Can Evangelicals Rid the World of Nuclear Weapons?
November 19, 2010
Tyler Wigg-Stevenson sees nuclear policy in black and white.
“We face two futures: a world without nuclear weapons or a world ruined by them,” he said at a November 16 Harris School event sponsored by the Committee on International Affairs and Public Policy.
Wigg-Stevenson is the founder of the Two Futures Project, a Christian-based organization that advocates for the abolition of all nuclear weapons. Trained and ordained as a Baptist minister, he has also worked on nuclear politics as an aide to now-retired Senator Alan Cranston of California, giving him what he considers a unique ability to bridge the two worlds.
Since 2007, Wigg-Stevenson has focused on reaching out to evangelicals—who he calls “the gaping hole in religious anti-nuclear activism”—and educating them on why nuclear disarmament is a moral issue. Laying out his theological arguments, he said one of the core tenets of Christian faith is the value of all human life, making the mass destruction and devastation of innocent victims caused by nuclear weapons simply unacceptable.
It’s a steep hill to climb, he admits. For years, if not decades, the idea of nuclear disarmament was viewed as little more than “hippie idealism,” he said. That started to changing on January 4th, 2007, when four right-wing Cold-War hawks—George Shultz, William Perry, Henry Kissinger, and Sam Nunn—published an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal calling for the eradication of nuclear weapons. “Reliance on nuclear weapons for [deterrence] is becoming increasingly hazardous and decreasingly effective,” they wrote.
Wigg-Stevenson saw that as a paradigm-shifting commentary, one that gave others on the political right permission to actively question nuclear warfare. “I’m convinced that long-term constructive change on nuclear security policy requires a nonpartisan consensus,” Tyler said in a conversation before the Harris School event. “The American church, especially evangelicals, are uniquely positioned to be that group.”
But Wigg-Stevenson doesn’t just rely upon moral and theological arguments to accomplish his goal. He believes nuclear disarmament is an important and plausible policy initiative as well, arguing that they offer no military utility at all. “What scenario would need to occur in which we were okay with using nuclear weapons?” he asked students at the Harris School event, suggesting that nuclear weapons haven’t prevented non-nuclear states from attacking nuclear states or nuclear states from losing wars in the last 60 years.
He’s also not claiming to be a policy wonk. Wigg-Stevenson sees his role as asking the important questions that keep our policymakers in check, providing the moral drive that takes us from our current world into a better one. And he’ll keep asking them until the world takes notice.
By Andrew Means
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