Let's be good. Let's be irrelevant

The Church of England has given further evidence of intellectual decrepitude.

I don't believe that there is a case for the moral acceptability of nuclear weapons that I could with integrity accept.
Rowan Williams

However, if they can somehow rope into their ranks a few more people like Bishop Michael Nazir-Ali (Bishop of Rochester), a 'refugee' from Pakistan, there is hope that the colonies will re-invigorate the mother country.

Nuclear weapons are here and they are not about to be disinvented. As they have done in the past, the Churches have a duty to set out the moral criteria for having, developing or replacing a nuclear capability. It is not their task to tell government what to do or to make policy on its behalf. They need to acknowledge that the government has the responsibility of protecting its citizens, strong and weak alike. They need to ask whether the international situation is such that a nuclear deterrent is needed. In the context of the Cold War, the General Synod agreed that it was. Is the situation any less dangerous today? I don't think so.

Of course, the CofE is not alone. The Scots and the Labour Left offer them solidarity.

"It would be the ultimate in hypocrisy if the UK were to be arguing, for example, that Iran should not be developing a nuclear weapons capability, while at the same time we were extending in scope and in time our own," a Scottish church report said in May.

Former environment secretary Michael Meacher, who is seeking to replace Blair when he steps down from office later this year, has the intervention by the bishops.

"On non-proliferation grounds - it is impossible to say to countries like Iran you should not have nuclear weapons but we must have ours," Meacher said in House of Commons motion, signed by 122 MPs last year.

That might be the case if all countries were equal in responsibilities, achievement and contribution. They are not.

(Second article via Ninme)