Bishop slams Government's Trident renewal plans

5:21pm Monday 26th February 2007

THE Bishop of Bath and Wells, the Rt Rev Peter Price, has condemned Government plans to renew the Trident nuclear weapon system.

He told the General Synod meeting in London on Monday that it "is morally unjustified and the very antithesis of the Gospel".

And he added that the weapon is anti-God and profoundly anti-human.

"To renew Trident is to break faith," he said.

"Britain has signed up to The Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty, which specifically includes Trident.

"To renew it, or to seek to adapt it so that it becomes more usable in an age of increasing global instability, is to renege on international agreements, which are the very bedrock of democratic government, which, once violated, leave such governments with no moral authority, and the law of the jungle predominates.

"The most profound motivation for peace does not come from our need for survival or fear of nuclear annihilation, but in the discovery of our solidarity with the human family for which Christ died."