On October 29, American Friends Service Committee, Bahai International Community, Gandhi Development Trust, Soka Gakkai International, Voices for a World Free of Nuclear Weapons, World Methodist Council, United Church of Christ, and ICAN hosted the second webinar in the interfaith series Choose Life: Faith Communities and the Movement for a World Without Nuclear Weapons. After a first session on why abolition matters to different faith traditions, this one focused on solutions: how people are working to reduce the nuclear threat, and what faith communities can do.
The webinar featured a rich discussion between Rivera Sun (Pace e Bene), Saffet Catovic (Justice for All), Andrea Yuji Balestra, (Senzatomica), and Allen Hester (Friends Committee on National Legislation) moderated by Hayley Ramsay-Jones (SGI). The discussion focused on ways to engage others and address the ongoing risk of nuclear weapons.
Make it a movement led with affected communities. Saffet Catovic said the harm of nuclear weapons has always followed lines of power, falling on hibakusha, Indigenous peoples, Pacific Islanders and downwind communities. He urged faith leaders to listen, to amplify frontline voices, and to step aside so affected communities can speak for themselves. He also called for treating nuclear weapons as a human rights issue, and for linking the nuclear movement to opposition to conventional war and the wider military-industrial complex.
Be strategic, and pace yourselves. Author and nonviolence trainer Rivera Sun argued that change comes from finding the system’s pressure points, such as the few facilities that can produce plutonium pits. She recommended time-limited campaigns of six to nine months instead of open-ended ones, and said the movement should use quiet periods to build rapid-response networks. Her advice on sustaining the work was “a marathon, not a sprint,” with faith and spirituality as a deep source of support. She also cautioned against alarming people without giving them something concrete to do.
Hope often follows action. Andrea Yuji Balestra said fear paralyzes young people, while learning and a real role in the work builds responsibility. His program’s impact evaluations found that learning more about nuclear weapons was linked to greater awareness and a stronger sense of shared responsibility, and not to more anxiety. His advice to faith communities: trust young people and give them space to lead.
Faith voices change the conversation in Washington. Allen Hester described a policy world dominated by deterrence and competition language, with little nuclear expertise in the U.S. Congress. Even so, he sees openings, including bipartisan concern about artificial intelligence in nuclear command systems. Faith groups, he said, bring a human rights and moral perspective that pushes lawmakers to think differently about what they are funding.
Concrete steps the speakers suggested:
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Have your local congregation endorse the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, and make that endorsement public.
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Work through local interfaith councils to pass town or city resolutions.
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Create spaces where young people can discuss nuclear weapons and peace in their own words, and help turn their ideas into action.
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Show up to other movements with a nuclear-abolition message, being intersectional rather than transactional.
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Make actions unmissable and give decision-makers a specific ask.
The session closed with Rivera Sun’s short fictional vision of August 6, 2126, the day the last nuclear weapon is dismantled, with the descendants of hibakusha, downwinders and Marshall Islanders swinging the hammers.