The Rt. Rev. William E. Swing

President and Founder of URI (United Religions Initiative) The Rt. Rev. William E. Swing speaks at the Burlingame Country Club about the importance of cultivating our inner resources in the time of coronavirus.

Good friend, as you enter upon the great and final pilgrimage of your life, may you now rest in the mercies of God and be filled with the power of Jesus’ resurrection.

The coronavirus is having its way. This malicious nightmare, this dry tsunami, this silent bomb targeting innocent lungs. Sooner or later, it drives us all to deadly seriousness.

This time around with the new pandemic, as an 83-year-old, I putter around wiping doorknobs and watching, hypnotized, the numbers of cases and deaths climb relentlessly.

I asked friends of mine who are experts in this field – former Secretary of State George Shultz, Physicist Sidney Drell, former Secretary of Defense, William Perry and eight others – to join with me once a month to try to discover new ways of advancing nuclear abolition.

This speech was given by The Rt. Rev. William E. Swing, President and Founding Trustee of URI, and Former Episcopal Bishop of California, at the occasion of the planting of trees at the San Francisco Japanese Tea Garden - saplings from trees that survived the atomic blast in Hiroshima.

"Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door." 

The nuclear nations have decided to “modernize” their weapons. With this almost fashionable announcement, the end of the world is all but guaranteed.

I, personally, feel that haunting necessity to compromise and accommodate between the Church and the State, between peace and war.

Dynamic voices from across the political, professional, and spiritual spectrums who have united to eliminate nuclear weapons once and for all.