Argument at Amsterdam

What was happening at Amsterdam last week? New York's Methodist Bishop G. Bromley Oxnam called it "continuous and creative cooperation of 145 churches at a world level." But what the world mostly heard were sounds of argument. At the first Assembly of the World Council of Churches, the chief debate seemed remarkably like the East-West bickering in U.N. The debaters: U.S. Layman John Foster Dulles and Czech Theologian Joseph L. Hromadka.

No Justice. Standing in an easy, stooped slouch and speaking quickly, Dulles told a crowd that had packed Amsterdam's Concertgebouw hall to its olive-green walls: "The Soviet Communist regime is not a regime of peace, and, indeed, it does not purport to be. It may not, and I hope that it does not, want international war. But, if so, that is a matter of expediency, not of principle ... It rejects the moral premises that alone make possible the permanent organization of peace . . . There is, says Stalin, no such thing as 'eternal justice' . . . Human beings have no rights that are God-given and therefore not subject to be taken away by men."

Hromadka, who taught at Princeton Theological Seminary from 1940 to 1947 and is now on the faculty of Prague's Charles University, replied in pungent, accented English: "Even the enormous wealth and the atomic power of the American nation must not deceive us ... The Western nations have ceased to be the exclusive masters and architects of the world . . . What I have in mind is Western man's apparent fear, frustration and helplessness in dealing with the great issues of our times. Anxiety about the advancing social transformations under the leadership of the Soviet Union is depriving the average Western citizen of a real grasp of the situation . . . [Communism represents] much of the social impetus of the living church from the Apostolic age down through the days of monastic orders to the Reformation and liberal humanism."

No Freedom? The two speakers got almost equal applause. In a press conference afterwards, Hromadka skillfully handled hostile questions. How had the Communist coup affected religion in Czechoslovakia? Said he: "Our churches are more relevant today than they have been in many decades." Was it possible to have a free church in a Communist state? "So far we have been left alone. I don't know what the Communists may do to the church tomorrow. But if they try to restrict my freedom I know what I will do. I will say no. I will go to prison." Later, Hromadka had an additional thought. The West was deluding itself, he said, "when it imagined it possessed freedom and others did not."

Despite this heavy flavor of Lake Success, Amsterdam was being watched with prayerful hope by Christians throughout the world. This hope was expressed in the Christian Century, in a quatrain by Edith Lovejoy Pierce, titled Amsterdam and Lake Success:

Two houses being built beside the strand.

Foundations--one in rock and one in sand.

Two mansions rising in the wide world's view.

And the floods came, and the winds blew . . .

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.