As an amateur historian I have often noticed that so-called "great warriors" and warmongers tend to bear a remarkable resemblance to each other, as if all afflicted by the same or similar mental illnesses. (And what does that say about societies where such war heroes are revered, held up to the young as models, given the highest accolades and often become political leaders who increase the militarization of society?) By contrast, peacemakers (including some former soldiers) come in a rainbow or kaleidoscope of varieties and their contributions and struggles are infinitely varied. Some of that variety has been shown in these "Random Chapters in the History of Nonviolence." This time, I want to focus on some peacemakers whose field, nuclear physics, has been used to give us the devastating nuclear bomb and bring us to the brink of global holocaust.

I am not a scientist, but I have always been fascinated by the sciences. My earliest childhood hero was Jacques Cousteau (I am still a member of the Cousteau Society) and I aspired to be a marine biologist, specializing in dolphin research. (Not surprising, perhaps, for a boy who grew up in Florida, lettered in swimming, and sometimes swam with dolphins in the early mornings as they came in close to shore following schools of fish.) Finding out in high school chemistry that I was too color blind to tell pink from blue on litmus paper (a major disqualifier when computer science was less advanced than now) forced me to pursue other interests, but I never lost my love for science and have tried to remain an "informed layperson." When my budding religious/spiritual quest took over, I observed that whereas medical doctors and biologists were often religious skeptics, physicists (even those formally claiming to be atheists) often had a mystical side. There is something humbling about working with the building blocks of the universe, something that both refuses to allow you to remain anthropocentric in outlook and, yet, often as not, redirects you toward compassionate care for the human family.

In seminary, years later, I couldn't help but notice that several of the most brilliant theologians of age had backgrounds in physics, including Thomas Torrance, Daniel Day Williams, Eric Rust, and others including Nancey Murphy of the Church of the Brethren who is developing an approach toward science and theology that is both informed by, and enlarges, the Anabaptist tradition. My own teacher, Glen H. Stassen, had been a nuclear physicist before the threat of THE BOMB to the world led him to a change of vocation -- enough people were working on the mysteries of the atom, but more needed to be working on preventing its dangers. Which leads us to the stories of Joseph Rotblat and Linus Pauling, two physicists who remained in their field, but dedicated their lives to the pursuit of peace and disarmament.

Linus Pauling, who had degrees in both chemistry and physics, worked in a minor way on the Manhattan Project. He was horrified to see the results of that work on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. He became one of the first notable scientists to warn about nuclear weapons and urge disarmament. When he won the Nobel Prize for Chemistry, he even used part of his acceptance speech to warn of the dangers of nuclear war. The U.S. government's reaction to Pauling was increasingly repressive. Pauling's struggle became a spiritual quest. Finding most Christian churches too close-minded in their approach to science and too quietist in the face of outstanding social problems, Pauling eventually found his way to membership in the Unitarian Church. He was, in the meantime, trying to use his chemical research to aid the "green revolution" and work toward ending hunger. But the danger of the Bomb wouldn't let him sleep nights. The events of world history combined with his spiritual quest to lead him to embrace a complete pacifism. He began to gather signatures of world-class physicists on a petition to the United Nations against nuclear weapons. This led him to found the Union of Concerned Scientists, dedicated to science in the public interest, especially the control and eventual elimination of nuclear weapons. The work of Pauling and the UCS bore fruit in the Limited Nuclear Test Ban Treaty which banned nuclear testing above ground. The UCS was also a major player in obtaining the much more recent Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, which would ban all nuclear testing -- without which the development of new generations of nuclear weapons would be impossible. (Note: The U.S. finally signed the CNTB Treaty in the final days of the Clinton administration, but it has not even been sent to the Senate for ratification. The Bush administration is hostile to the Treaty since it wants to develop new, smaller nukes for use in "conventional" wars against non-nuclear nations. It rightly understands that the CNTB halts the nuclear arms race, although it doesn't reverse it.) For his efforts in achieving the Limited Test Ban Treaty, Pauling was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, becoming the only person to ever win two undivided Nobel Prizes. (Mme. Marie Curie won a full Nobel in Medicine and a shared Nobel in Chemistry.)

But the United States government was not as appreciative. They called Pauling's Peace Prize, "a weird insult from Norway," and his pacifism caused him to be charged repeatedly with Communist sympathies -- charges he vehemently denied. Eventually, Pauling resigned from UCLA Berkeley's faculty because his peace activities were leading to pressure on the school from the government and his own students were finding it difficult to get positions.

Pauling's peace efforts were matched by the even more amazing story of Joseph Rotblat. Rotblat was born, raised, and educated in Poland. A Jew, he barely escaped Poland before the Nazis conquered it. He emigrated to England and became a British citizen. He earned additional degrees at Cambridge and the University of London. Believing that the world was safer if the Allies had the Bomb than if Hitler did, Rotblat went to Los Alamos, California, and worked on the (misnamed) Manhattan Project to build a nuclear weapon. However, then Rotblat did a thing almost unheard of for a scientist -- he walked away from a project. When it became obvious that Hitler's scientists had abandoned their efforts at developing a nuclear weapon as futile (and Hitler needed to shift resources to defend against the advancing Allied armies), Rotblat realized that the Bomb wouldn't be needed as a deterrent and so refused to continue to work on that most horrible of weapons.

As the Cold War began, Rotblat saw the results of his earlier deterrence position and renounced "peace through strength" for active peacemaking among nations and peoples. In 1955, he was one of the scientists who signed the Einstein-Russell Declaration calling for scientists to lead the way in arms control and nuclear disarmament. Rotblat chaired the news conference at the release of the Einstein-Russell Declaration. Out of this initiative came the "Pugwash Conferences" (so called because the first was held at Pugwash, Nova Scotia, in Canada) where top scientists worked with policy makers to address global social needs. Ending and reversing the nuclear arms race was the highest priority on the Pugwash agenda. For most of its history, Rotblat was the president of the Pugwash Conferences. Their efforts led to many changes in global policies in the areas of disease eradication, food production, control and elimination of conventional weapons, and nuclear weapons. The Pugwash Conferences set the agenda of the SALT I and SALT II arms control talks between the U.S. and the Soviet Union and they were instrumental in securing the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty in which non-nuclear nations promised not to attempt to develop or import nuclear weapons (and nuclear states promised not to sell the technology or weapons to non-nuclear states) and nuclear states promised to stop trying to increase their nuclear arsenal. (The failure of nuclear states to abide by the Treaty's ban on "vertical proliferation" has directly undermined the Treaty's ability to stop "horizontal proliferation" to non-nuclear states.)

For these efforts the 1995 Nobel Peace Prize was awarded jointly to Joseph Rotblat and the Pugwash Conferences. In his acceptance speech, Rotblat called for active peacemaking from governments, scientists, and ordinary individuals. Addressing his fellow scientists, he told them to "remember your humanity," and reject the false notion of science as "value neutral." Instead he recommended something along the lines of a Hippocratic Oath for scientists, so that they take responsibility in their research for the consequences to humanity and the world. Not everything technically feasible, Rotblat said, needs to be developed or invented -- a statement backed up by his own resignation from the Manhattan Project. He said that nuclear physicists could halt the arms race by refusing to work on any projects to develop new advances in nuclear weapons, technicians refused to service existing weapons, scientists refused to conduct nuclear tests. Rotblat recognized that governments may react negatively to this refusal by scientists -- but loyalty to humanity should take precedence. (In this regard, Rotblat praised Mordecai Vanunu, the Israeli nuclear physicist who blew the whistle on Israel's violation of the Nonproliferation Treaty to develop a nuclear arsenal. He called for Vanunu's immediate release from prison, saying, "He has suffered long enough for obedience to his conscience.") He called on similar risky responsible actions for peace from ordinary citizens. And he charged political leaders with working to abolish not only nuclear weapons, but war itself.

"Remembering our humanity" is a good moral motto for Christians, too, since we hold that God has created us in the Divine Image and given us stewardship over the created order. In this apocalyptic time, when a professing Christian president of the U.S. pushes the world toward war (aided by a professing Muslim president of Iraq and others), I have been encouraged that thousands of ordinary people are remembering their humanity and saying "No! Not in Our Names! Not with our cooperation!" I saw seeds of hope in such faithfulness last weekend in Knoxville, Tennessee, at the conference co-sponsored by Every Church a Peace Church and the East Tennessee Peacebuilders Institute. Whether or not we are able to stop this particular war from beginning, such signs of faithful personal moral responsibility give hope for the future. There is no time to relax and take our work for granted, but we work without the fever pitch of despair.

The Powers of War seek to dominate all areas of life, leading to what Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) calls "the militarization of thought itself." The 20th Century often saw the militarization of the sciences. But Linus Pauling, Joseph Rotblat and their colleagues hold forth for us a different vision -- of a scientific culture that takes personal moral responsibility for research and invention, rejects "value neutral" research, and does its work while "remembering its humanity." I dare to hope that all legitimate fields of endeavor will produce similar leaders who transform them in similar ways. When that happens, justice and peace will embrace far more often than today.

Dear ECAPC Folk:

In my column Sunday on Linus Pauling and Joseph Rotblat as examples of socially responsible scientists whose efforts to ban the BOMB led them to become pacifists, I mentioned both the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) and the Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs. I forgot to give URLs to their websites and will correct that now.

The Union of Concerned Scientists website is: www.ucsusa.org/index.cfm. Note that one can join as a trained and practicing scientist or as a supporting citizen for $35. If one joins now, one receives free the UCS practical consumers' guide to effective environmental choices. You can also read the UCS' statement on Iraq (agreeing that it needs to disarm from all nuclear weapons, but warning against unilateral, preemptive invasions and urging the inspections regime to continue) and its statements on Bush's nuclear policy (illogical and reckless).

The Pugwash Conference website is www.pugwash.org/index.htm. At that website you can read Joseph Rotblat's Nobel Prize acceptance speech and the Nobel lecture given by the scientist who accepted the prize for the Pugwash Conference. You can also read the original Einstein-Russell Declaration and look at Pugwash position papers on nuclear weapons, chemical & biological weapons, regional conflict and global security, energy, environment, & science and other matters close to home. If you click on the "about" button and then "organizational structure," you will come to a link to the international student Pugwash groups. You can read the ethical code of conduct that the U.S. student Pugwash group is developing for research scientists and technicians.

Both the UCS and Pugwash Conferences are composed of more than just pacifists. The scientists are united in working for the complete abolition of nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons, but they take a variety of views on defense, war itself, and conventional weapons. For peace activists, the data such scientists make available can be a valuable tool in persuading either political leaders or the public of the dangers of certain weapons, invasions, etc. Many of us want to make our arguments on moral or theological grounds, but pragmatic arguments are also helpful -- especially with people who do not share our core convictions.

Other professions have also formed peacemaking organizations. Future "Random Chapters" columns may feature the work of Doctors Without Borders, the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (and its U.S. branch, Physicians for Social Responsibility), the Lawyers' Committee for Human Rights, Lawyers' Committee on Nuclear Policy, Educators for Social Responsibility, Philosophers for Peace, Veterans for Peace, the Institute for Policy Studies, several women's peace and justice organizations, and others. These groups are not as well known among many faith-based peacemakers (and vice versa) and there is a strong need to promote mutual knowledge and cooperation to common ends.

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