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Grace Bible College, Grand Rapids, MI, April 22, 1972
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The original documents are located in Box D32, folder "Grace Bible College, Grand
Rapids, MI, April 22, 1972" of the Ford Congressional Papers: Press Secretary and Speech
File at the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library.
Copyright Notice
The copyright law of the United States (Title 17, United States Code) governs the making of
photocopies or other reproductions of copyrighted material. The Council donated to the United
States of America his copyrights in all of his unpublished writings in National Archives collections.
Works prepared by U.S. Government employees as part of their official duties are in the public
domain. The copyrights to materials written by other individuals or organizations are presumed to
remain with them. If you think any of the information displayed in the PDF is subject to a valid
copyright claim, please contact the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library.
Distribution: 20 20 copies up Mi.Forly
Office Copy
AN ADDRESS BY REP. GERALD R. FORD, R-MICH.
REPUBLICAN LEADER, U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
AT GRACE BIBLE COLLEGE
GRAND RAPIDS, MICHIGAN
7:30 P.M. SATURDAY, APRIL 22, 1972
FOR RELEASE ON DELIVERY
"THE SEVENTIES: A DECADE OF HOPE"
When I was invited to speak to this seminary, I was asked to discuss the
subject, "The Role of the Church in the Light of the Developing National Problems
that will be Facing our Society in the Next Five Years."
The awesomeness of the title reminded me of my college days when one of
the easy courses that many of the football players would take was called "New
Testament Survey." The reason it was so easy was that the professor, a kindly
old gentleman, would give the same examination question year after year: "Discuss
and analyze the travels of the Apostle Paul." All the students had to do the
whole term was to memorize the answer to this question.
But one year everyone walked in for the final exam and found that the
exam question was: "Discuss and analyze the Sermon on the Mount."
Everyone walked out except for one guy, easily the most stupid one in
the class. When the exam marks were posted, everyone failed except the fellow
who tackled the question. Of course, all the other students were curious as to
what he wrote, and he explained that he started off his examination paper with
these words: "Who am I to criticize the words of the Master? But I would like
to tell about the travels of the Apostle Paul."
And so I might paraphrase, who am I to tell you what the role of the
church should be, but I would like to talk about some of the issues that will
be facing the nation in the next few years.
Let us heed the words of the Danish theologian Kierkegaard who wrote,
"Life must be lived forwards, but can only be understood backwards." And so if
I am to look ahead into the Seventies, I must first discuss the decade of the
1960's.
If I am to talk about future-shaping issues, particularly as they relate
to the hopes for peace, the goals of science, and the aspirations of the Blacks
(more)
Digitized from Box D32 of The Ford Congressional Papers: Press Secretary and Speech File at the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library
-2-
and of our youth, I first must talk about the directions and goals of the '60's
and compare them with present directions and goals.
Think back to the 1960 presidential campaign. What were the dominant
themes that Senator Kennedy and Vice President Nixon addressed themselves to then?
In foreign policy, the Cold War was still the paramount concern.
To John Kennedy, the crucial issue in American foreign policy was the
rivalry with the Soviet Union. The world was divided in two--with the forces of
freedom on one side and Russia and the Communist nations on the other. It was
called the Sino-Soviet bloc--a monolith directed by Soviet leaders.
And this intense sense of competitiveness with Russia spilled over into
the science field. Remember Sputnik and the shock which that first orbiting
satellite put up by Russia had on the American public? There is little doubt
that John Kennedy was reacting to that feeling when he pledged in the 1960
presidential campaign an all-out effort to put an American on the moon. And so
the science headlines of the 1960's were dominated by aerospace accomplishments--
John Glenn's orbit of the earth--the first hard-landing on the moon--and then
finally the soft-landing in July 1969.
Another incident of that 1960 campaign that we remember was John Kennedy's
famous telegram to the jailed Martin Luther King. King at that time was just
assuming leadership in the Black struggle in the 1950's and '60's to overcome
discrimination, such as the obstruction of voting rights and segregation in schools.
Although it was the Eisenhower Administration in the 1950's that sponsored
the first Civil Rights voting bill and sent in the National Guard to Little Rock
to insure the integration of that city's schools, it is the decade of the 1960's
that is remembered as the time when civil rights moved to the public forefront as
the major issue of the time.
The Black movement was not the only movement that characterized the Sixties.
Another was youth. Here, too, we remember in the 1960 campaign the interest
generated by John Kennedy's call for a Peace Corps. It was a summons that touched
the idealism of the college youth. And the 1970's became a time of student
political involvement. Students marched against war and against pollution. It
was a time of idealistic fervor and political participation.
And yet by the end of the 1960's the heady wine of student idealism was
turning sour. Many young people, flushed with the excitement of political
participation, became frustrated by the complexity and slowness of democratic
(more)
-3-
change. Some, not finding easy results or instant solutions, turned against the
system. The excitement of participation became the disillusionment of alienation.
A Harvard law student in a graduation speech explained the growing reaction
of students to the rhetoric of the early '60's.
"We were given visions and then we found we had to
curb them. We were offered dreams and then we found we had
to abandon them. We had been made idealists and then we were
told to go slowly. "
This youth frustration with the institutions of government and society
in the 1970's is reflected by the popular phrase "against the establishment. If
And yet the phrase seems ironic when we look back to 1960. Then many commentators
were criticizing the student generation for being too much a part of the establish-
ment.
Critics despaired of the buttoned-down, crew-cut students of the 1950's
who too readily accepted the status quo and who were too eager to join the
establishment life of banks, corporations, and country clubs.
If a growing complacency was the malaise that disturbed critics about
youth as the decade turned from the Fifties to the Sixties, it is a growing
hostility that disturbs critics as we move through the Seventies. If the problem
then was to awake a sense of idealism in youth, the problem now is to develop
a better sense of realism about society and the ways to serve it.
We have plenty of protestors to spotlight problems bur fewer professionals
to solve them. We need those skills in the courts and the legislatures. We need
them to expand business opportunities and to deliver vital services to the needy.
If we ask youth for a more realistic response, the leaders in society
must show a more sensitive awareness of their concerns. This Administration is
trying to do that. Draft reforms have been achieved; the voting age has been
lowered.
Reinhold Niebuhr once wrote that a problem of society is the confrontation
between "idealists who have too many illusions and realists who have too little
conscience. 11
The institutions of government, law, business, and medicine need the
energy, initiative, and imagination that idealism generates. The challenge in
this decade is to find more effective ways of enlisting the dedication of our
young people.
(more)
-4-
The President has fashioned one of these ways by bringing the Peace Corps,
Vista, and a number of other agencies scattered throughout the Federal Government
together in a new agency--a new ACTION corps that gives young Americans
an expanded opportunity for the service they want to give--and that gives
them what has not been offered, a chance to transfer between service abroad
and service at home.
At the same time, law firms and businesses, for example, will have to allow
their young associates or executives wider opportunities to meet community needs.
The next few years will witness tremendous pressures for change in our
cities. Corruption and decay in local government will no longer be tolerated.
Major reforms will be called for in taxation and the allocation of resources.
New solutions will be needed in housing, employment, business investment, education,
and law enforcement. These solutions will need the energies and time of young
professionals lawyers, bankers, engineers, and scientists.
Perhaps even more important than the goal of bringing youth into the
mainstream of society is that of bringing in the Blacks. Here, too, there will
be a change in emphasis or direction.
As the Black movement in the Sixties pushed for civil rights, in the
Seventies the emphasis will be on economic rights.
Now, that does not mean that efforts to end voting discrimination and
school segregation will be abandoned. In 1970 the President signed into law a
strong new Voting Rights Amendment and praised the Congress for extending a law
under which so many minority citizens were given the vote. Furthermore, in this
Administration there has been more school desegregation than in the entire period
between 1954-when the Supreme Court first spoke to this issue--and 1969.
But in the next five years it will be not so much a drive for political and
social equality as one for economic equality; that is, equality at the starting
line.
The thrust of the Administration's new Family Assistance Plan is to help
those who want help--to get a job or job training.
The Administration's battle for the Philadelphia Plan for construction
unions is just the first chapter in the coming struggle to open up union membership
to minorities.
Similarly, the drive for economic opportunity in the 70's will see expanded
Black entrepreneurship--Black-owned and managed coops, shopping plazas, car
dealerships.
(more)
-5-
If in the area of minority rights the emphasis is changing from civil rights
to economic rights, in science national attention is moving from space to
environment. It might be said that the exploration of other planets has made us
more conscious of our own.
In his last speech, Adlai Stevenson expressed that thought: "We travel
together, passengers on a little space ship, dependent on its vulnerable reserves
of air and soil
"
The President, too, underscored the urgency to safeguard those reserves as
he said, "It is literally now or never," when signing the bill establishing a new
Council on Environmental Quality.
The President followed up with a message to Congress calling for 21 new
pieces of environmental legislation.
Meantime the Congress has adopted a tough Clean Air Act Amendments and is
on the verge of approving a comprehensive and accelerated clean waters program.
This is just a start on the attempt to undo the despoiling of our land that
we took for granted as the price of technological advance.
Man's greatest failure is that he is unable to see his planet as a single
dwelling place.
The same failure might describe man's incapability to live in peace. And
yet I am not a pessimist about the future.
I think there is greater hope today for better accommodation of differences
between East and West than there was ten years ago.
We recall John Kennedy's inaugural address which was praised then for his
cold war rhetoric. "Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that
we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend,
oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and success of liberty. "
At that time, Kennedy had just finished a campaign where he had pledged
no more missile gap and no more Cubas. President Kennedy looked upon our foreign
policy from the perspective of potential confrontation with Russia, the head of
the Eastern Sino-Soviet Bloc.
Let us compare that inaugural address with the one given in 1969 by
Richard Nixon.
"Let us take as our goal: Where peace is unknown, make it welcome, where
peace is fragile, make it strong; where peace is temporary, make it permanent.
After a period of confrontation, we are entering an era of negotiation."
(more)
-6-
Now that does not mean that the President entertains any notion that East
and West meeting at super-summit meetings can negotiate away all the differences.
No, what the President means is that the 1970's will be a time of realistic
negotiating on many fronts--and that some of this negotiation will lead to
settlements--settlements that will gradually slice away from the edges the danger
of war. Already the Nixon Administration has opened more doors, initiated more
peace moves, begun more negotiations than any other administration in a
comparable period. Richard Nixon is the first President to visit a Communist
country--he visited the People's Republic of China this year, Romania in 1969
and Yugoslavia in 1970. He has opened up communications with China by relaxing
trade regulations and passport restrictions.
Major peace moves include the cease-fire in the Mid-East in August of 1970,
and continued efforts to allow negotiations to take place now that we have only a
de facto cease-fire. Seeking peace in Indo-China, the President has proposed
an initiative that includes troop withdrawal, a cease-fire, exchange of prisoners,
and an internationally supervised Presidential election in South Vietnam.
At the same time, the President is drawing down America's troop commitment
in Vietnam to 69,000 by May 1.
In the area of the arms race, there has been tremendous progress.
The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty was signed by the President in 1969.
And hopefully this year we will see a successful conclusion to the SALT talks on
the regulation and limitation of strategic weapons.
This Administration is the first to renounce the use of biological weapons,
and resubmitted to the Senate for approval the 1925 Geneva Protocol prohibiting
the use of poisonous gases and bacteriological weapons.
The turn-away from the cold war era is no more apparent than in examination
of the national budget. For the first time in thirty years, America is spending
more for human needs than for defense.
The next years of our decade will see a continued shifting of priorities.
It will witness a continual diplomatic effort for settling those disputes that
can be realistically negotiated on grounds of mutual advantage.
Napoleon said to Czar Alexander at Tilsit: "If they want peace,
nations should avoid the pin-pricks that precede cannon shots. The decade of the
70's will see the removing of many such prickles that heighten the chances for
war.
(more)
-7-
From confrontation to negotiation in foreign policy; from the conquest of
space to the conservation of environment in science; from voting rights to
economic opportunity in the minority struggle; from the politics of protest to
the pursuit of professionalization in the attitudes of youth--the 1970's will be
a different decade.
Now, as religious leaders, what should be your role in response to this
changing scene? I recall the story of the Civil War era when Abraham Lincoln
received a delegation of Methodist clergy at the White House. The ministers
expressed confidence in the eventual victory of the Union because, as they said,
"God was on our side." Lincoln replied: "It's not a question of whether God is
on our side. It is a question of whether we are on His side."
It is this Lincolnesque sense of humility and understanding that we need
most from our religious leaders today.
Since World War II the church has gone through two phases--first, the time
of non-political involvement in the Fifties when the church was expanding into
the suburbs and second, the time of political involvement in the Sixties when the
church turned back toward the cities and political issues.
I am convinced that in the Seventies the Church will move away from
simplistic activism and toward reconciliation. The Church will urge people to look
at social problems from a perspective of moral concern but not decide for them the
morality of such issues.
In the Old Testament when the angel of the Lord asked the young Solomon what
he needed most to lead his people, he answered, "Give me an understanding heart."
So today the most important gift of leadership in the solution of problems
is the capacity to understand the other side, to respect motives, to honor
integrity.
If the Church helps bring about this climate of political tolerance, the
ideals of America will prevail in the coming decade.
# # #
20 capis u/ Fonly
a office Copy
AN ADDRESS BY REP. GERALD R. FORD, R-MICH.
REPUBLICAN LEADER, U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
AT GRACE BIBLE COLLEGE
GRAND RAPIDS, MICHIGAN
7:30 P.M. SATURDAY, APRIL 22, 1972
FOR RELEASE ON DELIVERY
"THE SEVENTIES: A DECADE OF HOPE"
When I was invited to speak to this seminary, I was asked to discuss the
subject, "The Role of the Church in the Light of the Developing National Problems
that will be Facing our Society in the Next Five Years."
The awesomeness of the title reminded me of my college days when one of
the easy courses that many of the football players would take was called "New
Testament Survey." The reason it was so easy was that the professor, a kindly
old gentleman, would give the same examination question year after year: "Discuss
and analyze the travels of the Apostle Paul." All the students had to do the
whole term was to memorize the answer to this question.
But one year everyone walked in for the final exam and found that the
exam question was: "Discuss and analyze the Sermon on the Mount."
Everyone walked out except for one guy, easily the most stupid one in
the class. When the exam marks were posted, everyone failed except the fellow
who tackled the question. Of course, all the other students were curious as to
what he wrote, and he explained that he started off his examination paper with
these words: "Who am I to criticize the words of the Master? But I would like
to tell about the travels of the Apostle Paul."
And so I might paraphrase, who am I to tell you what the role of the
church should be, but I would like to talk about some of the issues that will
be facing the nation in the next few years.
Let us heed the words of the Danish theologian Kierkegaard who wrote,
"Life must be lived forwards, but can only be understood backwards." And so if
I am to look ahead into the Seventies, I must first discuss the decade of the
1960's.
If I am to talk about future-shaping issues, particularly as they relate
to the hopes for peace, the goals of science, and the aspirations of the Blacks
(more)
-2-
and of our youth, I first must talk about the directions and goals of the '60's
and compare them with present directions and goals.
Think back to the 1960 presidential campaign. What were the dominant
themes that Senator Kennedy and Vice President Nixon addressed themselves to then?
In foreign policy, the Cold War was still the paramount concern.
To John Kennedy, the crucial issue in American foreign policy was the
rivalry with the Soviet Union. The world was divided in two--with the forces of
freedom on one side and Russia and the Communist nations on the other. It was
called the Sino-Soviet bloc--a monolith directed by Soviet leaders.
And this intense sense of competitiveness with Russia spilled over into
the science field. Remember Sputnik and the shock which that first orbiting
satellite put up by Russia had on the American public? There is little doubt
that John Kennedy was reacting to that feeling when he pledged in the 1960
presidential campaign an all-out effort to put an American on the moon. And so
the science headlines of the 1960's were dominated by aerospace accomplishments--
John Glenn's orbit of the earth--the first hard-landing on the moon--and then
finally the soft-landing in July 1969.
Another incident of that 1960 campaign that we remember was John Kennedy's
famous telegram to the jailed Martin Luther King. King at that time was just
assuming leadership in the Black struggle in the 1950's and '60's to overcome
discrimination, such as the obstruction of voting rights and segregation in schools.
Although it was the Eisenhower Administration in the 1950's that sponsored
the first Civil Rights voting bill and sent in the National Guard to Little Rock
to insure the integration of that city's schools, it is the decade of the 1960's
that is remembered as the time when civil rights moved to the public forefront as
the major issue of the time.
The Black movement was not the only movement that characterized the Sixties.
Another was youth. Here, too, we remember in the 1960 campaign the interest
generated by John Kennedy's call for a Peace Corps. It was a summons that touched
the idealism of the college youth. And the 1970's became a time of student
political involvement. Students marched against war and against pollution. It
was a time of idealistic fervor and political participation.
And yet by the end of the 1960's the heady wine of student idealism was
turning sour. Many young people, flushed with the excitement of political
participation, became frustrated by the complexity and slowness of democratic
(more)
-3-
change. Some, not finding easy results or instant solutions, turned against the
system. The excitement of participation became the disillusionment of alienation.
A Harvard law student in a graduation speech explained the growing reaction
of students to the rhetoric of the early '60's.
"We were given visions and then we found we had to
curb them. We were offered dreams and then we found we had
to abandon them. We had been made idealists and then we were
told to go slowly. "
This youth frustration with the institutions of government and society
in the 1970's is reflected by the popular phrase "against the establishment. "
And yet the phrase seems ironic when we look back to 1960. Then many commentators
were criticizing the student generation for being too much a part of the establish-
ment.
Critics despaired of the buttoned-down, crew-cut students of the 1950's
who too readily accepted the status quo and who were too eager to join the
establishment life of banks, corporations, and country clubs.
If a growing complacency was the malaise that disturbed critics about
youth as the decade turned from the Fifties to the Sixties, it is a growing
hostility that disturbs critics as we move through the Seventies. If the problem
then was to awake a sense of idealism in youth, the problem now is to develop
a better sense of realism about society and the ways to serve it.
We have plenty of protestors to spotlight problems bur fewer professionals
to solve them. We need those skills in the courts and the legislatures. We need
them to expand business opportunities and to deliver vital services to the needy.
If we ask youth for a more realistic response, the leaders in society
must show a more sensitive awareness of their concerns. This Administration is
trying to do that. Draft reforms have been achieved; the voting age has been
lowered.
Reinhold Niebuhr once wrote that a problem of society is the confrontation
between "idealists who have too many illusions and realists who have too little
conscience. 11
The institutions of government, law, business, and medicine need the
energy, initiative, and imagination that idealism generates. The challenge in
this decade is to find more effective ways of enlisting the dedication of our
young people.
(more)
-4-
The President has fashioned one of these ways by bringing the Peace Corps,
Vista, and a number of other agencies scattered throughout the Federal Government
together in a new agency--a new ACTION corps that gives young Americans
an expanded opportunity for the service they want to give--and that gives
them what has not been offered, a chance to transfer between service abroad
and service at home.
At the same time, law firms and businesses, for example, will have to allow
their young associates or executives wider opportunities to meet community needs.
The next few years will witness tremendous pressures for change in our
cities. Corruption and decay in local government will no longer be tolerated.
Major reforms will be called for in taxation and the allocation of resources.
New solutions will be needed in housing, employment, business investment, education,
and law enforcement. These solutions will need the energies and time of young
professionals. lawyers, bankers, engineers, and scientists.
Perhaps even more important than the goal of bringing youth into the
mainstream of society is that of bringing in the Blacks. Here, too, there will
be a change in emphasis or direction.
As the Black movement in the Sixties pushed for civil rights, in the
Seventies the emphasis will be on economic rights.
Now, that does not mean that efforts to end voting discrimination and
school segregation will be abandoned. In 1970 the President signed into law a
strong new Voting Rights Amendment and praised the Congress for extending a law
under which so many minority citizens were given the vote. Furthermore, in this
Administration there has been more school desegregation than in the entire period
between 1954-when the Supreme Court first spoke to this issue--and 1969.
But in the next five years it will be not so much a drive for political and
social equality as one for economic equality; that is, equality at the starting
line.
The thrust of the Administration's new Family Assistance Plan is to help
those who want help--to get a job or job training.
The Administration's battle for the Philadelphia Plan for construction
unions is just the first chapter in the coming struggle to open up union membership
to minorities.
Similarly, the drive for economic opportunity in the 70's will see expanded
Black entrepreneurship--Black-owned and managed coops, shopping plazas, car
dealerships.
(more)
-5-
If in the area of minority rights the emphasis is changing from civil rights
to economic rights, in science national attention is moving from space to
environment. It might be said that the exploration of other planets has made us
more conscious of our own.
In his last speech, Adlai Stevenson expressed that thought: "We travel
together, passengers on a little space ship, dependent on its vulnerable reserves
of air and soil
"
The President, too, underscored the urgency to safeguard those reserves as
he said, "It is literally now or never," when signing the bill establishing a new
Council on Environmental Quality.
The President followed up with a message to Congress calling for 21 new
pieces of environmental legislation.
Meantime the Congress has adopted a tough Clean Air Act Amendments and is
on the verge of approving a comprehensive and accelerated clean waters program.
This is just a start on the attempt to undo the despoiling of our land that
we took for granted as the price of technological advance.
Man's greatest failure is that he is unable to see his planet as a single
dwelling place.
The same failure might describe man's incapability to live in peace. And
yet I am not a pessimist about the future.
I think there is greater hope today for better accommodation of differences
between East and West than there was ten years ago.
We recall John Kennedy's inaugural address which was praised then for his
cold war rhetoric. "Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that
we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend,
oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and success of liberty."
At that time, Kennedy had just finished a campaign where he had pledged
no more missile gap and no more Cubas. President Kennedy looked upon our foreign
policy from the perspective of potential confrontation with Russia, the head of
the Eastern Sino-Soviet Bloc.
Let us compare that inaugural address with the one given in 1969 by
Richard Nixon.
"Let us take as our goal: Where peace is unknown, make it welcome, where
peace is fragile, make it strong; where peace is temporary, make it permanent.
After a period of confrontation, we are entering an era of negotiation.'
(more)
-6-
Now that does not mean that the President entertains any notion that East
and West meeting at super--summit meetings can negotiate away all the differences.
No, what the President means is that the 1970's will be a time of realistic
negotiating on many fronts--and that some of this negotiation will lead to
settlements--settlements that will gradually slice away from the edges the danger
of war. Already the Nixon Administration has opened more doors, initiated more
peace moves, begun more negotiations than any other administration in a
comparable period. Richard Nixon is the first President to visit a Communist
country--he visited the People's Republic of China this year, Romania in 1969
and Yugoslavia in 1970. He has opened up communications with China by relaxing
trade regulations and passport restrictions.
Major peace moves include the cease-fire in the Mid-East in August of 1970,
and continued efforts to allow negotiations to take place now that we have only a
de facto cease-fire. Seeking peace in Indo-China, the President has proposed
an initiative that includes troop withdrawal, a cease-fire, exchange of prisoners,
and an internationally supervised Presidential election in South Vietnam.
At the same time, the President is drawing down America's troop commitment
in Vietnam to 69,000 by May 1.
In the area of the arms race, there has been tremendous progress.
The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty was signed by the President in 1969.
And hopefully this year we will see a successful conclusion to the SALT talks on
the regulation and limitation of strategic weapons.
This Administration is the first to renounce the use of biological weapons,
and resubmitted to the Senate for approval the 1925 Geneva Protocol prohibiting
the use of poisonous gases and bacteriological weapons.
The turn-away from the cold war era is no more apparent than in examination
of the national budget. For the first time in thirty years, America is spending
more for human needs than for defense.
The next years of our decade will see a continued shifting of priorities.
It will witness a continual diplomatic effort for settling those disputes that
can be realistically negotiated on grounds of mutual advantage.
Napoleon said to Czar Alexander at Tilsit: "If they want peace,
nations should avoid the pin-pricks that precede cannon shots. " The decade of the
70's will see the removing of many such prickles that heighten the chances for
war.
(more)
-7-
From confrontation to negotiation in foreign policy; from the conquest of
space to the conservation of environment in science; from voting rights to
economic opportunity in the minority struggle; from the politics of protest to
the pursuit of professionalization in the attitudes of youth--the 1970's will be
a different decade.
Now, as religious leaders, what should be your role in response to this
changing scene? I recall the story of the Civil War era when Abraham Lincoln
received a delegation of Methodist clergy at the White House. The ministers
expressed confidence in the eventual victory of the Union because, as they said,
"God was on our side." Lincoln replied: "It's not a question of whether God is
on our side. It is a question of whether we are on His side."
It is this Lincolnesque sense of humility and understanding that we need
most from our religious leaders today.
Since World War II the church has gone through two phases--first, the time
of non-political involvement in the Fifties when the church was expanding into
the suburbs and second, the time of political involvement in the Sixties when the
church turned back toward the cities and political issues.
I am convinced that in the Seventies the Church will move away from
simplistic activism and toward reconciliation. The Church will urge people to look
at social problems from a perspective of moral concern but not decide for them the
morality of such issues.
In the Old Testament when the angel of the Lord asked the young Solomon what
he needed most to lead his people, he answered, "Give me an understanding heart."
So today the most important gift of leadership in the solution of problems
is the capacity to understand the other side, to respect motives, to honor
integrity.
If the Church helps bring about this climate of political tolerance, the
ideals of America will prevail in the coming decade.
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