Past articles from: Space and Security News

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From Fighter Pilot to Peacenik Bishop
Strange Steps Along a Journey in Faith
by Most Rev. Dr. Robert M. Bowman, Lt. Col., USAF, ret.

People often ask me why I changed. They want to know what made me switch from being a career military officer to being a "peacenik." I usually answer that I haven’t changed all that much. I saw "peace" as the objective of my military service. You remember, "Peace Is Our Profession." Many of us actually believed that. Now I just pursue it in a different way.

Throughout my military career, I saw the prevention of nuclear war as the primary reason for the military’s existence. I never really saw how Vietnam fit into that. I even spoke out against the war before going to fight in it. But I was young and had perhaps too much faith in the people running things. And sure, I saw decisions being made (like the MX) which I felt were counterproductive to our goal of war prevention. But overall, I felt that our policies served that goal, and that they worked. Even when I made a personal decision not to cooperate in the release of nuclear weapons under any circumstances — even retaliation — I still allowed myself to be used as part of the bluff. After all, deterrence was working. (This decision was made in 1969 in Korea when I was responsible for the war plans of three squadrons of aircraft armed with nuclear weapons. I decided that retaliation would be pointless and immoral. But, of course, I never said anything to anybody.) This incident was the only time that my Christian faith impacted on my military service. After all, the Roman Catholic Church (to which I then belonged) and all the others with which I was familiar kept chanting "Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition." So my "nuclear pacifism" was a personal decision arrived at not because of my church’s position, but in spite of it.

When I retired from the Air Force in 1978, I felt good about my career, and still supported our policy of war prevention. The big change came about when Reagan was elected president. He (or more properly the right-wing civilian ideologues who shaped his policies) changed everything. They changed the "Star Wars" programs which I had directed into a crash program to deploy offensive weapons (disguised as defense) in order to regain absolute military superiority. More importantly, they changed the overall defense policy of our nation from one of war prevention to one of war fighting. The Pentagon’s marching orders were to prepare to "fight and win a protracted nuclear war." This I could not support. I started speaking out, warning the people about the suicidal direction the new administration was taking us. Very quickly I found that I had less freedom of speech in industry than I had had in the military. I left General Dynamics rather than be quiet. The next place wasn’t any better, and in the middle of 1982 I was forced to resign from industry altogether.

That fall, my wife and I were on a charter flight for Vienna, where I was to chair an NGO conference on space weapons at UNISPACE 82. I was still unemployed, and struggling with whether this new "peacenik" role was compatible with my Christianity. (Now, of course, I can’t imagine how anyone can be a Christian without being a peacenik.) I picked a magazine out of the seat pocket and started reading. There were the words of Bishop Gumbleton and a couple of other courageous bishops — saying the very things I had been guiltily thinking. What a relief to find that I wasn’t the only Christian feeling that way!

In Vienna, we spent two weeks fighting the whole US delegation. Then the UN asked me to hold a press conference to announce the resolution against space weapons that I had written. All the captains of the aerospace industry were there (at taxpayers’ expense), and I was afraid that if I came that far out of the closet, I would never work again. After trying once more to reason with the US delegates in their plush hotel suites, Maggie and I were walking hand-in-hand back to our seven dollar a night youth hostel. I explained my dilemma. How were we going to survive financially? After all, we had a seven bedroom house in Potomac (the Beverly Hills of Washington, DC) with a 17 1/2% mortgage, and five of our seven children were in college. At that moment, Maggie said just the words I needed to hear, "If this is God’s work, He’ll make it possible. Do whatever you have to do." It was as if a huge weight had been lifted off my shoulders. I held the press conference. (And sure enough, I haven’t worked since.)

Over the 14 years since then, my Christian faith has become more and more intertwined with my work for peace. I preached my first peace sermon in October 1982. Gradually, they got more frequent. Maggie and I studied for ordination in the Episcopal Church, but didn’t follow through. Eventually, we were ordained in the American Catholic Church and in April 1996 I was consecrated an independent Catholic Bishop. I am now Presiding Bishop of the United Catholic Church, an ecumenical church with the liturgy of the Roman Catholics and the social conscience of the Quakers. We are a peace church. The nonviolence I preach is incompatible with the "just war" doctrine. So it turns out I have changed, after all. But it hasn’t been a sudden conversion. It has been the result of a difficult process of trying to understand the words and example of Jesus and discerning and accepting the will of God. I still think of myself as a military man seeking the security of my country. But the means now exclude killing another country’s soldiers. And I have the feeling my journey isn’t over yet.

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