Mark Tooley: Religiously Remembering Hiroshima
[Mark Tooley is president of the Institute on Religion and Democracy in Washington, D.C. and author of Taking Back the United Methodist Church.]
Somewhat surprisingly, the 65th anniversary of Hiroshima and Nagasaki this month passed without many sharp condemnations and calls for repentance by left-leaning church officials. The head of the Two Futures Project, a coalition for left-leaning evangelicals urging a nuclear free world, blogged for the Huffington Post about the atomic anniversaries serving as a reminder of the urgent need for nuclear disarmament. In Switzerland the head of the World Council of Churches (WCC) likewise urged complete "nuclear abolition" based on memories of those destroyed Japanese cities.
"Again we mourn the people who died from the atomic bombings of 1945 and extend our solidarity and resolve to those who survive," declared the Geneva-based WCC chief, noting that "65 years on, nuclear bombs still threaten humanity and deny a lasting peace." He also bemoaned the legacy that since 1945 has seen the world "divided into two camps -- a handful of states that assert the right to have weapons of mass annihilation and the majority of states that do not."
Of course, the WCC chief, who is a Norwegian theologian, did not acknowledge the context of Japanese militarism, with its millions of murdered victims across Asia. And he derided nuclear weapons as wicked without morally distinguishing among the various regimes that possess them or their purposes. In August 1945, many tens of millions rejoiced that U.S. atomic strikes would spare the lives of countless hundreds of thousands, probably millions, from dozens of nations would have died if the war had continued even a few more months, much less years. Interestingly, the WCC's news service reported about a Japanese pastor and atomic survivor who recently penned his memoir. Setting the context in contrast with silence from Western church officials, he wrote that the atomic bombings were "a result of a war of aggression and colonial rule in Asia by Japanese militarism, which cannot be talked about without a deep repentance as one who supported and cooperated with causing the war of aggression."
Read entire article at American Spectator
Somewhat surprisingly, the 65th anniversary of Hiroshima and Nagasaki this month passed without many sharp condemnations and calls for repentance by left-leaning church officials. The head of the Two Futures Project, a coalition for left-leaning evangelicals urging a nuclear free world, blogged for the Huffington Post about the atomic anniversaries serving as a reminder of the urgent need for nuclear disarmament. In Switzerland the head of the World Council of Churches (WCC) likewise urged complete "nuclear abolition" based on memories of those destroyed Japanese cities.
"Again we mourn the people who died from the atomic bombings of 1945 and extend our solidarity and resolve to those who survive," declared the Geneva-based WCC chief, noting that "65 years on, nuclear bombs still threaten humanity and deny a lasting peace." He also bemoaned the legacy that since 1945 has seen the world "divided into two camps -- a handful of states that assert the right to have weapons of mass annihilation and the majority of states that do not."
Of course, the WCC chief, who is a Norwegian theologian, did not acknowledge the context of Japanese militarism, with its millions of murdered victims across Asia. And he derided nuclear weapons as wicked without morally distinguishing among the various regimes that possess them or their purposes. In August 1945, many tens of millions rejoiced that U.S. atomic strikes would spare the lives of countless hundreds of thousands, probably millions, from dozens of nations would have died if the war had continued even a few more months, much less years. Interestingly, the WCC's news service reported about a Japanese pastor and atomic survivor who recently penned his memoir. Setting the context in contrast with silence from Western church officials, he wrote that the atomic bombings were "a result of a war of aggression and colonial rule in Asia by Japanese militarism, which cannot be talked about without a deep repentance as one who supported and cooperated with causing the war of aggression."