Christianity and Crisis

Strikes by meat packers and mine workers in 1946 prompted Henry P. Van Dusen and Liston Pope to consider the ethics of strikes and how the church should respond.

It would be hard to hold this belief and to live up to it, but it may be that only through some such holy act of imagination can we, in all humility, hope to possess the sober serenity called for in these days.

After a tumultuous start to the post-World War II era and before the Cold War fully commenced, the board of supervisors of Christianity and Crisis issued a joint statement in December 1946 that tried to explain a Christian approach to international issues.

Our greatest need today is the certainty of God, the profound conviction that he does rule, that his righteousness and justice and love are imperishable.

This remembrance helps develop a confident, enduring Christian hope that is more than wishful thinking and leads to real-world action.

Christians should not allow themselves to be swept along on the tides of popular resentment and feeling, but should plant their feet firmly on the rock of fact and of Christian love. Only thus will the truth be discerned amidst the babels of conflicting opinions.

“We have,” said an exuberant campaign orator in the recent campaign, “the moral leadership of the world. The whole world trusts in our devotion to freedom and expects us to save mankind from totalitarianism.” That is how we see ourselves, at least in our more complacent moods. The world does not see us as we see ourselves.

We are in a battle with despair these days. One cannot but regret interpretations which weigh the struggle on the side of defeat, especially when one’s own judgment is that such interpretations leave out great areas of fact which give one the right to cherish hope.

The Tree of Liberty, like every other tree, is judged by its fruits. The fruits of the tree are the citizens of the Republic, and the moral health of the Republic is known by the character of its citizens.