British Council of Christians and Jews Supports American Interfaith Peace Declaration

Catholics, Jews and Protestants in Great Britain were urged today to support the principles of the American document, “Pattern for Peace,” in a statement issued by the executive committee of the British Council of Christians and Jews. The Council was established in 1942 to study problems of tolerance and reconstruction, with the Archbishop of Canterbury, the late Cardinal Hinsley, the Moderator of the Free Church Federal Council, the Moderator of the Church of Scotland and the Chief Rabbi, as its presidents.

The American declaration on world peace was issued last October by 146 Catholic, Jewish and Protestant leaders. The seven principles of the identical statement express agreement on the moral law; the rights of individuals, minorities and colonial peoples; the necessity for international organization; the requirement of economic cooperation; and the need for social justice and harmony at home.

“The Council of Christians and Jews in Great Britain warmly welcomes the statement on the conditions of world peace signed by Protestant, Roman Catholic and Jewish leaders in America on October 7th, 1943, and finds itself itself in general agreement with the principles therein laid down,” says a proclamation issued by the Council today. “It is in accordance with the Council’s aims to urge that ethical and religious principles be applied to relations between groups, to the social life of peoples, and to international relations.

“The Council believes that it is the duty of religious people to pray and work for peace and for the reconciliation of enemies, for the abolition of war and all the evils it involves and for a new era of confidence and constructive service. The reestablishment of moral law, of respect for the rights of the person, especially those of the poor, the weak and the backward, and of responsibility towards the whole community, must be first charges on the energies of all right-thinking men and women. Church and Synagogue have the duty not only to exhort men in this sense but also to infuse with their spirit those agencies, diplomatic, political, economic, social and benevolent, through which a happier world order will be established.

“There can be no permanent peace without a religious foundation. The fact that both Church and Synagogue are international and supra-national, with traditions older than the political and economic structure of the modern world, entitles them to speak with authority at just such a time as this: they were founded on the divine law, on which also all social righteousness must rest. To reconstitute political institutions, to restart the agriculture, industry and trade of the world, to re-establish international institutions representative of the unity and interdependence of the nations and their well-being, will mainly be the responsibility of representative statesmen and assemblies. All Christians and Jews, however, will share the responsibility of putting the plans and actions of statesmen to the tests of religion, and of seeing that they correspond with righteousness, mercy and peace.”