Reinhold Niebuhr

IT is one of Visser 't Hooft's many creative contributions to
the ecumenical movement, for which he has furnished such
brilliant leadership for almost half a century (if the prelude in
the Student Christian Movement is counted, as it must be) that
he has always insisted that a closer and more creative encounter
between the various non-Roman churches must be based upon,
and must result in, the renewal of the churches. Without this
presupposition and consequence the ecumenical movement will
merely result in added ecclesiastical machinery.

In no department of the World Council's activities is this
creative renewal of the churches more apparent than in the
field of gradually elaborating a Christian social ethic, which
would express the spirit of the Gospel on the one hand and be
relevant on the other hand to the ever increasing complexities
of a technical civilization and a budding world community,
riven by a 'cold war' and living under the shadow of a nuclear
catastrophe.

This task is, and was, an enormous one. It is so enormous
because the New Testament has only the barest suggestions of a
social ethic with its 'nicely calculated less and more.' The ethic

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