The Network of Christian Peace Organisations, of which Pax Christi is a member, has just issued a Trident Briefing to encourage individuals, organisations and churches to engage in critical debate about the decision, to be taken later this year, on the replacement of Trident, the British nuclear weapons system.

The Briefing will be circulated through the thirteen member organisations of NCPO which includes Pax Christi, Quaker Peace & Social Witness, Christian CND, Fellowship of Reconciliation and the Student Christian Movement as well as within the wider Christian community.

NCPO hope that the Briefing will also encourage people to take part in national lobby of Parliament on Trident planned for 13 July.

It offers arguments and questions including those of costs, issues of legality and good faith, humanitarian concerns and concepts of security.
It states:, ” As Christians, we put our faith in God rather than in weapons… the longer we rely on these weapons, the greater the likelihood that they will be used by accident or design. It is gross misreading of history that the only reason countries have not attacked us in the last 70 years is because they were ‘deterred’ by the threat of massive nuclear retaliation”.

The briefing quotes Pope Francis and his message to the conference on the Humanitarian Impact of Nuclear Weapons in Vienna in 2014: “Nuclear deterrence and the threat of mutually assured destruction cannot be the basis for an ethics of fraternity and peaceful co-existence among people and states”.

https://paxchristi.org.uk/wp/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/Final-Trident-Briefing.pdf