Effect On Native Culture Of Economic Aid In Asia

Press, Volume XCVIII, Issue 28888, 7 May 1959, Page 13

Effect On Native Culture Of Economic Aid In Asia

“It is important for everyone involved in giving economic aid and technical assistance to Asian countries to study carefully the effect on the receiving countries,” said the Rev. Dr. Robert S. Bilheimer, associate general secretary of the World Council of Churches, in Christchurch yesterday. Dr. Bilheimer, who is the council’s director of the division of studies, is in New Zealand at the invitation of the National Council of Churches. He will give the opening sermon at the council’s annual conference at Ardmore next week, when the council will consider the attitude of churches to the programmes of economic aid to Asian countries. He said the world council’s view was that the maximum amount of assistance should be provided those countries, but that it was unwise to ignore the cultural effect of economic aid. “Economic aid causes terrific transitions in culture,” said Dr. Bilheimer. “There is a danger of the transition being for the worse and the churches are particularly concerned about this. The world council has a programme to get all churches to consider the problem to see that the end result is constructive.’ ’ Copper Belt He gave as an example the effect on villages in the copper belt of West Africa, where villagers were suddenly given jobs with wages, where they had not had wages before, lived together in barracks, and were suddenly taking part in a Western way of life. The same thing could be seen already in the big Asian cities or on big constructional projects, he said. A contrast could be seen, too, in Asia between, the use of Western medicine and indigenous native medicine.

“They hope to begin an analysis of the problem at the national council’s conference,” said Dr. Bilheimer. “New Zealand people are deeply conscious that much of the future of New Zealand has to be directed in terms of Asia. These questions are more immediate and personal here than in many other places of the world.”

Dr. Bilheimer comes from New York, where he was minister of a negro Presbyterian church for eight years, but his home now is in Geneva where, with a staff of eight, he assembles the results of studies by church experts in various subjects affecting the member churches of the organisation.

“Our task is to find the issue and to get the appropriate church leader# organised in a study of those issues. We bring the information into presentable form for the central committee and then it is commended to all member churches. “Standard” “Over a period of years a body of thinking develops which the majority of churches refer to as standard. In the next two or three years we will do most of the work on studies for the World Assembly at the end of 1961.” He said the division of studies had contact with most of the United Nations organisations like

U.N.E.S.C.O. and affiliated bodies like the World Health Organisation—“but we have to prod them to get them more deeply into the field of cultural effects of economic aid in Asia.” After the National Council of Churches’ conference Dr. Bilheimer will go with the secretary of the council (the Rev. A. A. Brash) to the East-Asia Christian Conference at Kuala Lumpur, where a regional church organisation in Asia, of churches from Korea to West Pakistan, including Australia and New Zealand, will be created. Dr. Bilheimer said the conference would attempt to define a common line of thought and strategy for churches in East Asia, and also establish wider con-i tacts among churches in the axea.l