And the trial was not so much about conditions of violence and oppression in Central America as it was about the grim condition of relations between the U.S. government and those persons and groups that oppose its domestic and foreign policies.
The guilty verdict was not merely a reflection of the blatant bias of U.S. District Judge Earl H. Carroll, the corruption of government informant Jesus Cruz, the ruthless and shameless pursuit of convictions by Immigration and Naturalization Service investigator James Rayburn and prosecutor Donald M. Reno Jr., or even the conclusion of 12 jurors, but rather the policies and decisions of larger governmental bodies and more powerful government officials. The investigation of the sanctuary movement was ordered, after all, by top immigration officials in Washington intent on silencing the truth about U.S. policy in Central America.
Dennis Marker 7-01-1986
Chernobyl's radioactive cloud had not yet reached the shores of the Pacific when official U.S. government pronouncements began assuring citizens that there was no danger to the public health. The same message had already been delivered by governments of other countries to their citizens as the radioactive cloud passed overhead.
Socialist and capitalist countries alike could agree that the radioactive release was safe for everyone living outside the immediate area of the Chernobyl plant. Radiation levels increased by more than 500 percent in some areas hundreds of miles away from the accident, but citizens were still assured this was safe. And in what can only be viewed as political double talk, some governments actually told their citizens the air was perfectly safe to breathe, while the fruit and vegetables in the same places might be unsafe to eat.
The Chernobyl reactor meltdown was predictable. The location and time were unknown, of course, but a nuclear disaster of this magnitude was bound to happen once, and unfortunately, it's bound to happen again.
The response of governments throughout the world has also been predictable. Hasty assurances of public safety were followed with detailed explanations of why a nuclear power disaster could not occur in their countries. And most predictable of all was the nearly unanimous silence about the victims of this accident.
Jim Rice 7-01-1986
Is it a sin to build a nuclear weapon? That question is becoming more and more central to the church debate on nuclear weapons, as two of the three largest denominations in the country took actions this spring that called into question the possession of nuclear weapons for deterrence.
Since 1945 deterrence in its various forms has been the philosophical cornerstone of the nuclear arms race. Each new U.S. weapon system through the years has been necessary, we were told, to maintain a credible deterrent against the Soviet threat. Variations and refinements of the theme, from "massive retaliation" to "flexible response," provided an excuse for even the most threatening and provocative advances in nuclear technology. The doctrine of deterrence has long provided the rationale for basing our entire defense policy on the insane threat of mass annihilation.
During the past six years, however, an important shift has occurred in the churches' stance toward nuclear weapons. In addition to the witness of communities of faith and resistance and the faithful stance of the historic peace churches, virtually every denomination in the United States has come out with a statement condemning the unrelenting arms race.
Yet until this year the mainstream church bodies in this country have not questioned the philosophy of deterrence. While church statements have raised moral questions about the use of nuclear weapons, the possession of nuclear weapons as part of a strategy of deterrence has been seen as a morally permissible evil. Churches have criticized everything about the arms race except the existence of nuclear weapons themselves.
Danny Duncan Collum 6-01-1986
On April 14 the United I States finally "did something" about terrorism by unleashing a massive bombing raid against Libya.
Jim Wallis 6-01-1986
This spring more than 200 U.S. religious leaders finally told the truth about Nicaragua.
Danny Duncan Collum 6-01-1986
The importance of a comprehensive nuclear test ban as a first step toward ending the arms race does not end with the Soviet moratorium.
The Editors 6-01-1986
With summer almost upon us, many of us at Sojourners are getting ready for long-awaited vacations. But each year, just as we're trying to spend a few weeks at the beach or in the mountains, many of our readers and other friends make a trek to the nation's capital.
Joe Lynch 5-01-1986
On a Saturday morning in early February, the residents and families living in 26 units of an apartment building in our neighborhood recieved a written notice commanding possession of their premises.
Danny Duncan Collum 5-01-1986
All analysis aside, there was much to be simply thankful for in the recent change of governments in the Philippines.