On the Surface

More than half the population of the U.S., about 77 million out of an estimated 148 million, are enrolled church members. In the 1949 edition of the Yearbook of American Churches, published last week, the Federal Council of Churches calls this the biggest such proportion in U.S. history. But Council Secretary Dr. Samuel Cavert ruefully notes that only 30% of the total membership--i.e., 30% of the 46,000,000 enrolled Protestants, 25,000,000 Catholics, 5,000,000 Jews, 1,000,000 Eastern Orthodox--go to church with any regularity. "On the surface, at least," says he dryly, "the U.S. appears to be a religious country."

Stand Firm

Around a crude wooden table in an austere schoolroom sat nine men: an Englishman, a Dutchman, an Indian, a Norwegian, a Czech, two Germans, and two Americans. Their debate was on a major matter: What should the Protestant churches do about the Communist attack on religious freedom in Eastern Europe? (For the Vatican's stand on the same question, see INTERNATIONAL.)

The nine had been appointed from among the 63 delegates to the first meeting, in Chichester, England, of the World Council of Churches' central committee. Five of the nine were front-line veterans of the fight against totalitarianism. Pastor Martin Niemoeller had spent eight years in a Nazi concentration camp; Norway's Bishop Arne Fjellbu was a leader in his country's wartime underground; Dr. Hendrick Kraemer was a member of the Dutch resistance movement; Germany's Bishop Otto Dibelius, who fought the Nazis for ten years, is now fighting the Communists in the Eastern part of his diocese; Dr. Joseph L. Hromadka of the Jan Hus Faculty of Theology in Prague, the only delegate from behind the Iron Curtain, is now walking an East-West tightrope.

Claims on the Whole Man. All agreed that the Protestant churches should speak out against Communist encroachments. The problem was, what could a group representing practically all of non-Catholic Christianity agree on saying?

Bishop Fjellbu (pronounced fyellboo) warned against any "attempt to pass judgment on capitalism and communism as economic systems"; the church, he said, should condemn "only a totalitarianism which makes claims on the whole man and seeks to restrict his religious freedom." Bishop Dibelius, who referred to Western Berlin as "a fortress amid the Red Sea," wanted strong language.

Prague's Joseph Hromadka tried to explain that the situation in Eastern Europe is "both wider and deeper than the question of religious liberty." These countries, said, are going through a total social, economic, and political transformation, and the churches "could not serve as a shelter for those who wish to retreat to the old social order." In short, "the judgment of God lies upon the churches for having failed to meet the needs of the broad masses of people throughout the world."

Guardian of Freedom. After three days of talking (all in closed session), the nine churchmen wrote a resolution which seemed to please everybody, even Hromadka. It put the council on record as "deeply disturbed by the increasing hindrances which many of its member churches encounter in giving their witness to Jesus Christ." It admitted that "churches themselves must bear no small part of the blame for the resentments among the underprivileged masses of the world, since their own efforts to realize the brotherhood of man have been so weak." After this mild preamble, the council spoke in sharp, clear language: "Justice in human society is not to be won by totalitarian methods. The totalitarian doctrine is a false doctrine. It teaches that in order to gain social or political ends everything is permitted. It maintains the complete self-sufficiency of man. It sets political power in the place of God. It denies the existence of absolute moral standards . . .

"We call upon statesmen and all men who in every nation seek social justice to remember this truth: a peaceful and stable order can only be built upon foundations of righteousness, of right relations between man and God and between man and man. Only the recognition that man has loyalties beyond the state will ensure true justice . . . Religious freedom is the condition and guardian of all true freedom . . . We warn the churches in all lands against the danger of being exploited for worldly ends . . . We ask all Christians to remember that the liberty which they receive from their Lord cannot be taken away by the violence or threat of any worldly power, or destroyed by suffering . . . We urge all Christians to stand firm in their faith."

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