The Christian faith must be demonstrated anew in each historical moment. The gospel is always addressed to the time in which we live. Christians must find ways to relate timeless but timely faith to their own situation, showing what they will embrace and what they will refuse because of Jesus Christ.
Some historical issues stand out as particularly urgent among the church's fundamental concerns. These overarching moral questions intrude upon the routine of the church's life and plead for the compassion and courage of God's people everywhere. Slavery was such a question for Christians in the 19th century. The nuclear arms race is such a question today.
Thousands of Christians from diverse 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 ownership of another human being denied that each person is loved by God and made in God's image. These Christians began to preach that to follow Christ meant to turn away from the institution of slavery, to refuse to cooperate with it, and to work for its abolition. Though this seemed like an absurd, unattainable goal, they insisted that God required nothing less. They came to be called abolitionists.
Christian acceptance of nuclear weapons has brought us also to a crisis of faith. The nuclear threat is not just a political issue any more than slavery was: It is a question that challenges our worship of God and our commitment to Jesus Christ. In other words, the growing prospect of nuclear war presents us with more than a test of survival; it confronts us with a test of faith.
Nuclear war is total war. Unlimited in their violence, indiscriminate in their victims, uncontrollable in their devastation, nuclear weapons have brought humanity to a historical crossroads. More than at any previous time in history, the alternatives are peace or destruction. In nuclear war there are no winners.
We are Christians who now see that the nuclear arms race is more than a question of public policy. We believe that the wholesale destruction threatened by these weapons makes their possession and planned use an offense against God and humanity, no matter what the provocation or political justification. Through deliberation and prayer we have become convinced that Jesus' call to be peacemakers urgently needs to be renewed in the churches and made specific by a commitment to abolish nuclear weapons and to find a new basis of national security.
As the foundation of national security, nuclear weapons are idolatrous. As a method of defense, they are suicidal. To believe that nuclear weapons can solve international problems is the greatest illusion and the height of naivete.
The threatened nuclear annihilation of whole populations in the name of national security is an evil we can no longer accept. At stake is whether we trust in God or the bomb. We can no longer confess Jesus as Lord and depend on nuclear weapons to save us. Conversion in our day must include turning away from nuclear weapons as we turn to Jesus Christ.
The building and threatened use of nuclear weapons is a sin against God, God's creatures, and God's creation. There is no theology or doctrine in the traditions of the church that could ever justify nuclear war. Whether one begins with pacifism or with the just war doctrine, nuclear weapons are morally unacceptable.
The God of the Bible loves the poor and demands justice for the oppressed. To continue to spend hundreds of billions of dollars in preparation for war 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 in order to heed the biblical vision of converting the weapons of war into instruments of peace.
When nuclear war is thinkable, folly and madness have become the accepted political wisdom. It is time for the church to bear witness to the absolute character of the word of God which is finally our only hope in breaking the hold of the political realities in whose name we march to oblivion.
In times past, Christians from many traditions joined together to oppose great social sin and point the way to change. We believe the growing prospect of nuclear war now calls for such unity of Christian response.
Our response as Christians begins with repentance for almost four decades of accepting nuclear weapons. Repentance in a nuclear age means non-cooperation with preparations for nuclear war and the turning of our lives toward peace.
Whatever we say to the government must be based first on what we have publicly committed ourselves to do and not to do in the face of a nuclear war. The fruits of our repentance will be made visible in our active witness and leadership for peace.
No longer trusting in nuclear weapons, we refuse to cooperate with preparations for total war. 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. Prayer is at the heart of Christian peacemaking. Prayer can change us and our relationships. Prayer begins in confession of our own sin and extends into intercession for our enemies, bringing them closer to us. We will pray, asking God to hold back the nuclear devastation so that we may turn from our folly. Through prayer the reality of Christ's victory over nuclear darkness can be established in our lives and free us to participate in Christ's reconciling work 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 biblical and theological basis for peacemaking. We will become thoroughly and deeply informed about the danger of the arms race and the steps to be taken toward peace. We will become aware of the churches' teachings on the matter of nuclear warfare.
3. Spiritual examination
We covenant together to examine ourselves. To shed the light of the gospel on the nuclear situation, 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 cooperating with preparations for nuclear war. The church should be concerned with the spiritual well-being of its members whose livelihoods are now dependent on the nuclear war system. We will undertake a thorough pastoral evaluation of the life of our congregations in all these matters.
4. Evangelism
We covenant together to spread the gospel of peace. We will speak out and reach out to our friends, families, and Christian brothers and sisters about the dangers of the nuclear arms buildup and the urgency of peace. We will take the message to the other churches in our neighborhoods, to our denominations, and to the decision-making bodies of our churches on every level. The cause of peace will be preached from our pulpits, lifted up in our prayers, and made part of our worship. We will offer faith in God as an alternative to trust in the bomb.
5. 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 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, stored, and deployed, and where decisions are made to continue the arms race.
The gatherings, events, and institutions of the churches will also become important places for our public witness. We will make our convictions known at all these places, especially on significant dates in the church calendar and on August 6 and 9, the anniversaries of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
6. Nuclear disarmament
We covenant together to work to stop the arms race. In light of our faith, we are prepared to live without nuclear weapons. We will publicly advocate a nuclear weapons freeze as the first step toward abolishing nuclear weapons altogether. We will act in our local communities to place the call for a nuclear weapons freeze on the public agenda. We will press our government and the other nuclear powers to halt all further testing, production, and deployment of nuclear weapons, and then move steadily and rapidly to eliminate them completely.
We recognize a call from God to make these simple commitments and, through the grace of God, we hope to fulfill them. Rooted in the gospel of Jesus Christ and strengthened by the hope that comes from faith, we covenant together to make peace.
How to use this covenant
The purpose of the covenant is to place before the churches the abolition of nuclear weapons as an urgent matter of faith. The nuclear threat is a theological issue, a confessional matter, a spiritual question, and is so important it must be brought into the heart of the church's life.
This is not a statement to sign but a covenant to be acted upon. In other words, the purpose is not to gain signatures, but to encourage response. Find at least two or three others to spend an hour, a day, or a weekend with this covenant. Gather with your friends to make the covenant and then take it to your congregations, groups, and communities. We hope to see the covenant distributed widely, used locally, and result in action.
The covenant should be dealt with in a community process. These commitments cannot be carried out alone. Therefore, we encourage people to enter into supportive relationships with others for the purpose of prayer, reflection, and action. Our hope is that the covenant can strengthen existing groups working for peace and help create new ones.
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