Religion: How About the Bomb?

Would use of the atom bomb be seemly in the eyes of God, and, if so, under what conditions? Singly and in groups, the world’s clergymen were doing their best last week to give the answer.

¶Asked whether the U.S. would be justified in using the atom bomb, Geopolitician Father Edmund A. Walsh, S J., of Georgetown University, said: “If the Government of the United States has sound reason to believe . . . that. . . attack is being mounted and ready … it would appear that President Truman would be morally justified to take defensive measures proportionate to the danger. That would mean use of the atomic bomb, as no power would launch a surprise attack on the United States without an adequate supply of atomic bombs . . . Neither reason nor theology nor morals requires men or nations to commit suicide by requiring that we must await the first blow …”

¶ Protestant Fundamentalist Carl Mclntire’s International Council of Churches (TIME, May 16, 1949) was in agreement. Use of the bomb “to defend human freedom, if necessary” would offend no moral principles, it declared.

¶ In western New York State, 78 clergymen of a dozen Protestant denominations issued a plea against use of the bomb “lest we lose all claim to God’s mercy by permitting the destruction of the innocent as well as the guilty.”

¶ In Michigan, 60 Methodist ministers dispatched a message to President Truman and Secretary of Defense Marshall: “Its previous use not having prevented the present crisis . . . and in consideration of the fact that the A-bomb is the extreme expression of violence completely contrary to Christian ethics, we … register our protest against either the use or the threat of the use of the A-bomb in any way.”

¶ Professor Robert M. Hawkins of Vanderbilt University’s School of Religion thought it a military rather than a moral question. “To me the atom bomb is just another weapon . . . Any weapon is inhumane, and I would rather be blown up with an atom bomb than bayoneted.”

¶ In an official report received by the Federal Council of Churches, a 16-man commission of clergy and laymen said: “If atomic weapons . . . are used against us or our friends in Europe or Asia, we believe that it could be justifiable for our Government to use them in retaliation . . .”

In Rome, Pope Pius XII issued an encyclical (Mirabile Illud) calling for a “sacred crusade” for peace. Though destined for other purposes, the human mind, he said, has devised “instruments of war of such power as to raise horror in the souls of all honest persons, above all because they do not strike only the armies but often wipe out private citizens—children, women, the aged and the sick—and with them sacred buildings and the most outstanding monuments of art.”