by Art Laffin

Seventy-five years ago the Nuclear Age began. On July 16, 1945, the first nuclear weapons test was conducted by Los Alamos scientists who detonated a plutonium bomb at a test site located on the US Air Force base at Alamogordo, New Mexico. The test was blasphemously called "Trinity."  On August 6-9, 1945, the US committed the unspeakable atrocities of using nuclear weapons in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, a mortal sin and colossal war crime that, to date, is still unrepented for by the US government. 

With the advent of the Nuclear Age, Albert Einstein declared: "The unleashed power of the atom has changed everything save our mode of thinking and we thus drift toward unparalleled catastrophe." The US and other nuclear powers have ignored Einstein's advice, as well as the new UN Treaty to Prohibit Nuclear Weapons, and consequently our world spirals towards catastrophe. 

During the last seven decades, the mining, testing, production, and deployment of nuclear weapons have desecrated native lands, caused incalculable ecological devastation, and claimed untold lives. The nuclear threat remains omnipresent. The US and Russia possess an estimated combined total of 12,600 nuclear weapons, many of which are on hair-trigger alert. In January 2020, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists set the Doomsday Clock at 100 seconds to midnight due to the existential dangers of nuclear war, the climate crisis, and worsening world tensions. 

Instead of adopting the UN Treaty to Prohibit Nuclear Weapons and abolishing nuclear weapons, the US refuses to disarm. Moreover, the current US Administration during the last three years has openly threatened to use nuclear weapons against adversaries on several occasions. According to the "Doctrine for Joint Nuclear Operations," Pentagon policy makers have declared that a limited nuclear war could be waged and won. This doctrine is the latest manifestation of a long-held existing policy positing that the US must be prepared at all times to use whatever military force is necessary, including the use of nuclear weapons, to protect its vital strategic and geopolitical interests in the world. The US also remains committed to a 30-year upgrade of its nuclear arsenal at an estimated cost of $1.7 trillion. This theft of the public treasury for murderous weapons instead of health care and other urgent human needs during this pandemic time, is a sin and crime, and must be resisted. 

There are many signs of hope and resistance in these unprecedented perilous times, including inspiring new movements for racial and social justice and peace. There is also the witness of groups like the Kings Bay Plowshares 7, six of whom still await sentencing (tentatively set for September 3-4) for their plowshares action on April 4, 2018 (the 50th anniversary of the martyrdom of Martin Luther King, Jr.) directed at the first-strike Trident submarine program at the Kings Bay naval base in St. Mary, Georgia. In their action statement they declared: "Nuclear weapons eviscerate the rule of law, enforce white supremacy, perpetuate endless war and environmental destruction, and ensure impunity for all crimes against humanity. Dr. King said, 'The ultimate logic of racism is genocide,' We say, 'The ultimate logic of Trident is omnicide.'" (To support the KBP 7 see: https://kingsbayplowshares7.org/ )  

What does it mean to follow Jesus’ way of the cross and to place our trust in God for our true security, instead of in nuclear weapons that can destroy all life on earth? How do we find hope and courage to stand for God’s reign of love, justice, and nonviolence in a time of unprecedented global perils? 

As worldwide commemorations will be held August 6-9 marking the 75th anniversary of the US nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and calling for nuclear abolition, a timely new book has been released that will inspire Christians who are seeking answers to these questions. The new edition of The Risk of the Cross: Living Gospel Nonviolence in the Nuclear Age, by Art Laffin, (forewords by John Dear and Henri Nouwen) is an invaluable resource to assist followers of Jesus to better grasp the absolute threat that nuclear weapons pose to all of God's creation, embrace the way of Gospel nonviolence, and act in solidarity with people in our society and worldwide who are working for social justice and a disarmed world. The book is also intended to help more Christians realize that to follow Jesus' way of the cross today requires that we nonviolently resist empire, systemic oppression, racism, inequality, and injustice and all forms of violence and killing.

As we work to build a global grassroots movement to abolish war and nuclear weapons, this reflection will help place our efforts within the context of the Gospel, in discipleship to the nonviolent Jesus who resisted imperial violence and calls us, come what may, to do the same.