The Day the Bomb Fell

The morality of nuclear weapons and deterrence, and the possibility of “just war”, is still hotly debated amongst Christians. Fr Siemes’s account of the Hiroshima bombing and its aftermath is remarkable for its level-headed, factual tone; he does not engage in the easy judgements so common in discussing nuclear weapons. All war is horrible, and so-called “conventional” explosives are quite as capable of killing civilians as their nuclear analogues. Bruce Kent’s text on the peace movement was first published in 1970, at the height of the Cold War. Today our real concerns about security are less likely to involve the arms race and opposed great power blocs than the actions of international terrorists and rogue states. Many sincere Christians still advocate disarmament and the exclusively peaceful resolution of conflict. That other equally sincere Christians reckon them naïve or mistaken does not diminish the value of their witness; nor, however, does the sincerity of that witness tell us, in itself, anything about the value of their arguments.