The Archbishop of Glasgow and Moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland will protest against the ‘insanity’ of nuclear weapons outside Faslane this weekend.
Archbishop William Nolan of Glasgow and the Rt Rev Dr Iain
Greenshields, are traveling to Faslane nuclear base this Saturday to pray for peace and call for an end to nuclear weapons.
The ecumenical effort has extra urgency amid growing fears the war in Ukraine could escalate beyond conventional weapons.
Pope Francis this week warned that the conflict risked sparking a ‘nuclear conflagration’.
Both the Church of Scotland and the Catholic Church in Scotland are long-standing opponents of the UK’s possessing nuclear weapons but this is the first time senior
figures from both churches have protested together at the home of Britain’s nuclear Trident submarines.
The Scottish Bishops’ opposition goes back to 1982 when they published a pastoral letter on Peace and Disarmament.
“In this letter they challenged not just the use of nuclear weapons, something the
church has always condemned, but they challenged also the very notion of deterrence and the morality of deterrence,” Archbishop Nolan said earlier this year. “We believe in the dignity and right to life of every human being and that nuclear weapons violate that dignity and threaten that life. It is evident that the use of
nuclear weapons would have indiscriminate and devastating humanitarian consequences that would extend beyond the borders of any
single nation-state.”
He added that ‘the threat of nuclear arms poisons the soul of humanity, and their use by any state or leader would be an immoral act against humanity and against creation.
Following a prayer service at the gates of Faslane Rt Rev Dr Iain Greenshields is expected to say ‘the existence and proliferation of nuclear weapons’ is an ‘insanity’ that God will judge us for condoing.
“Think of the difference it would make to those who will struggle this year and every
other year, if what we spend on nuclear weapons were instead to be spent to support the most vulnerable in our society,” he will go on. “The old slogan of “Ban the Bomb” still stands as the only sane thing we can stand for, as we speak out with passion and insist upon from those in power the end of these
weapons.”