The Peace Drive in the Churches

In the plenary session of the controversial NCC World Order Study Conference, delegates from major denominations projected a year-long peace offensive in the 144,000 churches to which Cleveland conferees addressed recommendations that the U.S. recognize and the U.N. admit Red China. The peace drive, it was said, would begin in June and would cost $35 million in manpower alone. A Rockefeller Foundation grant is to underwrite staff personnel coordinating the drive with American higher education.

Sweeping plans were announced by key denominational delegates. This summer, leadership training gets underway in conferences, camps, and assemblies under denominational and ecumenical sponsorship. In September and October, state councils of churches will sponsor leadership training institutes. In November and December, local councils of churches will promote leadership training institutes. From January to June, 1960, an education and action program is projected for every church across the nation. The sponsoring agency is NCC’s Department of International Affairs, which arranged the World Order Study Conference.

The peace drive, it was noted, would be thrust into the mainstream of the separate denominational programs, the Cleveland conference and other ecumenical sources supplying study materials. The Methodist Church, giving special attention to students and youth, a representative reported, will sponsor schools of missions nationwide, plus thousands of study units on the role of the U.N. in world affairs. In addition to cooperating with a steadily expanding program of U.N. seminars, Methodists will emphasize certain legislative objectives, including repeal of selective service and increase of foreign economic aid. United Church of Christ (formerly Evangelical and Reformed, and Congregational), steadily enlarging interest in international affairs through denominational journals and pulpits, and through Asian interpreters of world events making an American tour, will then hold regional five-day social action institutes to train seminar leaders in cooperation with local councils of churches. The Southern California-Nevada Council of Churches has arranged a pilot-project with two major universities. Indiana Council of Churches will promote an institute and discussion groups for high school and college students, foreign students, denominational leaders, World Federalists, and representatives of International Fellowship of Reconciliation, with advance assurances of special interest from press, radio and television media.

Announced objective of the peace program is action, and not mere discussion. In this respect, the city of Denver is to serve as an example. Not only will study materials be distributed from Social Science Foundation and adult education sources, and special emphasis be given the theme of the Christian faith and peace during the Religion in Life program at University of Denver, but the peace drive will be geared to community political action. Instead of one central meeting, the peace program will be promoted in church institutes in each of nine aldermanic divisions of the city. Special peace rallies will precede the election of a mayor, so that Christian social action is fully meshed with political decision.

It would be tragic indeed if the Christian concern for peace in our time were either to fade away or to miscarry. The problem of war remains one of the terrifying social issues of our era. In the face of it the Christian movement dare not remain silent, nor dare it say the wrong thing.

George V. Allen, director of U.S. Information Agency, recently told the North Carolina Council of Churches that he would like to see the churches “take over” America’s foreign relations by working for peace. The determination of some Protestant spokesmen to dictate American foreign policy seems to be shaping new opportunities of direct ecclesiastical intrusion into state affairs.

The tide of opposition to NCC World Order Study Conference commitments on crucial issues discloses a growing spirit of anxiety over ecumenical positions and pronouncements in international affairs. In a leading editorial titled “Who Says 38,000,000 Protestants Want to Recognize Red China?,” The Saturday Evening Post recently commented that “American Protestantism has been taken for a propaganda ride by a group of ‘progressive’ leaders whose titles suggested that they represented more Protestants than they did.” In the aftermath of the Cleveland commitments, American Protestants will critically review the presuppositions of the peace drive projected in the churches by NCC’s Department of International Affairs.

We must clear the air of propaganda sallies by left-wingers who boldly identify social progress (“Christian social action”) with their private aims, and disparage all opposition as uninformed, reactionary, fundamentalist, separatist. The facts are that World Order positions on foreign policy do not reflect the majority conviction of NCC’s own constituency; that critics of these positions are stationed in diverse theological traditions; that on these issues these critics are more informed and less reactionary than most of the Cleveland delegates.

The Christian Century bluntly dismisses criticism of World Order commitments this way:

Catholics are joining Protestant fundamentalists and ‘Formosa Firsters’ in condemning the Cleveland action. The differences which prevent a united front go to the roots of our beliefs about the nature of society and the nature of the church. Liberal Protestantism is firmly committed to the principle of reconciliation: in its own household, among the races, among the peoples of earth. It will continue in the prophetic tradition to offer its considered judgments on foreign policy matters (Feb. 18, 1959, issue, p. 189).

The first sentence is so transparent that further comment would waste precious space. The third sentence does not, we hope, carry any implication that evangelical Protestantism is disinterested in reconciliation—central as this doctrine is in biblical theology—although evangelicals are often wary, and with good reason, of liberal dilution of redemptive facets of this sacred term and of liberal injection of social and politico-economic overtones not infrequently borrowed from quite debatable social philosophies. The fourth sentence—if it implies that the Cleveland plea for recognition and admission of Red China authentically reflects “the prophetic tradition”—leaves us wondering just which biblical prophets justify the corporate Church’s promotion of this particular foreign policy as a divinely-imposed duty. The heart of the matter lies in the second sentence, reminding us that liberal Protestantism indeed has its own special view of “the nature of society and the nature of the church.”

In coping with problems of world order and peace, modern formulas of “reconciliation” show the outlines of speculative theories of man and society, and betray their neglect of the biblical view of the Church and its sacred task in the world. Recent issues of CHRISTIANITY TODAY have pinpointed the peril to the Church of neglecting its basic commission to call out a new race of twice-born men, of relying on world systems (softened by religious idealism) for reconciliation and redemption, of pragmatic pursuit of social change. Corporate Protestantism stumbles into these unhappy lines of thought and action through its indifference to the great principles and precepts of revealed religion. In this issue CHRISTIANITY TODAY makes available a series of significant articles relevant to current discussions of Christianity and war and peace. They are written by men who have earned a right to speak on their respective themes. Churches will do well not to ignore their plea for a profounder and more biblical approach to the problem of reconciliation.

The Christian religion, above all others, is on the side of peace. Its faith is fixed upon “the Prince of Peace” who in turn has pronounced a special benediction upon the peacemakers.

Repugnant to Christianity, however, and contradictory of it, is the “peace at any price” philosophy that infects a self-indulgent people too often, bent on immediate ends.

The blood of the Cross is a reminder that peace, in Christian dimensions, carries its distinctive price. War is no Christian weapon for world conversion, nor is foreign aid. The world’s predicament is moral and spiritual; this calls for moral and spiritual redemption.

The Christian revelation strikes deeper than modern notions of social order based on sentimental theories of brotherliness and love. It elevates the timeless demand for love of God and of his holy commandments. Almost all foibles of ecclesiastical “social actionists” today spring from their neglect of justice as the cardinal problem of society, and their substitution of some other center of primary social concern. Some crusaders elevate “elimination of poverty” into social objective Number One; others exalt “elimination of war.” This disregard of the fundamental importance of righteousness works great havoc in the sphere of social ethics. The restriction of war, the promotion of peace, is then unwittingly pursued to the advantage of unjust nations and to the disadvantage of decent nations. Unless justice is honored as the primary social concern, peace and plenty become canopies beneath which perverse powers promote their evil ends.

Dr. Russell Kirk, editor of Modern Age, recently stated that the United States is rapidly losing any class capable of just leadership qualified to make the great choices in national life. The reason is our misunderstanding of justice—due in large measure, Dr. Kirk thinks, to the impact of Dewey’s philosophy upon American intellectuals. Whether Dewey is the fountainhead or not, there can be little doubt of our modern loss of the vision of justice as the primary social problem of our era. That this vision should be lost by the churches, or at least by those who profess to speak for the churches to the nation and to the world, marks this as America’s saddest hour, and gives reason for great anxiety as Protestant ecumenical leaders move the corporate Church more and more into direct political commitment and action.

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Simple Paths Through A Complex Age

Confronting the technical terrors and challenges of the nuclear age, churchmen are sometimes tempted to contrive new systems and even novel doctrines to command the attention of the populace. And some of them have yielded. But there are also churchmen like the rector of Calvary Episcopal Church, Pittsburgh, the Rev. Samuel M. Shoemaker, in 1957 and 1958 speaker for the national “Episcopal Hour” and in 1955 named by Newsweek one of the ten greatest preachers in the United States.

Speaking recently in Washington, Dr. Shoemaker noted that man does indeed face the question of extinction or survival. In answer, he affirmed the primacy of the organic over the organizational and declared man’s real need to be a great awakening through the Holy Spirit. Calling for a new reformation, he named three rediscoveries the church needs to make: the Holy Spirit as the “life and soul of the Church,” the fellowship of the Spirit through oneness in Christ, the obligation of Spirit-impelled witnessing to Christ. “There is a simple law,” said the preacher: Aim first at spiritual conversion, gather into fellowship, and thrust forth witnesses. “I think the Holy Spirit will go on using these simple ways.”

And so do we. These ways led to the first century accusation that the apostles were turning the world “upside down.” The correct term was “right side up.” These simple ways alone are profound enough to right us and to save us.

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Those In Peril On The Sea

The inexorable movement of time continues to pull a reluctant world closer to the potential May 27 showdown decreed by the Kremlin. No amount of feet-dragging will avert its arrival, though Communist backtracking may. Some leaders wonder out loud whether this is to be the ultimate showdown. Although the Communist strategy of proceeding from crisis to crisis is well known, one may now muse whether June will hear the song of birds mockingly echoed back by the ruins of Western civilization, or whether there will be any birds.

Through a current film, the tragedy of the Titanic has gripped the public imagination once again. The 1912 disaster displays a microcosm of society, the rich and the poor, how they lived their last hours and how they died. The vulnerability of man’s “unsinkable”.… But the Titanic taught its lessons, and transport on the high seas subsequently became safer.

The question is now asked whether any will survive the world’s next lesson—one not of water but of fire. Or has mankind been too delinquent in its study of such lessons as Nagasaki, Buchenwald, Munich, Sarajevo, and Pompeii, Carthage, Marathon, Philistia, but most of all—Calvary.

In light of the possible approach of humanity’s “moment of truth,” what better time for a Presidential call for nationwide prayer?—perhaps on May Day, when the Kremlin will parade its missiles and might. Not that there should be a parade of piety, but rather a proclamation of this nation’s sources of strength. In the balances are the cannons of destruction and death, and the canons of faith and of life.

The early Celtic May Day symbolized the defeat of winter and the return of life. It was thus associated with human sacrifice, and only two hundred years ago the customs of leaping over fire and of driving cattle between two fires yet persisted.

If the symbolism appear depressing, and if a fiery cataclysm is near, the Christian may lift up his head in the assurance that his redemption draws nigh. But he dare not be flippant in the face of human events of truly titanic dimensions. The human sacrifice of body and breath may well be prevented by the hard human sacrifice of prayer and repentance. It would avail this country little to provide as its only counterpart to the Kremlin’s May Day militarism a day of preoccupied materialism. Official prayer day or no, let the populace pray!

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A Plea For Morality In American Fiscal Policy

Taxation and morality would seem to have a growingly tenuous relationship in American government.

In recent weeks we have seen pari mutuel betting, liquor addiction, bingo gambling and public lotteries proposed as sources of new tax revenue by states and municipalities.

Such proposals dignify these evils and tacitly approve them. Furthermore, they take unfair advantage of human weakness to fill the public treasury and balance the budget.

Take gambling as an example. To the rising generation a law authorizing a tax on games of chance says, in effect, that government approves the achievement of success without merit and the acquirement of wealth without labor. Gambling is thus recognized as legally respectable and justifiable. It is classified with vindicable luxuries and accustomed pleasures.

The state thus contributes to the moral delinquency of its citizens and puts the halo of good citizenship on the brow of its taxpaying sinners.

The church with a social conscience should speak out against this travesty on justice and morality and plead for a new respect for basic moral principles in the fiscal policies of government.

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