Religion: American Malvern

  • Share
  • Read Later

These are the high spots of organized U.S. Protestantism's super-protestant new program for a just and durable peace after World War II:

>Ultimately, "a world government of delegated powers."

>Complete abandonment of U.S. isolationism.

>Strong immediate limitations on national sovereignty.

>International control of all armies & navies.

> "A universal system of money ... so planned as to prevent inflation and deflation."

> Worldwide freedom of immigration.

> Progressive elimination of all tariff and quota restrictions on world trade.

> "Autonomy for all subject and colo nial peoples" (with much better treatment for Negroes in the U.S.).

> "No punitive reparations, no humiliating decrees of war guilt, no arbitrary dismemberment of nations."

> A "democratically controlled" international bank "to make development capital available in all parts of the world without the predatory and imperialistic aftermath so characteristic of large-scale private and governmental loans."

This program was adopted last week by 375 appointed representatives of 30-odd denominations called together at Ohio Wesleyan University by the Federal Council of Churches. Every local Protestant church in the country will now be urged to get behind the program. "As Christian citizens," its sponsors affirmed, "we must seek to translate our beliefs into practical realities and to create a public opinion which will insure that the United States shall play its full and essential part in the creation of a moral way of international living."

Among the 375 delegates who drafted the program were 15 bishops of five denominations, seven seminary heads (including Yale, Chicago, Princeton, Colgate-Rochester), eight college and university presidents (including Princeton's Harold W. Dodds), practically all the ranking officials of the Federal Council and a group of well-known laymen, including John R. Mott, Irving Fisher and Harvey S. Firestone Jr. "Intellectually," said Methodist Bishop Ivan Lee Holt of Texas, "this is the most distinguished American church gathering I have seen in 30 years of conference-going."

The meeting showed its temper early by passing a set of 13 "requisite principles for peace" submitted by Chairman John Foster Dulles and his inter-church Commission to Study the Bases of a Just and Durable Peace. These principles, far from putting all the onus on Germany or Japan, bade the U.S. give thought to the short sighted selfishness of its own policies after World War I, declared that the U.S. would have to turn over a new leaf if the world is to enjoy lasting peace. Excerpts:

  1. Previous Page
  2. 1
  3. 2
  4. 3