WORLD PEACE COUNCIL

Press, Volume LXXXVII, Issue 26514, 31 August 1951, Page 2

WORLD PEACE COUNCIL

VIEW OF WELLINGTON METHODISTS (New Zealand Press Association) MASTERTON, August 30. “Believing that world peace must be based upon Christian principles, and not merely upon sociological snd economic reasons, this Synod is unable to associate itself with the World Peace Council,” says a statement issued by the Wellington District Methodist Synod, frtim its session in Masterton.

“This Synod, nevertheless, is greatly concerned with the growing threat to peace, implicit in the present international situation. It does not believe in the inevitability of war, and calls upon all Methodists to work resolutely for the removal of the causes of emmity between nations.

“We call upon our people to recognise afresh their kinship with all other peoples of the earth, seeing them as equally subject with ourselves to the moral law of God, and equally under His fatherly providence and the grace of Our Lord Jesus Christ. Whatever tensions exist do so within the world family and ought to be seen in terms of our essential kinship. “We call upon all oui - people to continue to assist in every way open to them in the restoration of lands shattered by warfare, peoples displaced and in want because of the effects of war, and backward peoples who need generous and brotherly assistance from their more technically develooed neighbours. “In particular, we call upon all our people and upon the Government of New Zealand to offer full support to Korean relief, to support enthusiastically the Colombo Plan for the economic development of under-developed countries, and to offer asylum to such displaced persons as those who, through age or disability, will not be able to make much economic contribution to New Zealand, but who, nevertheless, have a right to claim our Christian compassion and help. Above all. we call upon our people not to surrender to pessimism and hatred, prejudice nor hasty judgment, but to seek peace and pursue it with all men.”