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Some religious doves have suggested that Washington should take the first step on its own. Though the Vatican does not support unilateral disarmament, the U.S. branch of the Catholic peace organization Pax Christi believes the U.S. should act alone, in the hope that the Soviets might later go along; in the past year, membership of U.S. bishops in Pax Christi has risen from 17 to 54. Unilateral U.S. initiatives have also been endorsed by the United Church of Christ and by a panel of the World Council of Churches.
Most antinuclear church activists still stop short of the unilateral strategy. Even on milder antinuclear positions, "the churches are quite a bit ahead of the people," concedes Presbyterian Pastor David Erickson, head of a New Jersey interfaith peace group. But more and more U.S. church authorities are committed to guiding their congregations toward a moral "nuclear pacifism" as a replacement for what they see as the immorality of nuclear fatalism.