DECLARATION OF CONSCIENCE :

PASSOVER/EASTER 1984

Pershing Plowshares

We act in faith in a time when the "doomsday clock" stands at 3 minutes to midnight.

in a time of fear, desperation, violence ;

a violence concretized in the Pershing nuclear sword that is

pointed at the heart of the Russian people,

intensifies the cycle of threat, deployment, counter-threat on both sides.

This nuclear threat holds all people hostage:

the people of Germany, the first to die in a "limited" nuclear war;

the people of the third world, oppressed under the East-West nuclear umbrella;

the poor everywhere, victims now of the $256 billion we spent this year on the arms race.

Of the $4.6 million spent on just one Pershing.

In a time of the militarization of thought, of oppressive silences and twisted words that call the Pershing--offensive in s~ee1 range accuracy -a "defensive" weapon, we decry these realities with the symbols of hammers and blood; we express our desire to repent of the deeper violence that "secures" power and property while it bankrupts the spirit of a nation rle1~ed to a welcome for the world’s oppressed and to life, liberty and happiness for all.

We act as a prayer that our hearing and vision be healed, that those we call "foreigner" and the invisible poor of our world may be seen, recognized, and named our sisters and brothers, that we be led out of the darkness of despair and apathy into the light of hope.

We act in hope that this Passover may be a new liberation from the "flesh-pots," the consumer life-style, that enslaves us; from the fear and false securities that paralyze us; in the conviction that, in the midst of mutilated and impotent words, we must risk our bodies to conquer despair. We hope that, in a vulnerability open to the power of God, we can be healed of our violence and empowered by love, break through the walls that divide "friend" from "enemy."

We act in love, in this Easter, this "dawn" of new life: responsible love: recognizing our relationship to these weapons which we must transform, to their creators--all of us in our shared violence and apathy, to their victims who cannot act; communal love: conspiring--breathing together-that we may be one: East and West, North and South in a more human and faithful world; obedient love, enfleshing the prophets' command:

"They shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks;

One nation shall not raise the sword against another, nor shall they train for war again."

In choosing to disarm our own hearts and to say NO to one weapon at its source.

we celebrate the renewal of life; we choose the way of love that we and our children may live.