Nuclear Weapons and In-Group Moral Reasoning: The Case of Orthodox Christianity

Are nuclear weapons moral? The contemporary ban movement asserts that they are not, and a common view prevails that even if possession for deterrence can be accepted, there is a taboo against the use of nuclear weapons. However, the literature of the last quarter century shows that in-group political identification supports the possession and even the first use of nuclear weapons. Meanwhile, the literature on how organized religious groups perceive nuclear ethics is underdeveloped. The Russian Orthodox Church argues that Russia’s nuclear arsenal is divine and legitimate. It posits a religiopolitical civilization as the in-group for whom nuclear armament is moral. Does this reflect the view of Orthodox Christians elsewhere? This article presents the findings of an original study of a diverse sample of Orthodox Christians in Sweden. It finds that Orthodox Christianity as an independent variable supports the view that nuclear weapons are not moral. However, it also finds that political identity acts as a moderating variable on Orthodox Christian perspectives. Orthodox Christians are not immune to the effects of political in-group identification. Still, Orthodox Christianity appears to be an untapped resource for furthering anti-nuclear-weapon norms.