It seems to me that there are many respects in which religions can play a benign, useful, salutary, practical, functional role in the prevention of nuclear war. And there are still other ways that are maybe longer shots but, considering the stakes, are well worth considering. One has to do with perspective.
Now, not all religions have this perspective on the stewardship of the Earth by men and women, but they could. The idea is that this world is not here for us only. It is for all human generations to come. And not just for humans. Or even if you took only a very narrow view of the world, if you were a speciesist in the same sense as being a racist or a sexist, still you would have to be very careful about all those other nonhuman species, because in many intricate ways our lives depend on them. I remind you of the elementary fact that we breathe the waste products of plants and plants breathe the waste products of humans. A very intimate relationship if you think about it. And that relationship is responsible for every breath you take. We in fact depend on the plants, it turns out, a lot more than the plants depend on us. So that sense that this is a world that is worth taking care of is, it seems to me, something that could be at the heart of religions that wished to make a significant contribution to the human future.
Then there are more direct kinds of political activity. For example, religious people played a role in the abolition of slavery in the United States, and elsewhere. Religions played a fundamental role in the independence movement in India and in other countries and the civil rights movement in the United States. Religions and religious leaders have played very important roles in getting the human species out of situations that we should never have gotten into that profoundly compromised our ability to survive, and there is no reason religions could not in the future take on similar roles. There are, of course, occasional circumstances, individual clergypersons who have taken that role in this particular crisis, but it is hard to see any major religion that has made this kind of political activity its foremost objective.
There is also the issue of moral courage. Religions, because they are institutionalized and have many adherents, are able to provide role models, to demonstrate that acts of conscience are creditable, are respectable. They can raise awkward possibilities. The pope, for example, has raised (although not answered) the question about the moral responsibility of workers who develop and produce weapons of mass destruction.
Or is it okay as long as there is a local excuse? Are some excuses better than other excuses? What are the implications for scientists? For corporate executives? For those who invest in such companies? For military personnel? The archbishop of Amarillo has urged workers at a nuclear-weapons facility in his diocese to quit. So far as I know, no one has quit. Religions can remind us of unpopular truths. Religions can speak truth to power. It's a very important function that is often not carried out by all the other sectors of society.
Religions can also speak to their own sectarian eschatologies, especially where they run contrary to human survival. I'm thinking, for example, about the Christian fundamentalist view in the United States that the end of the world is unerringly predicted in the book of Revelation, that the details in the book of Revelation are sufficiently similar to those of a nuclear war that it is the duty of a Christian not to prevent nuclear war. The Christian who does so would be interfering with God's plan. Now, I know I have stated this somewhat more baldly than the advocates of such views, but I believe that is what it comes down to. Christians can play a useful role in providing a steadying hand on people with such eschatologies, because they're very dangerous.
Suppose someone with such a view were in a position of power, and there was a critical decision that had to be made in a moment, and that person had a little sense that maybe this was the fulfillment of biblical prophecy. Maybe he shouldn't make the effort to avoid this, especially if he believed that he himself will be one of the first people to leave the Earth and appear at the right hand of God. He might be interested to see what that would be like. Why slow it down?
Religion has a long history of brilliant creativity in myth and metaphor. This is a field crying out for apposite myth and metaphor. Religions can combat fatalism. They can engender hope. They can clarify our bonds with other human beings all over the planet. They can remind us that we are all in this together. There are many functions that religion can serve in trying to prevent this ultimate catastrophe. Ultimate for us-I want to stress that we're not talking about the elimination of all life on Earth. Doubtless roaches and grass and sulfur-metabolizing worms that live in hot vents in the ocean bottoms would survive nuclear war. It is not the Earth that is at stake, it is not life on Earth that's at stake, it is merely us and all we stand for that is at stake.
Now, along these lines I should also say that at least some religions have specific suggestions on standards of moral behavior that conceivably could be relevant to this problem. (I don't guarantee it; I don't know. The experiment has not been carried out.) And in particular there is the issue of the Golden Rule. Christianity says that you should love your enemy. It certainly doesn't say that you should vaporize his children. But it goes much further than that. It says not just abide your enemy, not just tolerate him, love him.
Well, it's important to ask, what does that mean? Is this just window dressing, or do the Christians mean it?
Christianity also says that redemption is possible. So an anti-Christian would be someone who argues to hate your enemy and that redemption is impossible, that bad people remain forever bad. So I would ask you, which position is better suited to an age of apocalyptic weapons? What do you do if one side does not profess those views and you claim to be a Christian? Must you adopt the views of your adversary or the views advocated by the founder of your religion? You can also ask, which position is uniformly embraced by the nation-states? The answers to those questions are very clear. There is no nation that adopts the Christian position on this issue. Not one. There's 140-some-odd nations on the Earth. As far as I know, not one of them takes a Christian point of view. There may be some perfectly good reasons for that, but it's remarkable that there are nations that take great pride in their Christian tradition that nevertheless do not see any contradiction between that and their attitudes on nuclear war.
By the way, this is not just Christianity. The Golden Rule was uttered by Rabbi Hillel before Jesus, and by the Buddha centuries before Rabbi Hillel. It is involved in many different religions. But for the moment let's talk about Christianity. It seems to me that the admonishment to love our enemy must be something central to Christianity; it's that strong statement of the Golden Rule that sets Christianity apart. There were no qualifying phrases that said, "Love your enemy unless you really don't like him." It says love your enemy. No ifs, ands, or buts. Now, political nonviolence has worked wonders in our time. Mohandas Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. achieved extraordinary, and for many people counterintuitive, victories. It might even be a practical, novel, certainly breathtakingly different approach to the nuclear arms race. Maybe not. Maybe it's flawed and hopeless. Maybe the Christian point of view on this issue is inappropriate to the nuclear age. But isn't it interesting that no nation of Christians has adopted it? The Soviet leaders do not profess to be Christians, so if they do not pursue the path of love, they are not inconsistent with their beliefs. But if the leaders of other Western nations profess to be Christian, then what course of action should they be engaged in? Let me stress I don't necessarily advocate such a policy. I don't know if it would work. It may be, as I say, hopelessly naive. But should not those who make conspicuous public displays of their devotion to Christianity follow what is certainly among the central tenets of the faith?