Religion: Christians & World Order

To survey the world crisis and chart a realistic Christian course of action, 400 delegates representing more than 35 million U.S. Protestants met in Cleveland this week, under the auspices of the Federal Council of Churches. This conference on "The Churches and World Order" was the third such church discussion of inter national affairs to be sponsored by the Federal Council. The first, in 1942 at Delaware, Ohio, produced the famed "Six Pillars of Peace," which stressed the need for a postwar world organization. The second, at Cleveland in 1945, prophesied against the moral nihilism of the Dumbarton Oaks Charter and effectively demanded that the United Nations Charter should pay its respects to the Christian concepts of justice, law and human rights. * This week's meeting was opened with a speech by John Foster Dulles, delegate to U.N., who, for eight years as Chairman of the Commission on A Just and Durable Peace, has led a devoted band of Christian thinkers in serious efforts to apply Christian principles to the tough and thorny problems of the world as it is. This time he was able to show that Protestant influence had been effective in leading the U.S. away from isolationism toward a sense of realistic responsibility for the peace and liberty of men & women in other countries. Illusion V. Faith. According to Dulles, it is quite wrong to say that a third world war is inevitable. "Today there are assets for peace which were wholly lacking before World War II." Specifically, he said, "we are largely cured of the illusion that words are a substitute for deeds, and we know that a just and durable peace cannot be achieved merely by ... heads of states meeting to proclaim it."

"Our churches," declared Dulles, "have played a notable part in changing the attitudes of our people . . ." It was Christian leadership, he said, that committed the U.S. to helping weaker nations (e.g., the Marshall Plan), while it permitted a big stick to enforce a just and Christian peace in the world. "And if, over the past three years, our nation has dealt with the Soviet Union on a basis that has been firm but that, for the most part, avoided provocation, it is largely because our Christian people have, on the one hand, seen the danger lying behind beguiling Communist propaganda, but have also seen that there was no inevitability of war."

The Churches' Role. In waging the cold war, Dulles warned, the Russians are doing their best to trick the U.S. into rushing to the defense of unjustifiable attitudes. "Soviet leadership is astute in aiming its assaults against positions in the non-Communist world that are indefensible, morally or practically . . . We need not laud or sanctify whatever or whomever Communism attacks, and our material support should principally serve to sustain, fortify and enlarge human freedom and healthy economic and social conditions."