National Council of Churches Slams U.S. Nukes

The U.S. nuclear arsenal is an imminent threat to world peace, according to the Governing Board of the National Council of Churches (NCC), which met in New York September 21-22.

Their resolution, titled “Nuclear Disarmament: The Time is Now,” sharply criticized the United States but barely mentioned rogue states such as North Korea and Iran.

Although the council has a long history of calling for the elimination of nuclear weapons since its founding in 1951, the 10-page resolution is the first action on nuclear disarmament that the NCC has taken since 1988.

“There’s a sense that this had fallen off the agenda of the ecumenical movement,” said NCC General Secretary Dr. Michael Kinnamon, who said that the statement was now timely because of the 20th anniversary of the Cold War’s end. “We call ourselves again to press this agenda.”

The NCC resolution calls for “the total worldwide eradication of nuclear weapons,” but focuses almost exclusively on the United States, beginning with a denunciation in the second paragraph in which the value of a U.S. nuclear deterrent is dismissed and the U.S. nuclear program is blamed for having “poisoned our air, our water, and our children.”

“Many believe it has also engendered a false sense of security coupled with inordinate pride, much resented by other nations,” the resolution continues. “This has only served to degrade the status and esteem accorded to the U.S. by the other peoples of the world, not to maintain or improve them.”

The anti-U.S. language was so strong that during discussion of the resolution, objections were raised by representatives of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese.

“People will get to paragraph two and roll their eyes saying, ‘there goes the NCC again,’” cautioned Governing Board Member Dr. Anton Vrame of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese, who was joined by fellow Greek Orthodox John Paterakis in expressing concerns about a sole focus on the United States.

 “You own your own stuff before you start pointing fingers at others,” countered Dr. Miriam Burnett of the NCC’s Justice and Advocacy Commission, apparently equating the possession of nuclear arms by the United States with that of rogue nations.

Kinnamon backed Burnett’s defense of the resolution’s original language, urging a sharp focus on the United States, while also mentioning that the U.S. wasn’t the only nation with nuclear weapons.

NCC President Archbishop Vicken Aykazian of the Armenian Orthodox Church admitted that nuclear weapon dangers come from many nations and not just the U.S.

Vrame introduced an amendment to remove the entire second paragraph, but the amendment was rejected after only garnering modest support from Vrame, Paterakis and one other.

Eventually the council adopted another amendment that retained the controversial paragraph focused on the United States, but added: “The same might be said of other nations that possess nuclear weapons.”

North Korea, which recently drew international condemnation after detonating a second nuclear device, is only mentioned once, in the resolution’s introduction.

“Here, we must rely on the diplomatic weight of the entire rest of the world coming down on them [North Korea], peaceably, in order to induce change,” the resolution reads. “This will not happen, however, until the United States takes the lead, because, like it or not, we are the only superpower left.”

While the statement infers that the United States must surrender its nuclear weapons before North Korea can be expected to, it does not comment on the failure of six-nation multilateral talks to deter North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il from continuing his country’s nuclear program, or Iran’s continued development of nuclear enrichment facilities.

The resolution instructs readers: “This commitment should not be dismissed merely as a knee-jerk ‘liberal’ reaction to the new of the day. In fact, it is based on solid theological grounding, which goes back to the earliest years of the organization.”

Full text of the resolution can be viewed by clicking here. It now advances to the ecumenical council’s annual General Assembly to be held in Minneapolis this November.