Something New after 70 Years: A Way Forward Together

By Bishop Heinrich Bedford-Strohm, chair of the Council of the Evangelical Church in Germany and member of the Church Leaders’ Pilgrimage to Japan of the World Council of Churches on the 70th Anniversary of the Atomic Bombings.

Dear Friends,

All of us here today are united by a great hope: After 70 years of fear, it is high time to abolish nuclear weapons. And we hope that someday this goal will be achieved. I share that hope with you on behalf of the World Council of Churches which has member churches on every continent, including here in Japan, and in my own country of Germany.

Thankfully, in this anniversary year, there is something new. It is a new way forward together towards a world free of nuclear weapons. It is a growing worldwide majority that rejects the threats that began with the bombing of this city. It is a growing number of governments, civil society organizations, and people inspired by humanitarian values, by compassion, and by the vision that this world is truly one.

Our world urgently needs such a new initiative. The multilateral mechanisms that are tasked with ending nuclear dangers have not kept their promise. Nuclear nations are not joining non-nuclear nations in truly filling with life the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and the Conference on Disarmament. Nuclear powers keep denying the evidence about the catastrophic humanitarian consequences of nuclear weapons. These powers praise disarmament as a goal while spending untold billions to modernize their nuclear arsenals for use far into the future.
But there is hope. More and more of the non-nuclear majority are working together to demonstrate they will no longer tolerate this situation but take new initiatives to overcome it. I refer to the Humanitarian Pledge, the fruit of three years of majority action. The Pledge calls us to “fill the legal gap for the prohibition and elimination” of nuclear weapons. One hundred thirteen states have now endorsed the Pledge. More continue to join, urged on by civil society including religious organizations. This new majority is already visible in the 159 countries that have joined their voices to declare: “Nuclear weapons must never be used again, under any circumstances”.

What is new is the growing global majority being empowered to break the deadlock over nuclear disarmament. Surely, a 95-percent majority of states, backed by global public opinion, has the power to outlaw nuclear weapons. A ban will not make nuclear weapons vanish, but law is a necessary step toward their abolition and an essential instrument towards their elimination.
This new way forward will succeed only if governments and civil society move together. The way forward is difficult. The crisis over Ukraine is bringing out dangerous old habits. Fear is being mobilized to increase support for nuclear weapons. Members of NATO assert that Cold War-style nuclear confrontation is necessary, and even inevitable, in the crisis over Ukraine.
The politics of fear and confrontation are sadly familiar here in Northeast Asia. Nuclear weapons thrive here under such conditions. Seventy years ago, atomic bombs were used on two cities. Today, all the cities of the region stand at risk. Every country in this region either possesses nuclear weapons or depends on the nuclear arsenal of the United States.

The World Council of Churches held a worldwide Assembly near here, in South Korea, in 2013.
Member churches from Asia influenced the Assembly. Living inside the target zones of opposing nuclear forces, living among nuclear power plants, they called for eliminating nuclear weapons as a step toward peace and for replacing nuclear power as a step toward sustainable development.

My church in Germany and churches around the world are influenced by the hibakusha of Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and also Fukushima. Their brave witness that no one else must ever suffer their fate is a source of strength to all people, including Christians.

The hibakusha’s story shows that human beings are called to a new way of living: We must live in ways that protect life instead of putting it at risk. We must not use the energy of the atom in ways that threaten and destroy life. To do so is a sinful misuse of God’s creation. We must refuse to accept that the mass destruction of other peoples can be a legitimate form of protection for ourselves.
For this 70th anniversary, the World Council of Churches has sent church leaders here from seven countries that have not yet agreed to close the legal gap around nuclear weapons. We are here from two countries that have nuclear weapons – the United States and Pakistan – and from five countries that profess support for nuclear disarmament but still are willing to have nuclear weapons used on their behalf. After this historic anniversary, our plan is to go home to talk with our governments about what was done to Hiroshima and Nagasaki, to ask why our governments still are prepared, 70 years later, to destroy hundreds of cities even more terribly, and to urge our governments to join the new Humanitarian Pledge.

The 70th anniversary of the atomic bombings is a promising time for all of us. Let us move forward together. To ban nuclear weapons is something new, something necessary and something a world majority must finally do.

A Japanese translation of Bishop Bedford-Strohm's speech is available here.