November/December 1986, Good News Magazine
God’s people are called by Him to be peacemakers. It is not an optional enterprise. Thus our effectiveness in attempting to make peace matters a great deal. It is my conviction that in issuing In Defense of Creation: The Nuclear Crisis and a Just Peace, the United Methodist bishops have acted irresponsibly and done a serious disservice to the church. Do not misunderstand me. I am sure the UM bishops genuinely want peace; but I am equally convinced that their actions have made peace more difficult to achieve.
The secular press has focused on our bishops’ opposition to current U.S. policies such as deterrence and the Strategic Defenses Initiative (popularly known as "Star Wars"). Unfortunately, most of the analyses of the bishops’ letter neglect its major omission—a recognition of the root causes of the conflict between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. Nowhere is the nature of the Soviet system realistically discussed. The bishops devote only a token sentence to the Soviet "authoritarianism," repression and brutality.
Why do the bishops refuse to deal with the bitter truth about the Soviet system? They, like all of us, are faced with a terrible dilemma. On one hand, we have the awesome power of nuclear weapons; on the other hand, we have an implacable enemy. The bishops try to solve the problem of nuclear weapons by denying the nature and the threat of totalitarianism. Then they can frame the choice before us simply as one between "growing trust or mutual destruction." But in the real world— choosing an illustration from the very week in which the bishops released their pastoral letter—how does one trust a government that does not have the human decency promptly to warn its citizens and its neighbors that a radioactive cloud is headed their way?
The bishops act as if difficult choices in a fallen world cease to exist if we simply refuse to acknowledge their presence. It is at this point that traditional pacifists exhibit a great deal more hard-headed realism than the bishops. Genuine pacifists at least refuse to duck the consequences of the policies they promote. They acknowledge that renouncing use of force may lead to the loss of liberty and the coming of tyranny. But pacifists believe we are responsible for our intentions, not the consequences of our actions. Our UM bishops tell us we can have it all—we can abandon deterrence, achieve peace and maintain freedom. The problem for many of us, however, is that the kind of "peace" which the bishops advocate may well bring much more death and suffering than that likely to be produced by maintaining deterrence.
Our bishops attempt a new contribution to the church’s historic teachings on war and peace. They introduce an "ethic of reciprocity" to replace nuclear deterrence. By this they mean that "nuclear-weapon states" are to "act together in agreed stages to reduce and ultimately to eliminate their nuclear arms. Such an ethic is shaped by an acceptance of mutual vulnerability, a vision of common security and the escalation of mutual trust rather than mutual terror."
I’ve puzzled over this a great deal. At first I thought that by "ethic of reciprocity" the bishops meant a "bluff" deterrence. This view assumes that to use or threaten to use nuclear weapons is immoral, but we can possess nuclear weapons while we negotiate reductions. The "bluff" has a latent deterrent effect because the Soviets would never really be sure that we wouldn’t use the weapons. This is apparently not what the bishops mean, however, because they disavow such an "ambiguous" and "inconsistent" position.
Then I thought the bishops might simply be advocating a negotiated, mutual and verifiable arms reduction. I could agree with that (but then, so could Ronald Reagan). Nevertheless, if the "ethic of reciprocity" merely involves support for such a reduction of nuclear weapons—while at the same time forcefully declaring that one could never, under any circumstances, use such weapons—wouldn’t it be more honest if unilateral disarmament were frankly endorsed?
Trained theologians will analyze the bishops’ use of Scripture and their tendency to imply that peace, shalom, may be constructed primarily by human effort, rather than received as the gift of God through His Son, Jesus Christ. But any reader will readily discern the arrogance that has tempted the bishops. They say they do not speak for the church, but then they assure us that "nuclear deterrence is a position which cannot receive the church’s blessing." Though the bishops say that they are seeking full and fair discussion and honest consideration of different and critical opinions, they consistently demean those who disagree with them by frequent references to the "idolatry" of deterrence and by attributing to other Christians "idolatrous loyalties to special interests and ideologies."
Diane Knippers is president of the Institute on Religion and Democracy.