Letters
Love or violence
Sir: In your leading article 'A sterile argument' (30 October) you have put your finger both on the weakness of the Church working party report, The Church and the Bomb, and also on the issue which lies behind it.
You rightly argue that the main issue is not, as the report assumes, the particular kind of weapon evolved by modern war, or even whether this or that particular war is justified, but the permissibility so far as Christians are concerned of war itself. The power which underlies the Gospel is the power of sacrificial love, and this power provides the basis for' belief in Christ's kingdom and both defines and provides the sanction for its universal law.
The 1978 Lambeth Conference declared that the use of violence is ultimately con- tradictory to the Gospel, and the Pope has spoken of the irresistible force constituted by communities who stand together in their acceptance of Jesus's supreme message of love, expressed in peace and reconciliation and in their rejection of all violence.
Mankind desperately needs to be delivered not only from atomic weapons but also from violence itself in the ordering of its affairs. The Christian Gospel offers the possibility of this deliverance, and in its own underlying power it offers an alter- native to violence as the basis for political power.
Violence ultimately demands total com- mitment. So does the power of divine love. The choice between the two is now clearly before the world. It is the Church's task to present that choice clearly to the world and not to try to offer solutions within the world's own military-based power dimen- sion.
Revd. Gordon Wilson Anglican Pacifist Fellowship, St John's Vicarage,
14 Dane Bank Avenue, Crewe, Cheshire
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