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“God and the Atom”: British Churchmen and the Challenge of Nuclear Power 1945–1950

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 July 2014

Kirk Willis
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Extract

The nuclear age opened in prayer:

Almighty Father, who wilt hear the prayers of them who love Thee, we pray Thee to be with those who brave the heights of Thy heavens and who carry the battle to our enemies. Guard and protect them, we pray Thee, as they fly their appointed rounds. May they, as well as we, know Thy strength and power, and armed with Thy might may they bring this war to a rapid end. We pray Thee that the end of war may come soon, and that once more we may know peace on earth.

May the men who fly this night be kept safe in Thy care, and may they be returned safely to us. We shall go forward trusting in Thee, knowing we are in Thy care now and forever. Amen.

Thus did United States Army Chaplain William B. Downey bless the anxious crew of the Enola Gay in the quiet, early hours of 6 August 1945. After the aircraft's successful mission and return to the tiny island of Tinian, both President Harry Truman and former Prime Minister Winston Churchill ended their official announcements of the “mastery” of nuclear power and the destruction of Hiroshima with their own benedictions. To Truman, preoccupied with the imminent close of the war, the chief blessings to be offered were strategic: “We thank God that it has come to us, instead of to our enemies; and we pray that He may guide us to use it in His ways and for His purposes.” For Churchill, now uncomprehendingly in political opposition, the appropriate prayers were far more ambiguous:

This revelation of the secrets of nature, long mercifully withheld from men, should arouse the most solemn reflections in the mind and conscience of every human being capable of comprehension. We must indeed pray that these awful agencies will be made to conduce to peace among the nations, and that instead of wreaking measureless havoc upon the entire globe they may become a perennial fountain of world prosperity.

Type
Research Article
Information
Albion , Volume 29 , Issue 3 , Fall 1997 , pp. 422 - 457
Copyright
Copyright © North American Conference on British Studies 1997

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References

* An earlier version of this essay was presented to the annual meeting of the North American Conference on British Studies at Boulder, Colorado, in October 1992. I am grateful to J. R. Berrigan, T. W. Heyck, and Richard Rempel for their careful readings of earlier drafts.

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43 A sample of such imaginings may be found in Patrick Simpson, Carnegie, “On the Atomic Bomb,” British Weekly, 23 August 1945, p. 275Google Scholar; “Commentary,” ibid., 11 October 1945, p. 13; “Commentary,” ibid., 25 October 1945, p. 45; “Commentary,” ibid., 1 November 1945, p. 61; “Commentary,” ibid., 8 November 1945, p. 73; “An Evil Instrument,” Catholic Herald, 24 August 1945, pp. 2, 4Google Scholar; “World Chaos,” ibid., 28 September 1945, p. 4; “Peace is a Question of Moral Values,” ibid., 2 November 1945, p. 4; “The Charter,” Christian Nevis-Letter, 5 September 1945, pp. 1–3Google Scholar; “The Atomic Bomb,” Christian News-Letter, 3 October 1945, pp. 1–3Google Scholar; Headlam, A. C., “The Future: War or Peace?” Church Quarterly Review 141 (October-December 1945): 86–97Google Scholar; “War and Peace,” Church Times, 17 August 1945, p. 466Google Scholar; Jacks, L. P., “Atomic Energy,” Hibben Journal, 44 (October 1945):. 1–2Google Scholar; “The State of Europe,” Methodist Recorder, 1 November 1945, p. 8Google Scholar; “Atomic Diplomacy,” ibid., 8 November 1945, p. 8; “Co-operation for Peace,” ibid., 6 December 1945, p. 8; “The Control of Atomic Power,” Tablet, 18 August 1945, p. 75Google Scholar.

44 Quoted in News Chronicle, 10 August 1945, p. 2Google Scholar.

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60 One such petitioner was the young John Collins, then an RAF chaplain. At Lambeth Palace a chaplain told him that “His Grace had ‘gone into hiding’—a favourite posture of the Church in moments of moral crisis. The Archbishop, he said, had already been pestered by a great number of cranks, and was refusing to speak to anyone or answer any questions. When I made known my business the chaplain suggested that I put my suggestion in writing….The war ended on August 14, and soon afterwards 1 received a reply to my letter. The Archbishop expressed the view that, as the war was now over, there was no need for the Church to make any pronouncement about the atomic bomb.” Collins, L. John, Faith Under Fire (London, 1966), p. 99Google Scholar.

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73 Catholic Herald, 17 August 1945, 4Google Scholar. The correspondence columns of the Catholic Herald, Tablet, and Universe were at their liveliest in late August, September, and early October.

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85 Eliot was a signatory to a petition, presented to Archbishop Fisher in October 1945, that requested that guidance from the church be published and a commission be appointed to consider “The Moral and Spiritual Implications of Modern Methods of Warfare.” See Kirby, , “The Church and Nuclear Debate,” pp. 253–54Google Scholar. Anne S. of Luton suggested the same thing of Methodist leaders in a letter to the Methodist Recorder, 8 November 1945, p. 8Google ScholarPubMed.

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90 Ibid.

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110 The members of the commission were Dean of Winchester E. G. Selwyn, Dean of Chichester A. S. Duncan-Jones, Dean of Gloucester H. Costley-White, Provost of Southwell H. C. L. Heywood, Provost-Vicar of Lincoln G. B. Bentley, Archdeacon of Stoke-on-Trent Percy Hartill, Principal of Clifton R. J. Cobb, Principal of Bishops' College Canon Lindsay Dewar, L. B. Cross, E. L. Mascall, Canon of St Paul's J. K. Mozley, Christendom editor Maurice Reckitt, Professor H. A. Smith, Sir George Thomson, and Rear-Admiral H. G. Thursfield.

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117 Major, H. D. A., “The Atom Bomb and its Threefold Problem,” Modern Churchman, 30 (March 1950): 8Google Scholar. “Are we not making a great deal too much about the hydrogen bomb?” asked a columnist in The Methodist Recorder, and a month later, “My plea is to give the hydrogen bomb and all its potential horrors a rest” (Demos, , “Lay Opinions,” Methodist Recorder, 27 April 1950, p. 1Google Scholar).

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122 The literature on the evolution of just-war thinking is vast. A good introduction to the central issues may be found in Johnson, James Turner, Can Modern War Be Just? (New Haven, 1984)Google Scholar; Ruston, Roger, A Say in the End of the War: Morals and British Nuclear Weapons Policy 1941–1987 (Oxford, 1989)Google Scholar; Teichman, Jenny, Pacifism and the Just War (Oxford, 1986)Google Scholar.