The United Nations Charter was signed JUNE 26, 1945, by 51 member nations.
With
lofty goals, the name "United Nations" was coined by Franklin D.
Roosevelt for countries fighting the National Socialist Workers Party
(Nazi) and their axis powers. The United Nations had a goal of
protecting the Jews, as FDR spoke on Justice for War Crimes, March 24,
1944:
"The
United Nations are fighting to make a world in which tyranny and
aggression cannot exist...In one of the blackest crimes of all
history-begun by the Nazis...the wholesale systematic murder of the
Jews of Europe goes on unabated...Hundreds of thousands of Jews...are
now threatened with annihilation as Hitler's forces descend...
The
United Nations have made it clear that they will pursue the
guilty...All who knowingly take part in the deportation of Jews to
their death...are equally guilty with the executioner."
On November 11, 1942, President Franklin Roosevelt complimented the Jewish Theological Seminary of America:
"If
the world to emerge from the war after a victory of the United Nations
is to be a world of enduring peace and of freedom, that peace and that
freedom must be founded on renewed loyalty to the spiritual values...
Enemies
of mankind who are arrayed in battle against us realized this, and
therefore began their effort to subdue the world with an assault on
religious institutions...which...taught...the dignity and worth of human
personality...
In
cooperation with Catholic, Jewish, and Protestant scholars...it will
in time, I trust, become an increasingly powerful instrument for
enlightening men of all faiths."
The day after Franklin D. Roosevelt's funeral, President Harry S. Truman told Congress, April 16, 1945:
"Our
forefathers came to our rugged shores in search of religious
tolerance...Within an hour after I took the oath of office, I announced
that the (United Nations) San Francisco Conference would proceed...
In
the memory of our fallen President...I appeal to every American...to
support our efforts to build a strong and lasting United Nations
Organization...with Divine guidance, and your help...I humbly pray
Almighty God, in the words of King Solomon: 'Give therefore thy servant
an understanding heart...'"
In April 1946, President Truman addressed United Nations delegates:
"At
no time in history has there been a more important Conference than
this one in San Francisco which you are opening today...We beseech our
Almighty God to guide us in the building of a permanent monument to
those who gave their lives that this moment might come."
The United Nations began with high hopes, as President Harry S Truman stated, March 6, 1946:
"We
have just come though a decade in which the forces of evil in various
parts of the world have been lined up in a bitter fight to banish from
the face of the earth both these ideals-religion and
democracy....founded on one basic principle, the worth and dignity of
the individual man and woman.
Dictatorship...is
founded on the doctrine that...men and women and children were put on
earth solely for the purpose of serving the State...
The
Protestant Church, the Catholic Church, and the Jewish Synagogue-bound
together in the American unity of brotherhood-must provide the shock
forces to accomplish this moral and spiritual awakening...Unless it is
done, we are headed for the disaster we would deserve...We have tried
to write into the Charter of the United Nations the essence of
religion."
One of the first acts of the United Nations was to recognize Israel as a nation.
In 1953, President Eisenhower addressed the United Nations:
"The whole book of history reveals mankind's never-ending quest for peace and mankind's God-given capacity to build."
President
Eisenhower's delegate to the United Nations was Henry Cabot Lodge,
Jr., who sent a letter to every member state, December 30, 1955:
"I propose that God should be openly and audibly invoked at the United Nations...
I
do so in the conviction that we cannot make the United Nations into a
successful instrument of God's peace without God's help-and that with
His help we cannot fail. To this end I propose that we ask for that
help."
Lodge's proposal was not acted upon.
Nevertheless,
Charles Habib Malik, President of the United Nations' General
Assembly, 13th Session, who helped write the United Nations Universal
Declaration of Human Rights, stated in 1958:
"The
good (in the United States) would never have come into being without
the blessing and power of Jesus Christ...Whoever tries to conceive the
American word without taking full account of the suffering and love and
salvation of Christ is only dreaming.
I
know how embarrassing this matter is to politicians, bureaucrats,
businessmen and cynics; but, whatever these honored men think, the
irrefutable truth is that the soul of America is at its best and
highest, Christian."
In subsequent years, the mission of the United Nations became increasingly unclear.
Former
President Herbert Clark Hoover suggested reorganizing the United
Nations in a speech to the American Newspaper Publishers Association,
April 27, 1950:
"I
suggest that the United Nations should be reorganized without the
Communist nations in it. If that is impractical, then a definite New
United Front should be organized of those peoples who disavow
communism, who stand for morals and religion, and who love freedom...
What
the world needs today is a definite, spiritual mobilization of the
nations who believe in God against this tide of Red agnosticism. It
needs a moral mobilization against the hideous ideas of the police
state and human slavery...
It
is a proposal to redeem the concept of the United Nations to the high
purpose for which it was created...It is a proposal for moral and
spiritual cooperation of God-fearing free nations...in rejecting an
atheistic other world."
By June 10, 1963, President Dwight Eisenhower confided to the National Junior Chamber of Commerce:
"The United Nations has seemed to be two distinct things to the two worlds divided by the iron curtain...
To
the free world it has seemed that it should be a constructive
forum...To the Communist world it has been a convenient sounding board
for their propaganda, a weapon to be exploited in spreading disunity and
confusion."
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