FEDERAL COUNCIL OF CHURCHES MEETS, TRIES TO STEER ECONOMIC MIDDLE WAY

...Echoing Flynn's charge that there is "no important economic difference between communism and socialism," Satgent lapsed into Biblical research by asserting that "Jesus said it was improper to change money in the Temple, but He did not say that money-changing was improper if carried on elsewhere...

...Illinois...

...Delegates departed from Detroit feeling they had wrestled with if not solved some of the most basic economic problems of our times...

...Weeks before the Conference, most delegates received—in addition to the working papers carefully prepared by committees of the Federal Council—special mailings from rightist groups...

...It affirmed that "man is still exploited by his brother and vast inequalities in wealth and therefore in status, fundamental differences in scales of value, and wide disparities in the possession of power create and maintain class consciousness...

...During the Conference, it was announced that the Rockefeller Foundation had appropriated $100,000 to enable the Federal Council to conduct a three-year study of the ethical principles of economic activity in modern society...

...This contains a bitter attack on the Federal Council of Churches, charging it with promoting "the interests of a Socialist revolution in America," with "humble communicants of countless little churches all over this broad land .. . paying the bills for this propaganda drive...

...The Federal Council of Churches, top Protestant body consisting of twenty-eight- cooperating denominations, has long been interested in the relationship of the church to economic society...

...He pleaded for the "broad democratic middle," inveighing against those on the far right who contend that human security is the price men pay for freedom and against the communists who contend that freedom is the price for security...

...Toward the close of the Conference there was prolonged debate on an amendment urging denominational bodies and local churches to seek to use union labor for church printing...

...And the group by vote upheld the CIO leader...

...Although the churchmen in the main dealt with principles and not specifics, they no longer stammered with an inferiority feeling engendered by those who would maintain the existing economic disparities in so« ciety...

...He asserted that both positions were "economically unsound and morally wrong...

...By the time each delegate returned from Detroit, however, he found in his mail a :?2-page pamphlet entitled, John T. Flynn Replies to His Critics (available from Flynn at 210 East 43rd Street, New York 17...

...Reuther, right arm still incapacitated and wisecracking that he was only temporarily a leftwinger, received the greatest ovation of the conference...

...Deeply conscious of the futility of debating economic issues under the shadow of the hydrogen bomb, the delegates overwhelmingly approved a resolution by ex-Congressman Jerry Voorhis which asked the Federal Council to take immediate steps to coordinate religious forces in the country to consider the implications of the hydrogen and atomic bombs and to slrenghten the United Nations aa an agency capable of actually preventing war...

...The Conference affirmed that the churches above all must practice what they preach about economic justice...

...The economic royalists, out-maneuvered at Pittsburgh three years ago, laid their plans more carefully for the Detroit Conference...

...This discussion group refused to make any direct judgment on the profit svstem as such, but it did declare that "if competition in economic life leads men to compete in the acquisition of wealth fdr its own sake or in the use of power over one's fellow or to gain special privilege which bars others from the goods of life, then that competition must be judged unchristian...

...Noel Sargent was busy counting the religious words used in the working papers prepared by the Federal Council and complained in his speech that the preliminary papers contained "only six mentions of Christ and only one mention of the name of Jesus...

...Speaking to the freedom-versus-security dilemma, the Conference laid that "freedom must be interpreted to include freedom for all men, the strong and the weak, the talented and the handicapped, and such freedom involves clear distinction between the planning that enslaves and the planning that, emancipates...

...No special economic group represented at the Conference felt any clear-cut victory, although James Fifieid of Spiritual Mobilization complained of being tfeated with an "unchristian spirit...

...I * OF EVEN GREATER controversial nature were the four "agenda" statements of the Conference, each prepared after 13^ hours of concentrated group meetings by delegates...

...Spiritual Mobilization, a well-heeled if ineffectual pressure group, sent each delegate a bound copy of John T. Flynn's The Road Ahead...

...The statement went on to say that "no true Christian is complacent in the face of periodic crises in which millions are denied work, consumers' needs are unmet, and unemployment becomes epidemic...

...The groups were headed by such well-known laymen as Jerry Voorhis and Victor Reuther, with other prominent lay persons such as Frances Perkins and Senator Flanders participating...

...Although Charles P. Taft wanted to omit the phrase, "contemporary capitalism," as being misleading, the Conference voted him down and affirmed that the church must attack "such practical atheism as is present in contemporary capitalism in which God's will is regarded as irrevelant to the economic process, whenever or wherever it appears in the professions, in labor leadership, in farm organizations, in industrial ownership and management...

...As active participants in economic life as employers, purchasers, recipients of gifts, and property owners, the churches daily face such problems as wages, use of invested funds, fair employment practices, relations with labor unions, pensions, and rentals...

...The delegates took no dictation from authorities, even defeating Professor Reinhold Niebuhr on a minor theological issue...

...WITH THIS preparation, 450 delegates representing twenty-two denominations (and only secondarily representing agriculture, business, government, labor, and the church) met in Detroit for four solid days...

...Federal Council of Churches Meets, Tries to Steer Economic Middle Way By HOMER JACK IF MOST RELIGION for too many centuries has been the opiate of the people, in recent years some churchmen have become uncomfortable serving as chaplains to the status quo...

...The agenda group on "Conflicting Motives and Claims in Economic Life" affirmed that, lor the churchman, "responsibility for the welfare and freedom of others takes priority over his desire, however worthy, for his own individual freedom...

...New York 10...

...The Conference also recognized that basic to any program is a well-educated clergy with a broad knowledge of economic problems, and it urged special instruction in the theological schools and in-service training...

...Last month the second National Study Conference on the Church and Economic Life was held in Detroit, this time to attempt to spell out more clearly the principles the church must advocate in the economic sphere...

...The Federal Council promptly called the Flynn charges "replete with misunderstandings, misrepresentations, and falsities" in a pamphlet entitled The Truth About the Federal Council (297 Fourth Avenue...

...ALL DELEGATES in all agenda groups discussed the topic, "The Churches: Their Program in Relation to Economic Life.'' It was agreed that not enough formal study has been made on the moral and ethical implications of economic life...

...In this group...

...It also declared that "in a society marked, like ours, by interdependence and by hazards over which the individual can exercise no control, there is social as well as individual responsibility for decent security for the aged and for dependent children and against unemployment, disability, and illhealth...

...Federal Council secretary Samuel McCrea Calvert agreed on a watered-down sentence proposed by the head of a state manufacturer's association, but he was called down by a CIO leader from Cleveland for "not being Christian enough...

...The Conference condemned "class churches," urging that church doors be opened to all...

...The only oratory of the conference occurred at the opening luncheon when Walter Reuther of the UAW-CIO and Noel Sargent, secretary of the National Association of Manufacturers, traded blows...

...In all these areas, the Conference declared that "churches must conform to the highest ethical standards for the sake of their own integrity and the setting of a good example to others...

...Jack was a delegate to both the Pittsburgh and Detroit Conferences on the Church and Economic Life and Is now minister of the Unitarian Church of Evanston...

...This amendment was passed by a relatively close vote...

...In a preliminary 3,000-word "Call for Action in Relation to Economic Life," initially drafted by Bishop G. Bromley Oxnanybut debated word for word, the Conference declared that the churchman "does not approach the economic order bound by the dogmatism of communist, socialist, or capitalist...

...In 1947 it c6nvcned the first study conference on the church and economic life at Pittsburgh which clearly affirmed the right of the Protestant churches in America to delve into the most controversial problems of the marketplace...

...church that has not set its house in order is not in the proper place to summon the economic order to Christian standards...