75 years ago: Liberal "Christians" promote the New World Order

Support from religious liberals for a new world order is nothing new. On July 9, 1943, John Foster Dulles, chairman of a planning commission established by the Federal Council of Churches of Christ in America (which became the National Council f Churches in 1950), told the International Conference of Christian Leaders--a council of 68 churchmen from 14 nations--that Protestant churches would sponsor a program in the fall to promote international collaboration. As reported by Australian Associated Press and published in the Hobart Mercury, July 13, 1943:

NEW YORK. Mon. [July 12] - The International Conference of Christian leaders at Princeton has decided to recommend to the Governments concerned that the temporary collaboration between the United Nations should, as soon as possible, give way to a universal order and should not be consolidated into a closer military alliance with the object of establishing a preponderance or concert of power.

The recommendation formed part of a resolution on post-war problems as seen in the light of Christian principles, which was adopted after four days' discussion. Other requirements named for progress towards a world order included: (1) That national isolationism and monopolism of political power by a few nations which hitherto had failed to maintain peace should be repudiated as policies which contravened the purpose of establishing a world order; (2) that armaments be drastically reduced as a step towards the goals envisaged in the Atlantic Charter of the abandonment of the use of force and the lifting of the crushing burdens of armaments from the people.

According to Martin Erdmann in his book Building the Kingdom of God on Earth: The Churches' Contribution to Marshal Public Support for World Order and Peace, 1919-1945 (2005), p. 296:

The Committee consisted of John Foster Dulles, New York, Chairman of the Commission on a Just and Durable Peace; Dr. A.C. Craig, London, General Secretary, British Council of Churches; Dr. Gordon A. Sisco, Toronto, Ontario, General Secretary of the United Churches Commission on Church, Nation and World Order; Very Reverend Alwyn Keith Warren, Dean of Christchurch Cathedral, New Zealand; Dr. H.J. Gezork, Newton-Andover Theological Seminary; and Dr. Timothy Lew, Dean of the Department of Theology of Yenching University and Member of the Chinese Yuan (Senate). See press release, Princeton, July 8, 1943.

Mr. Dulles, a Presbyterian, was well-qualified to lead such an organization. He was the son of a Presbyterian minister and the grandson of a Presbyterian missionary. A lawyer as well as a layman, he defended popular liberal minister Harry Emerson Fosdick in Mr. Fosdick's heresy trial in 1924. Mr. Dulles served as the Chairman and Co-founder of the Commission on a Just and Durable Peace of the Federal Council of Churches of Christ in America; Chairman of the Board for the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace; and a Trustee of the Rockefeller Foundation from 1935 to 1952. He was also a founding member of the Foreign Policy Association and Council of Foreign Relations. He was best known for serving as United States Secretary of State in the administration of President Dwight D. Eisenhower from 1953 until shortly before his death from cancer in 1959 at the age of 71, and was thus in a position to influence events in the direction he intended. Mr. Dulles' liberal legacy includes his daughter Lillias, who became a Presbyterian minister, and his son Avery who converted to Roman Catholicism, joined the Jesuit order, and became a cardinal.