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tactics for the great variety of specific problems which call for atten
tion in the broad area of race relations. Neither will an attempt be
made to draw together the results of a growing amount of important
research with regard to certain principles which must underlie the de
velopment of any effective strategy for reducing prejudice and dis
crimination.34 Rather, our primary concern at this point is to empha
size the fact that the Christian is motivated by gratitude to God and
by love for the neighbor to use the knowledge, instruments, and skills
provided by the social sciences in an effort to realize the goal of
equality and mutuality in human relationships. The Kingdom for
which he prays and labors is a “kingdom beyond caste,” and it is to
be manifest in the daily relationships of men as well as in the spiritual
oneness which they profess.
Although we have disavowed any attempt to prescribe the tactics
which Christians should employ in dealing with any of the social
problems which we have examined, consideration of four general
obligations which the Church faces in the field of race relations will
indicate something of the breadth of responsibility which Christians
share in this area, both as members of the Church and as citizens in
society.
In the first place, Christians in and through the Church have a re
sponsibility to make clear the relevance of Christian faith to issues of
social concern in general and to intergroup relationships in particular.
The Church must seek to understand the faith to which she has been
summoned to witness, and she must be faithful in proclaiming and
interpreting it to the world. It is not sufficient to speak vaguely of the
fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man and of the obligation
to love the neighbor. What these mean in the present-day economic,
educational, political, and religious areas of life must be squarely
faced, for it is here that the neighbor is to be loved. While there will
be sincere differences of opinion with regard to the specific ways in
which Christian love can best be expressed in dealing with these
social problems, the Church ought to make it clear that responsible
Christian action in these areas begins with the acknowledgment that
God’s will is normative in all of these relationships and with a per
34 The reader is referred to such discussions of strategies for influencin
intergroup relations as the following: John P. Dean and Alex Rosen,
A Manual
of Intergroup Relations,
Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1955; Simpson
and Yinger,
op. cit.,
pt. I ll; Maclver,
The More Perfect Union;
and Allport,
op. cit.,
pt. VIII.
370
Biblical Faith and Social Ethics