Religion: Christian Economics

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Is a Christian state necessarily a welfare state? At the Federal Council of Churches' second National Study Conference on the Church and Economic Life last week it looked as though that was what some U.S. Protestants were thinking. For three days 450 ministers and laymen from 37 states pulled & hauled over the knotty question: How should the church discharge its responsibility for the nation's economy? The conferees had some sharp-edged answers.

After a rousing speech by the United Automobile Workers' President Walter Reuther and a somewhat less rousing one from Secretary Noel Sargent of the National Association of Manufacturers, the delegates buckled down to business in four separate study groups. Three made voluminous reports, well seeded with declarations on behalf of moderation, cooperation, and a Middle Way. But the report of Group B — "Freedom of Enterprise and Social Controls" — packed more fissionable material.

Jointly led by U.A.W. Educational Director Victor Reuther and General Foods Corp. Public Relations Director W. Howard Chase, Group B's 210 ministers and laymen seemed anxious to get Caesar to do more of God's work:

On price controls : "We seek the use of a price system which has been strengthened in its operation and corrected in its abuses through various social controls. Some of the most crucial controls are in the area of stabilizing incomes through regulation of the volume of money in the economy and regulation of government's taxes and expenditures . . . We cannot, for example, talk realistically in terms of restoring an unregulated, competitive price system in America."

On taxes: "We recognize that the extensive use of taxation to reduce inequalities that now exist is a desirable procedure from an economic and Christian perspective."

One pretty housewife at the conference objected to listing as a Christian responsibility the provision of medical care for everybody. Chairman Victor Reuther replied: "There are times when compromise has its value, but I doubt if this is one of them."