WCC 9th Assembly, Porto Alegre, Brazil, 14-23 February, 2006

Speaking out of love for the world and in obedience to the God of all life, we raise
our voice again with convictions the church has held since nuclear weapons were
used six decades ago.

In the nuclear age, God who is slow to anger and abounding in mercy has granted
humanity many days of grace. Through the troubled years of the Cold War and into
the present time, it has become clear that, in this as in other ways, God has saved
us from ourselves. Although many were and are deceived, God is not mocked (Gal.
6:7). If vengeance in daily life is for God (Rom. 12:19), surely the vengeance of
nuclear holocaust is not for human hands. Our place is to labour for life with God.

Churches are not alone in upholding the sanctity of life. One shared principle of
world religions is greater than all weapons of mass destruction and stronger than
any ‘balance of terror’: we must do to others what we would have them do to us.
Because we do not want nuclear weapons used against us, our nation cannot use
nuclear weapons against others. Since Hiroshima and Nagasaki there is uranium
within the golden rule.

Indeed, governments in the year 2000 made an “unequivocal undertaking” to
meet their obligations and eliminate all nuclear weapons under the Nuclear Non-
Proliferation Treaty (NPT).

Yet instead of progress there is crisis. The basic and compelling bargain at the
heart of the treaty is being broken. The five recognized nuclear powers who pledged
“the total elimination of their nuclear arsenals” under the NPT, are now finding
new military and political roles for nuclear arms instead. The other 184 states in
the treaty pledged never to have nuclear weapons. If the bargain to eliminate
nuclear weapons is being broken, they for their part may have an incentive to seek
the weapons too. When states with the biggest conventional arsenals insist for
their security on also having nuclear weapons, states with smaller arsenals will
feel less secure and do the same. It must be recognized as well that external political
and military pressure can provoke countries to pursue nuclear weapons. In
short, there is nuclear proliferation now despite the NPT.

As more states acquire nuclear arms the risk of nuclear weapons falling into nonstate
hands increases – just when it is an international imperative wisely to over-
come the violence of terrorism. Nuclear arms do not deter non-state agents and
nuclear action against them would cause gross slaughter while shattering international
law and morality. These are scenarios the parties to the NPT are obligated
to prevent.

On the question of morality, all people of faith are needed in our day to expose
the fallacies of nuclear doctrine. These hold, for example, that weapons of mass
destruction are agents of stability; that governments have nuclear arms so they
will never use them; and that there is a role in the human affairs of this small
planet for a bomb more powerful than all the weapons ever used. With our aging
sisters and brothers who survived atomic bombs in Japan and tests in the Pacific
and former Soviet Union, and as people emerging from a century of genocides
and global wars, we are bound to confront these follies before it is too late.

Churches must prevail upon governments until they recognize the incontrovertible
immorality of nuclear weapons.

From its birth as a fellowship of Christian churches the WCC has condemned
nuclear weapons for their “widespread and indiscriminate destruction” and as a
“sin against God” in modern war (First WCC Assembly, 1948). It recognized
early that the only sure defence against nuclear weapons is prohibition, elimination
and verification (Second Assembly, 1954) and, inter alia, called citizens to
“press their governments to ensure national security without resorting to the use
of weapons of mass destruction” (Fifth Assembly, 1975).

Existing WCC policy urges all states to meet their treaty obligations to reduce
and then destroy nuclear arsenals with adequate verification. Our position is that
the five original nuclear weapons states (in alphabetical order: China, France,
Russia, United Kingdom, United States) must pledge never to be the first to use
nuclear weapons, never threaten any use, and remove their weapons from high
alert status and from the territory of non-nuclear states. WCC policy calls the
three states that have not signed the NPT (India, Israel, Pakistan), the one that
has withdrawn (North Korea) and the one threatening to withdraw (Iran), respectively,
to join the treaty as non-nuclear states, to make a fully verifiable return
and not to withdraw (WCC Executive Committee Statement on the Nuclear Non-
Proliferation Treaty, 19.02.04; WCC Central Committee Statement on Nuclear
Disarmament, NATO Policy and the Churches, 05.02.01). These measures have
broad support across the international community, yet they remain undone.

Resolution:

The Ninth Assembly, meeting in Porto Alegre, Brazil, 14-23 February, 2006:

a) Adopts the minute on the Elimination of Nuclear Arms;

b) Calls each member church to urge its own government to pursue the unequivocal
elimination of nuclear weapons under the terms of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation
Treaty. Governments that have decided to abstain from developing nuclear weapons
should be affirmed; states that are not signatories of NPT must be pressed to sign
the treaty as non-nuclear states.

c) Urges churches to work to overcome the ignorance and complacency in society
concerning the nuclear threat, especially to raise awareness in generations with
no memory of what these weapons do.

d) Strongly recommends that, until the goal of nuclear disarmament is achieved,
member churches prevail upon their governments to take collective responsibility
for making international nuclear disarmament machinery work, including
mechanisms to verify compliance, for securing nuclear weapons and weapons-useable
material from non-state actors, and for supporting the International Atomic
Energy Agency in its critical mission of monitoring fissile material and peaceful
uses of nuclear energy.

e) Calls on member churches and parishes to mobilize their membership to support
and strengthen Nuclear Weapons Free Zones, which are established in Latin
America and the Caribbean, the South Pacific, Southeast Asia and Africa and are
proposed for other inhabited regions of the earth; and especially commends churches
to engage other religions and to advocate for these zones during the WCC
‘Decade to Overcome Violence: Churches Seeking Reconciliation and Peace –
2001-2010’.