"Misguided Judgment"

When they advocated U.S. recognition of Communist China, its admission to the U.N., and closer relations with Communist countries generally, the 500 delegates to the Fifth World Order Study Conference of the National Council of Churches (TIME, Dec. 1) knew they would probably reap a whirlwind. By this week, the breeze of criticism was fairly stiff.

The Southern Baptist Formosa Mission had sent a formal protest to the U.S. ambassador on Formosa, Everett F. Drumright. The Chinese pastors of 57 Protestant churches and organizations on Formosa denounced the resolution's "terribly misguided judgment." In a radio broadcast this week, the Rev. Daniel A. Poling, Dutch Reformed editor of the Christian Herald, reported that the leading spokesman for the Protestant missionary and educational groups in Formosa had told him: "Out here, the decision of the Cleveland conference is almost beyond belief ... To us it is betrayal--betrayal of their enslaved, tortured and often martyred fellow Christians in China."

In the Jesuit weekly, America, Robert A. Graham, S.J., added a blast of Catholic wrath at the Protestants' position. The World Order Conference's resolution, wrote Graham, is a stand "to puzzle and dishearten those who expected something more worthy of the cause of peace to which the delegates were dedicated ... In its silences and evasions, in its carefully phrased ambiguities and obvious inconsistencies, this would-be message of hope is a ghastly monument of abandonment. Its high words about the love of Christ and its vision of a world community willed by God sound fearfully hollow against its deep silence on the religious issue--not only on the mainland of China but wherever Communism rules."

The resolution, says Father Graham, seems deliberately to avoid the antireligious aspect of Communism. "The closest it comes to mentioning this side of life under Communism is a classic circumlocution. The Red program is described as 'this process of assimilation of ancient religiously imbued cultures into a Godless culture.' ... An outsider can only speculate that the World Order Study Conference seemed to be reverting to the strong pacifism characteristic of American Protestantism before the war."

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