Hearings

We have an open session this morning to hear witnesses on the continuation of the mutual security hearings for the fiscal year 1960. Our first witness is Dr. Donald C. Stone, representing the National Council of Churches.

You have a statement, Dr. Stone?

Dr. STONE. Yes, sir.

Chairman MORGAN. Go right ahead, sir.

STATEMENT OF DR. DONALD C. STONE, ON BEHALF OF THE NATIONAL COUNCIL OF CHURCHES OF CHRIST IN THE U.S.A.

Dr. STONE. My name is Donald C. Stone. I am testifying here in behalf of the National Council of Churches of Christ in the U.S.A. by the authorization of its appropriate officers.

I am currently dean of the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs of the University of Pittsburgh and a member of the Department of International Affairs of the National Council of Churches.

While I am here as a designated representative of the Department of International Affairs, I obviously cannot and do not presume to speak for each of the 38 million members of the 33 Protestant and Eastern Orthodox denominations in the national council, but I am presenting policies and views adopted after careful study, discussion, and deliberation by the council's policymaking bodies composed of official representatives of the denominations.

The council believes it appropriate and desirable that in hearings such as this major religious groups in our country have the opportunity to share in expressing from religious and moral perspectives, their views on the objectives, policies, and adequacy of the mutual aid and assistance programs of the United States. On behalf of the council may I express appreciation for this opportunity.

GENERAL POSITION OF THE NATIONAL COUNCIL OF CHURCHES

In keeping with the actions of the council's policymaking bodies, we hold it to be a Christian concern and the moral responsibilty of the United States to take all appropriate action within its capacity

and resources to promote justice, economic betterment, social wellbeing, freedom, and peace among the peoples of the world, including our own, and especially among the newly independent, emerging, and developing nations. To this end we support the improvement and expansion of technical assistance, educational exchange, economic aid, trade and private investment, and other measures essential to the improvement of conditions of life and the creation of free, responsible, and stable societies.

RELIGIOUS AND MORAL FOUNDATIONS

The competence and the responsibility of the churches to delineate the religious, the moral, and the ethical truths or requirements which underlie public issues is well established. This has been a function of our religious traditions and heritage beginning with the prophets of old.

In studying God's purposes and requirements, as reflected in both the Old and New Testaments, we find the principle that the state should be founded on justice, that it is instituted by God to enact just and equitable laws, that in the fulfillment of its mission the state should be the organized expression of God's character and purpose. The state, to be specific, our country or any country, is thus judged by divine standards of righteousness and justice. Lawmakers, judges, and administrators are God's servants charged with bringing to all people the blessings of just, efficient, and humane government. Nations and individuals are accountable for their acts and are judged by God by the same moral and ethical standards.

We believe that governments, as individuals, must conform to the moral law of God. The people of a nation, as children of God, have the obligation of promoting justice, freedom, equality, opportunity, respect, integrity, and mercy in all relationships. So, too, government as the means by which people carry out their collective public concerns and responsibilities, must fulfill these same obligations.

This conception of the moral and spiritual foundation of government is uniquely reflected in the covenants of our country and in the official statements of our leaders.

The Declaration of Independence explicitly emphasized these truths. In the eyes of its architects, men are viewed as children of God, they have rights and values growing out of their spiritual relation to God, they are equal as personalities and equal as members of one human family, they are part of a world brotherhood, and government is a means subject to their control for achieving the benefits of their God-given rights.

George Washington summed up these views in his Farewell Address with the words:

Reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in the exclusion of religious principle.

The mind of Lincoln was saturated with the same values of lifebrotherhood, justice, mercy, honesty, reverence. A fundamental tenet in his political philosophy was the responsibility and the accountability of the Nation to Almighty God.

In speaking of the rights of men, women, and children in the struggle for existence, President Wilson said, in his first inaugural address: Justice and only justice shall always be our motto. * * * The feelings with which we face this new age of right and opportunity sweep across our heartstrings like some air out of God's own presence, where justice and mercy are reconciled, and the judge and the brother are one.

I mention these factors in our heritage because they emphasize the necessity and practicality of applying moral and religious principle in the formulation and execution of public policy. We, in the churches, are concerned with the tendency to separate these interrelated aspects of life in the marketplace of daily decision making.

We believe that these moral and spiritual foundations for Government and public policy apply to the total community of mankind. They are the requisites for individual and group fulfillment at the level of the family, the local community, the State, the Nation, and the international community. Where individuals seek special privilege based on selfish interest, where they have no concern for the well-being of their fellow men and isolate themselves from responsibility for service to the general welfare of the community, their justice, freedom, economic and social advance, and public morality corrode and wither. Likewise, when a nation on the basis of its narrow self-interest endeavors in isolation to provide for its protection, seeks the economic prosperity of its citizens with little tangible regard to the misery, poverty, and ignorance which may exist outside of its boundaries, or furthers the economic development of other countries primarily in the interest of its own security and as a means of obstructing the outreach of an enemy, it, too, lacks adequate moral and religious foundation, and its policies will be frustrated and its actions resented.

It is in this context and on moral and religious grounds that churches support more adequate assistance for the underprivileged and disinherited people of the world and more effective measures of mutual help and self-help.

INADEQUATE MORAL AND RELIGIOUS RATIONALE FOR OUR AID PROGRAMS

We believe the concept of mutual security, under which countries join together to create conditions essential for peace and freedom, and for the furtherance of economic and social well-being, is consistent with the moral and religious principles just elaborated. We believe that in the Marshall plan these principles were fulfilled in a historic manner. The success of that program and its appeal to man's conscience and to the aspirations of human beings everywhere was due to the unusual extent to which the ideals of sharing, mutual respect, selfhelp, and the imperatives of human brotherhood were incorporated in the total program, especially during the first 2 years.

We are concerned with the extent to which present-day official arguments justify both the military and economic components of the mutual security program almost exclusively on the basis of narrow self-interest, emphasize their value in counteracting Soviet imperialism, and imply that we can buy with our material surplus the support and friendship of countries whose help we need. We are concerned with the criticisms which grow out of a naive expectancy that people of other countries should be grateful for the programs which we ourselves declare we are carrying out in our self-interest. How can

right feelings and genuine mutuality be created among nations unless moral and psychological conditions essential to understanding, respect, and cooperation are fostered?

We believe that our country would be far more effective in achieving its stated objectives if the specific assistance programs, and the methods used in carrying them out, fulfilled more fully the moral and religious tenets which the Council of Churches and its constitutent denominations have enunciated on several occasions before this committee. In doing so, we would be infinitely more successful in creating the conditions under which collective security, international cooperation, and economic progress can be realized. Moreover, the newly independent, emerging, and less developed countries would feel partners in a common enterprise aiming at achieving their freedom, stability, and social advancement. We must develop a rationale that will meet the test of the collective conscience of mankind, and that test must be morally and ethically sound.

We must do these things because we are concerned for people as people-for the citizens of other countries as well as our own-and because misery, ignorance, despotism, and self-serving exploitation must be relieved wherever they exist, so far as the abilities, resources, and intelligence of a people permit. The great extremes of poverty and relative abundance in the world are intolerable to the Christian conscience, and they will not be accepted for long by the peoples of depressed areas who today, through communication, education, transportation, and other forces which have created a shrunken, closely knit world, are determined that they, too, should share in the better things of life.

THE CHURCHES SPEAK FROM EXPERIENCE

Not only do the churches speak out of their religious conviction based upon sustained and penetrating study of the application of religious principle in U.S. foreign policy, but beyond this, the churches have had long, practical, and steadily broadening experience in overseas aid and in international cooperation. In mission work, they pioneered in technical and economic assistance, in education, literacy programs, medicine, public health, agriculture, industry, mass communications, and leadership training.

During recent years, the churches have engaged in many types of relief and cooperative endeavors to administer to the distressed, and to help hungry, illiterate, diseased, and impoverished persons to become self-supporting and to guide their own peoples into responsible nationhood. During 1958, our churches contributed approximately $120 million to these ends. Through our Department of Church World Service, our churches have given aid to people in need around the world, distributed surplus food, sent relief in the wake of disasters, and pioneered in village and community projects. In 1958, the churches contributed $32 million for such aid.

Worldwide projects are carried on also by the United Christian Youth Movement, the United Student Christian Council, and United Church Women. These agencies and the Department of the Church and Economic Life and the Department of International Affairs of the National Council of Churches conduct study and action pro

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