nineteen hundred and forty-six - Amazon Web Services

64
SOUTHERN BAPTIST CONVENTION
articles to the press, both Baptist and secular, in the earnest effort to get them
understood and to get our people mobilized in support of them.
Our next effort was to cooperate with the United States Government, unofficially
of course, in the organization of the United Nations. To this end your
chairman attended the meeting of representatives of national groups called
by Secretary Hull in the State Department in October, 1944, to hear the meaning
of the Dumbarton Oaks proposals and offer suggestions for their improvement.
At that meeting -your chairman pleaded for guarantees of religious
liberty. At other meetings of such groups, as at the National Conference of
the Churches for a Just and Durable Peace held in Cleveland, Ohio, in January,
1945, members of our Committee had a free share in formulating other suggested
improvements of the Dumbarton Oaks proposals. It is exceedingly
encouraging to note that seven out of the nine suggestions so offered were
substantially incorporated in the United Nations Charter as finally adopted.
Meanwhile in State conventions, district associations, and local churches our
people, sometimes under the leadership of this Committee and many times upon
their own motion, were contending for certain highly desirable objectives in
world peace, notably religious liberty.
Our great opportunity came in the San Francisco Conference. Your chairman
attended as an observer and invited participant., He not only represented
Southern Baptists thus unofficially so far as the Government was concerned,
but requested also by Northern and Negro Baptists to serve them as well. In
company with Dr. W. O. Lewis, secretary of the Baptist World Alliance and
others, he presented to the Secretary of the United Nations certification of
approximately 100,000 petitions for religious liberty which had come up mainly
from Southern Baptist churches, asking that guarantees of religious liberty
should be incorporated in the Charter of the United Nations Organization.
While we cannot assert that the guarantees of such liberty as finally written into
the Charter embody all that we as Baptists could desire in the way of explicit
definition, we nevertheless rejoice that three times over there is included a very
gratifying guarantee of it. It is our fond hope and firm belief that this guarantee
will eventually be further expanded and enforced under development of
a bill of rights yet to be adopted by the United Nations.
We rejoice unspeakably at the war having ended in military victory over the
Axis Powers and at the United Nations having commenced to operate as an
international organization, yet we are made acutely aware of the many vast,
almost insoluble questions which now confront our Nation and our people. Any
facing up to these problems and duties must tremendously challenge us to most
serious endeavors. At this time we offer the following expression of our convictions
and beseech Southern Baptists to ponder them well.
1. It is our solemn conviction that we should look sympathetically, hopefully
and cooperatively upon the United Nations as the best existing organization
through which to secure a just and durable peace. We fully recognize that it
is not perfect, that it has glaring defects, and may even be only a step toward
the World Government which will later be found imperatively necessary to the
peace and order of the world. Nevertheless it has been arrived at after prolonged
study and conference and by united agreement of the fifty-one nations
comprising it. Very excellent provisions have been made in it such as the
General Assembly in which all the nations enjoy an equal voice, the international
court of justice, the economic and social council, the commission for recommending
the control of the atomic bomb, etc. There is good reason to believe the
objectionable veto power m the Security Council may be amended The United
Nations Organization is a visible, Poetical .response to the situation in which
everybody knows it is ONE WORLD OR JsONE.
2. Since our Nation has undertaken to lead the world into peace accordi
to moral law, it behooves our people to guard well the safety and security of
the internal order. We hear much of the dangers of fascism and communism.
While we do not minimize the menace of either of these systems which are
contrary to our American democratic order, we would warn against the sinister
power of militarism which is wholly inconsistent with our sincere sunnort of
the United Nations; which by means of compulsory peace-time military training
or indefinite perpetuation of the draft would substitute for our lone time
or prolific national else by of policy wars building and the up which hated huge has conscription armaments so lately been would which the virtually historically chief reliance impose abroad of upon totalitarianism"
has our been people
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