Seven Points for Peace

This week, for the first time, U.S. Protestant, Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox and Jewish leaders united on a peace program. Appended to their "Declaration on World Peace" were 144 signatures.* These signatures do not bind any church to the peace proposals, they do commend the peace declaration to some 56,000,000 members of the participating faiths.

The declaration resulted from six months' study by priests, ministers and rabbis of Papal peace pronouncements, declarations by Protestant churches, Jewish organizations and nondenominational groups such as the Commission to Study the Bases of a Just & Durable Peace. Protestants, Catholics and Jews cannot yet agree on all phases of a just peace, but they have agreed on seven points, which provide the moral bases of such a peace. The seven points which embody the signers' hopes for the postwar world:

> "The organization of a just peace depends upon . . . recognition . . . that not only individuals but nations, states and international society are subject to the will of God as embodied in the moral law."

> "The dignity of the human person as the image of God must be set forth in all its essential implications. . . . States, as well as individuals, must repudiate racial, religious or other discrimination. . . ."

> "The right of all peoples . . . must be safeguarded within the framework of collective security. The progress of undeveloped, colonial, or oppressed peoples toward political responsibility must be the object of international concern."

> "National governments and international organization must guarantee the rights of ethnic, religious and cultural minorities to economic livelihood . . . equal opportunity for educational and cultural development . . . political equality."

> "An enduring peace requires the organization of international institutions [to] develop . . . international law, guarantee . . . international obligations . . . assure collective security by drastic limitation and continuing control of armaments, compulsory arbitration . . . adequate sanctions to enforce the law."

> "International economic collaboration to . . . provide an adequate standard of living . . . [to] replace the present economic monopoly and exploitation of natural resources by privileged groups and states."

> ". . . Steps must be taken to provide for the security of the family. . . collaboration of all groups and classes in the interest of the common good, a standard of living adequate for self-development and family life, decent conditions of work, and participation by labor in decisions affecting its welfare."

* Among them: Bishop Henry St. George Tucker, Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church and President of the Federal Council of Churches; Dr. Henry Sloan Coffin, Moderator of the Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A.; Dr. Ferdinand Q. Blanchard, Moderator of the Congregational Christian Churches; Bishop G. Bromley Oxnam, Secretary of the Methodist Church's Council of Bishops; Roman Catholic Archbishops Edward Mooney of Detroit, Samuel A. Stritch of Chicago, Robet E. Lucey of San Antonio; Rabbi Israel Goldstein, President of the Synagogue Council of America.

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