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    Faith Confronts Nuclear Power: A Theological Critique
    Faith Confronts Nuclear Power: A Theological Critique
    Faith Confronts Nuclear Power: A Theological Critique
    Ebook135 pages1 hour

    Faith Confronts Nuclear Power: A Theological Critique

    By John R. Gugel and Edward H. Schroeder

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    About this ebook

    Faith Confronts Nuclear Power is a theological critique that attempts to call people to action in the battle against nuclear power. Nuclear power is a sophisticated, terribly expensive, and frightfully dangerous way to boil water. What is it doing to the earth our God created? How do we care for the earth if we allow it to continue? Looking at nuclear power through the eyes of faith, a Lutheran pastor, John Gugel, is alarmed at the apparent lack of concern on this issue and seeks to call people to action.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherResource Publications
    Release dateOct 22, 2015
    ISBN9781498218719
    Faith Confronts Nuclear Power: A Theological Critique
    Author

    John R. Gugel

    John Gugel graduated from Concordia Junior College in Ft. Wayne, IN; Concordia Senior College in Ann Arbor, MI; and Concordia Seminary in St. Louis, MO. He served churches in St. Louis, MO; Des Moines, IA; Marion, IA; and Muskego, WI, having to retire early because of Parkinson's Disease. He then began his writing career, writing for church publications.

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      Book preview

      Faith Confronts Nuclear Power - John R. Gugel

      Faith Confronts Nuclear Power

      A Theological Critique

      John R. Gugel

      Foreword by Edward H. Schroeder

      resource.jpg

      Faith Confronts Nuclear Power

      A Theological Critique

      Copyright © 2015 John R. Gugel. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical publications or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Write: Permissions, Wipf and Stock Publishers, 199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3, Eugene, OR 97401.

      Resource Publication

      An Imprint of Wipf and Stock Publishers

      199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3

      Eugene, OR 97401

      www.wipfandstock.com

      ISBN 13: 978-1-4982-1870-2

      EISBN 13: 978-1-4982-1871-9

      Manufactured in the U.S.A.

      Scripture quotations are taken from the New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright © 1989 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission.

      Table of Contents

      Title Page

      Dedication

      Foreword

      Acknowledgments

      Nuclear Power’s Dirty Secret

      Introduction

      1. Welcome to Fortunate Island

      2. God Is Creator of All That Exists

      3. Dark Days for the People of God

      4. Jesus Came Proclaiming the Kingdom of God

      5. Justice According to God

      6. Health Risks

      7. Dollars and Nonsense

      8. What Are We Doing with All This Waste?

      9. Scrawny-looking Dogs

      10. Fossil Fuel Follies

      11. Alternatives to Nuclear Power

      12. Call to Action

      Conclusion

      Bibliography

      Dedication

      I met Kay Drey while I was studying for the ministry at a Seminary in St. Louis. It was a most improbable relationship that has grown into a friendship spanning half a century. At the time, Kay was committed to achieving racial diversity within her community, University City, Missouri.

      Together we founded the organization known as New Neighbors, later changed to County Open Housing. Her interests have expanded to include a fierce desire to bring an end to nuclear power. She led the fight for the defeat of the Callaway Nuclear Power Plant and succeeded in stopping the construction of a second nuclear reactor on the site. Her wish to bring an end to this dangerous and outmoded source of energy knows no limit. She brings to the task passion and humor. I could not have written this without her support.

      Table and Illustrations

      Table 1. Vocabulary for the Nuclear Age | 3

      Figure 1. Routine Radioactive Releases from US Nuclear Power Plants | 46

      Figure 2. US Government Spending on Energy Research and Development | 56

      Foreword

      In the very opening chapters of the Bible—strictly speaking, the Hebrew Scriptures—the tempter teases our primal parents with this pitch: Look, you can be like God. And that’s a good idea. So try this. And so they do, even though the creator had said this was a no-no and the consequences would be lethal. Their offspring have followed their example ever since.

      In ancient Greece, there was a parallel story. Prometheus (literally fore-thinker, possibly even rendered someone who thinks for himself) challenges Zeus’s omnipotence, invades Olympus to steal the divine fire, and winds up suffering forever.

      Other cultures share similar ancient legends. And lethal it always is. Every such attempt brings catastrophe for the human agents who attempt to go over the line into the divine. A few chapters later in the Bible comes a repeat performance of what happened in Eden. It is the Tower of Babel—human creatures seeking to literally move into the creator’s turf to occupy the creator’s chair and thereby, of course, move the creator out.

      The scholarly term for such narratives is mythos—mythos in the classical Greek meaning of that term: not a fictitious story, but a true story, a parable that exposes a deep truth of human life through a storyline that permeates the whole human race. In this case, the human yen—insane though it always is—is to not be content with being merely creatures of the creator, but to usurp the creator’s turf and take it over on their own. (Better said, on our own. For I am implicated in this as well.)

      John Gugel reports here on one such Promethean attempt in our own time. Namely, using atomic energy to fabricate here on earth the fire that burns in the sun—not mythological Prometheus, but us. Or, in Biblical imagery, to replicate for the umpteenth time the Tower of Babel story as our story. And, of course, as said the Ur-tempter, it is not really wickedness to be such forethinkers. Au contraire, for good will come from that trans-gression. That’s been the tempter’s promise from the get-go.

      But to be like God is trans-gression—literally, going over the boundary. This transgression is ultimately lethal for a boundary-jumper whose existential structure is to be a creature of God, an image of the deity but not a deity per se. Humans are not wired to be deities. You might say: We imitate the image of God through the technology of divine electrical circuitry. But only at twelve volts. We’re not wired for the deity’s 240—or possibly 24000 volts. Every attempt to plug into the deity’s circuitry has but one consequence: Burn, baby, burn.

      Babel is the name used in the Hebrew Bible for the city of Babylon. Babel is also the Bible’s diagnostic term for human would-be invaders of God’s turf. Regardless of their country of origin, they are Babylonians. In John Gugel’s lifetime (mine too) the Babylonian heart is still among us—actually still in all of us—and still at work in tower-construction. John’s book is about possibly the tallest such tower: atomic energy, which attempts to replicate the sun’s action down here on earth.

      I remember attending a conference years ago sponsored by ITEST, the Institute for Theological Encounter with Science and Technology, just as atomic energy was coming over the horizon. Both atomic physicists and theologians were in attendance. I’ve never forgotten the words of one of the scientists: I’m all in favor of atomic energy, just so long as the plant is ninety-three million miles away from where I live. Planet earth can’t handle what goes on in the sun.

      Was that a scientist’s way of telling the Tower of Babel story today? I thought so.

      Are there more towers now under construction? Genetically modified organisms? Stem-cell stuff? Genome repair? Fracking?

      All of the above projects come with proposed benefits for human life on earth. But is Promethean trans-gression occurring in, with, and under these projects as well? Are our Babylonian hearts building another tower?

      At the very least, that question needs to be asked. Granted, it may not be easy to get a clear answer. But it needs to be pursued. Not for God’s sake! Nor for the sake of theologians like John Gugel, but for our sake. For the sake of human life on this planet, human survival—the ostensible good for human welfare that each projects’ proponents proclaim. For if it is a trans-gression, or crossing the line into the divine, then we must consider that the track record from time immemorial is self-destruction. Not because God is mean and punishes intruders, but because no human being is wired to run on God’s voltage. To attempt such a trans-gression is not merely stupid, but ultimately suicidal.

      Granted, it often takes a long time before the results are in. A thousand years are like a day and vice versa—not only in the creator’s time-keeping, but in that of creation too. For the same drip-drip-drip that creates the Colorado River has, after a zillion years, created the Grand Canyon.

      John Gugel is not merely asking the question Is atomic energy on earth trans-gression? He says it is. He puts before our eyes vivid, even grisly, evidence of the self-destruction already underway. He may be a voice crying in the wilderness (John 1:23), and there may indeed be pushback, but that’s not a bad label for John Gugel to have. In Christian history, the first person so designated was

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