This article is taken from the August-September 2024 issue of The Critic. To get the full magazine why not subscribe? Right now we’re offering five issues for just £10.

On the night before he died, Jesus told his disciples, “But now, he that hath a purse, let him take it … and he that hath no sword, let him sell his garment, and buy one.” This is not necessarily the clinching Scriptural argument for the arms trade, but it’s pretty much the only one we’ve got so I’m going to run with it.

The ethics of investing in the arms trade are interesting. The Church doesn’t do it. The Church Commissioners have a £10.2 billion portfolio of assets to generate income which they are supposed to spend on funding the cure of souls in poorer parishes (which they have mostly redirected to other things, but that’s a separate issue).

They are banned from investing in “any company deriving more than 10 per cent of its turnover from strategic military sales including conventional military platforms, whole military systems, weaponry or strategic military parts or services”.

Which is all very well, and it probably salves the conscience of the Ethical Investments Advisory Group (which recently contained Paula Vennells, but that too is a separate issue). However, there is a huge intellectual and moral problem here.

When we, as the Church, say that we could not morally invest in a company, we are also saying that we wish nobody would invest in that company. If nobody invested in that company, it would go bust.

So I want to ask: do we really want our arms companies to go bust? Do we want the West to be entirely reliant on Russian and Chinese companies for our defence?

Because I don’t think that we do. I think we are very glad that we live in a country with armed forces we can rely upon to defend us in the event of an attack on us or our allies.

I think we are very glad that we look at Russia, and the horrors of its internal and external policies; and China, currently committing a genocide of Uighur Muslims; and Iran, with its inhumane treatment of women, gays and religious minorities, and that we can give thanks for the fact that we live in a country defended by NATO’s nuclear umbrella and our own nuclear deterrent.

Ask the people of Ukraine how well they would have fared had there been no Western arms industry to supply them with the NLAWs; the Storm Shadow missiles; the Leopard, Challenger and Abrams tanks; and all the essential ammunition with which they have defended their homes and families from unspeakable aggression.

We sometimes have to fight, and if we fight, then it is better that we win

The Archbishop of Canterbury put this extremely well in a debate in the House of Lords in March of this year, and I am delighted to be able to quote my spiritual leader with unambiguous approval. “In conversations with senior politicians in Ukraine, as well as the most senior religious leaders in that very religious country, the question they put was not just what the West intends and what the UK intends … but what were the means to those ends. You do not win wars by good intentions.”

If we want armed forces that can defend us and keep the forces of our strategic enemies at bay, they need to have weapons. They need to be able to shoot further and faster and with better targeting than their enemies, and that means that they need companies developing these weapons in safe countries from whom to buy this ordinance. And the Church knows this.

Similarly on nuclear weapons. Here the Church Commissioners have no ambiguity. A company must have zero involvement in the nuclear weapons industry for the Commissioners to invest in them.

I declare an interest as the founder of Christians for a Continuous-At-Sea Nuclear Deterrent (current membership, one; probably because I need to think of a better name), but aside from a few kooky members of Christian CND, I am not sure most Anglicans want to cede sole possession of nuclear weapons to Russia, China, Pakistan, India and Iran. Ask Ukraine how well unilateral disarmament has gone for them.

The Church of England has never been pacifist. We know that in this fallen world we sometimes have to fight, and if we fight, it is better that we win. Which means that the Church no more wants these arms companies to stop working than you or I do.

But what it does want is to be able to wrap itself in virtue whilst praying that enough others ignore their advice and use their less-virtuous money to keep our Western defence companies going. There is a word for this. It is more usually used of the clergy who preach against extramarital sex and find themselves propping up the local brothel.

Since the end of the Cold War, this hypocrisy hasn’t really mattered. But now it does and the consequences could be fatal for the Free World. Justin Welby was right, “you do not win wars by good intentions”, but we could certainly lose wars by them.