Government and society must find “new resolve to protect the sanctity of life,” Rev. Dr Olav Fykse Tveit, general secretary of the World Council of Churches (WCC), said in a statement recognizing the 65^th anniversary of the atomic bombs being dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

“The Bible urges us to ‘choose life’ so that all may live” Tveit said in the statement.

Even 65 years after the first nuclear weapons were used, “nuclear bombs still threaten humanity and deny a lasting peace” he said. “There is also a legacy that since 1945 the world is divided into two camps, a handful of states that assert the right to have weapons of mass annihilation and the majority of states that do not.”

Tveit recognized that strides have been made to eliminate nuclear weapons. “People of faith are standing together for a world without nuclear weapons,” he said in the statement. He said the WCC and its member churches are promoting the ratification of a new arms control agreement between the United States and Russia and reform of NATO’s nuclear policy.

“The atomic bomb survivors of 1945 continue to live lives of courage and endurance, witnessing to the hope that no one will ever again suffer as they have suffered,” he said.