2. A Religious Dream: The United Nations (Remastered)

A Religious Dream: The United Nations

R.J. Rushdoony

In the last century, the poet Tennyson was faced by a personal crisis, his loss of faith. Much as Tennyson tried to retain some form of Christianity, and in spite of the fact that very often in his poetry he did give expression to Christian sentiments, the basic fact in his life was that he could no longer believe in orthodox Christianity. The doctrine of evolution had shattered Tennyson’s faith. As a result, as he looked out at the world, he saw not God’s world, but Darwin’s world; ‘red it tooth and claw.’ He wrote;

..this Earth, a stage so gloom’d with woe

You all but sicken at the shifting scenes. 1

There was one reality as Tennyson saw it, to this world. That reality was mutability, change and decay, perpetual flux. Everything passes, nothing stands. And so he gave expression to this, his basic faith, as well as his problem, in a passage ‘In Memoriam,’ declaring;

The hills are shadows, and they flow

From form to form, and nothing stands;

They melt like mist, the solid lands,

Like clouds they shape themselves and go. 2

“...Nothing stands...” This was Tennyson’s belief, and his problem.

If we believe that nothing stands, we face a problem, we need as a counterbalance to change something that is in some sense eternal. There is a source of certainty, an agency of control over change. As an answer to mutability, the change and decay, man can find that source of certainty and agency of control in two directions; he will either find in a transcendental creator God; His agency of control and origin, or he will seek it in a human or natural order. But, something must give him certainty, and world government control. It is inescapable, it is a logical necessity of a man’s thinking. There are indeed those who have ridiculed the quest for certainty. The philosopher John Dewey spoke with contempt of the quest for certainty in his book of that title; but what John Dewey did not like was the quest for certainty in the supernatural, in God. What John Dewey did offer was the quest for certainty and the achievement for certainty in a world socialist order, what he called; ‘the Great Community,’ or; ‘the Great Society.’ The question therefore is; “What is your source of certainty? God, or a human order? Eternity, or time?”

Tennyson, because he had come to the conclusion as he surveyed the world’s scenes, said; ‘because nothing stands, something must be made by men to stand.’ And therefore, in his poem ‘Locksley Hall’ he looked forward to a world where, in his words;

Till the war-drum throbb'd no longer, and the battle-flags were furl'd

In the Parliament of man, the Federation of the world.

There the common sense of most shall hold a fretful realm in awe,

And the kindly earth shall slumber, lapt in universal law.

Such a fate was, for Tennyson, not an act of perversity, but a logical necessity. Man has to have an agency of certainty and control, and he will either have it in God, or in a man-made order. And so, it is a logical necessity to have this agency of certainty and control, not an act of perversity. Indeed, we can talk about conspiracy in the realm of the UN, as we can in any realm, including the churches. Conspiracy dogs every domain of the world, but conspiracy can sustain nothing, unless first of all it be in need to man. The man without God must make unto himself a god and the order that he creates like God will be man’s source of salvation, it will be a saving order. In the UN Charter, in its preamble begins by declaring;

“We the people of the United Nations determined to save... have resolved to combine our efforts to accomplish these aims.” 3

It is a humanistic organization, dedicated to the religion of humanity, dedicated by its own profession to humanitarian principles. Thus, we see that man needs an agency of certainty and control make the world change and decay, and to give that world meaning. And second, that that agency that he creates is a substitute god. There will thus be a theology of state and the attributes of God will be ascribed to the social order. In every area that men have turned away from the supernatural faith they have created a theology of the state.

This was as true in the eighteenth century with the doctrine of the ‘divine right of kings,’ as it was in the days of The Roman Empire, when there was not only a theology of the state but when Julius Caesar was assassinated, there was for him a passion liturgy, celebrating his death as an atoning fact. Dewey had a theology of state attached to, or developing in connection with, The United Nations. Is it indeed beginning to develop those attributes which make it a substitute God?

Now the first and basic requirement of a theology is the unity in the godhead. A god cannot truly be god if he is at war with Himself, and therefore whatever is made god must be unified. The basic premise of all theology, whatever the religion, is the unity of the godhead. Thus, in Christian theology, the doctrine of The Trinity asserts three persons, one God in perfect unity, without any subordination. Now, in the religion of humanity, the face of the one-world order, man is deified. And, because man is deified, and personified in this world-order, there can be no division, no disunity tolerated in the godhead. As a result, this means the unity of mankind is a necessity. There can be no division, no differences, no separation, no discrimination between man and man in this faith. All men must be brought together and made one, without any differences. To permit any differences is to destroy the unity of the godhead. We will return to this in a moment.

But, in any such theology, the basic sin becomes no longer apostasy from God, or what we would call ‘moral evil,’ but disunity. And they among the churches, which are infected with this kind of thinking, which have made the one-world order their substitute God, and among those who are outside of the churches, the great sin is disunity. And different races, different churches, different organizations must all be brought together, and war, which separates man and discrimination which separates men, constitutes the real evil.

President Johnson has declared on a world-wide basis we place much hope in the United Nations. And he went on to say that the real evil of our time is not sin, but war; whose roots are poverty and ignorance, misery and disease. And in his ‘State of The Union’ address last month the President declared; “...we are entering the third century of the pursuit of American union.” Now, this is a curious interpretation of American history which he gave in his ‘State of the Union’ address. According to the men who fought The War of Independence, their purpose was to free this country from a statist invasion and from a centralist power. But, according to the President, their purpose was ‘ever-increasing union.’ Union in terms of civil rights, federal aid, the unity of man with the world he has built, The United Nations, a new immigration policy, and The Great Society. So that the more men are unified, and the more that they lose their identities and the more the people of the United States lose all racial and cultural and religious identity, the more they are merged; into one homogeneous mass, the closer we will be to realizing that pursuit of union.

This is a religious faith, it is not Christianity. It is the religion of humanity, the religion of the UN It is the theology and ethics of this new faith in the UN, and it is not surprising that the president concluded his ‘State of the Union’ address with the doxology declaring; “...this is the state of the union, free, restless, growing and full of hope. So it was the beginning, so it shall always be what God is willing and we are strong enough to keep the faith.” But the faith that we are supposed to keep, according to President Johnson, is not in God, but in ourselves. the UN Charter in its preamble says that its purpose is; “...to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war.” 4 And it goes on to declare in chapter one, article one, section three that it purposes to gain; “...fundamental freedoms for all without distinction as to race, sex, language, or religion….” Language which was echoed recently in California in The Rumford Act. This is a religious standard, it is not a Christian standard, indeed it is anti-Christian, but it is religious, and it declares that disunity is the greatest evil; the one great sin of man. And therefore, man must be merged; “...without discrimination as to race, sex, language, or religion.”

This also means that all religions are equal, that Christianity is, in effect, outlawed in that it requires one to believe there is one way to salvation, Jesus Christ. That people who adhere to other faiths are lost, and can only be saved through Jesus Christ. They are guilty, you see, of discrimination. The goal is the unity and the oneness of man, without discrimination, total equality. And total equality means that there are no differences, that there are no differences; not only as to race, sex, or language but no differences with respect to morality. Because, if total equality be thoroughly applied, we must insist, as many of them do, and this is a matter of sworn testimony before our committees by adherents of this faith, that we cannot distinguish between moral acts. When a congressman who is a noted champion of this faith returned from Europe recently and was criticized for having spent money freely, and as well having taken a couple of mistresses along as his secretaries. He told he was not setting a good example and he said he was, because he was being equal with anything and everybody, and he said; “...that’s what I’m preaching, equality.”

In other words, there’s equality between right and wrong, good and evil, between all opinions, all peoples. This is the faith of this new religion; “...freedom for all, without distinction as to race, sex, language, or religion.” And yet, the greatest adherents of this faith are not in The United Nations, but in private agencies, in national agencies, and especially in clergy, who far surpass The UN in their zeal for world unity, and it is with them a religious dream. This is the answer to all the world’s problems, this the saving situation, the saving form. But the UN itself has dreams of this world order which is going to save men. And its immigration policies are a part and parcel of this program of world salvation. In a vast number of documents, the UN has spelled out its immigration policy. For example, in ‘The Future Growth of World Population,’ 1958, this statement is made by the UN department of social affairs; population division:

“A new process is about to begin, or has perhaps already been started and the first signs of that, ‘socialization’ of the world which appears on the horizon, may be significant in this connection.” 5

What is this new process of ‘world socialization?’ It is the immigration policy.

Now, strictly speaking, the UN does not have an immigration policy. Rather, it proposes that in this document, the elements of immigration policy, and in the introduction it states that no attempt is made to propose solutions for the problems stated. The present study is not to regard as an argument in favor of immigration or against it. It simply presents elements for an immigration policy in case anyone is considering an immigration policy. Nonetheless, this document is very, very important. A number of agencies of the UN worked cooperatively to prepare it. The International Labor Office, The Food and Agricultural Organization, U.N.E.S.C.O., the World Health Organization, the social welfare division and the population division of the Department of Economic Affairs of the United Nations and the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development.

Now, as we read this statement of the elements of population policy we find some very strange paragraphs catching the eye, and the more one reads them and considers their implication the more disturbing these passages become. Consider, for example, this paragraph, and notice as I read, that it indicates the population, the peoples do not move; they are moved. The passive verb is used in each reference to the population.

“A point which may count in favor of immigration when the total cost of settlement is considered, lies in the avoidance of duplication of overhead capital. In the case of transfer of local population to developing areas, the service and housing already provided in the areas of out-migration might be left unutilized or under-utilized, thus causing wasteful duplication. In the case of immigration such waste is avoided, since the local population will continue to utilize the services provided for them. Equally, of course, waste could be avoided if at the same time the local population was transferred immigrants were moved in to take the place of the transferred global population, and to utilize the housing and services already provided for them. In that case, immigrants could be settled to take the place of the transferred population without undue cost of settlement. Whereas the receiving country is undeveloped however, the provision of general services in the areas of out-migration will often be insufficient to begin with.” 6

This is a curious statement! Since when are populations moved rather than move themselves? And since when, as a part of the elements of population policy have we considered moving one segment of population out of an area, and immediately transferring another into their homes and places? If these are the elements of population, what are we to say of the policy itself? Does it not recall the policy of ancient Babylon and Assyria. Where, in order to internationalize their empires, and break down local loyalties, and national loyalties, racial loyalties, loyalties of language, people were systematically moved and scattered throughout the length and breadth of those empires, in order to destroy every loyalty possible. But, let us read another paragraph.

“A distinction must be made between the settlement of new land and the placing of new farmers on land already cultivated. Where agricultural immigration is encouraged as a part of the program for reorganization or diversification of agriculture involving the transfer of land already under cultivation to the hands of immigrant farmers, the methods of affecting the change need to be planned in such a way as to produce the least possible disruption of agricultural operations, as well as the minimum of social disturbance and hardships. Schemes may have to be devised to enable the population formally engaged in the discontinued sites of agricultural activity to be absorbed in the new forms of agriculture in conjunction with the immigrants.” 7

Now, how often do farmers leave operating farms and go to another part of the world and their farms turned over immediately, in order to maintain operation, to other farmers from some other part of the world? Immigration is usually promoted by tyranny in the home country, and people fleeing from it, or religious persecution, or such a breakdown of economic conditions that it’s no longer possible to make a living there. But this contemplates the transfer of already existing farms from people who are moved out, to other people who are moved in. Again, these are disturbing elements of an immigration policy. We are further told in this same document that there will be considerable tension as these populations are transferred, but these problems will be taken care of in the second generation as a result of intermarriage. The older generation will be prejudiced, but the younger generation will intermarry, and the tension will end. And the great agency, it is stated in this document, of bringing about these intermarriages will be the schools. The schools will be used, it is stated, to integrate the children.

It is interesting to note that in the current ‘New Yorker’ for February 13, 1965, there is an article on page twenty-four rather satirically written on organization, of which very prominent, if not leading, member is the Reverend Robert L. Pearson, an Episcopal clergyman, who is the son-in-law of Governor Rockefeller. And this group originally titled ‘The Peace Hostage Exchange Foundation,’ instituted in 1962, a policy of drumming up support for a program of exchanging millions of people between the United States and the Soviet Union in order to help preserve peace.

“Today we bring tidings...” quoting from the ‘New Yorker,’ “...that ‘The Peace Hostage Exchange Foundation,’ has peacefully evolved into an organization called; ‘The Citizen Exchange Corp,’ whose members have continued the policy of drumming up support for a program of exchanging millions of people between the U.S.A. and the U.S.S.R. with the added wrinkle of facilitating matters logistically by utilizing ships of the maritime administration reserve fleet. This, then, is a program seriously considered not only in the elements of immigration policy but by a foundation established in this country.”

If these are the elements of immigration policy as being outlined, where is the policy itself taking shape?

On October 2, 1964, President Johnson in proclamation 3620 declared 1965 to be ‘international cooperation year,’ dedicated to international cooperation and strengthening world organization. The Kennedy-Johnson bill to take care of this international cooperation by means of immigration has been introduced to the senate by Hart S-1932, and in the house by Seller H.R.-7700, to repeal the ‘McCarran-Walter Immigration Act’ of 1952. This new immigration bill, which is quite likely, as far as present indications are concerned, to pass, unless a storm of protest arises with respect to it, has three central aspects. First, Senator Javits has referred to this bill as being; “...the civil rights legislation for the world.” Now, I didn’t say that, Senator Javits did. When he calls it “...a civil rights legislation for the world...” he means now that immigration will no longer be, if this bill passes, a privilege we extend to peoples of the world, if we find them congenial to us, and physically and spiritually congenial and healthy a privilege we extend to them to come into our country. On the contrary, it will be the right of the people of the world to claim immigration as their privilege. It will be the “…civil rights legislation for the world...,” it will put foreign interests above American interests. The idea of an American culture, an American heritage and identity, is seen as wrong. A world culture alone is valid, and hence, this new immigration bill would seek to destroy anything that would be conducive to our identity.

Second, immigration control would be transferred from the legislative branch to the executive branch. Third, the law would be secondary to the President’s wishes. It really would be no law, but a blank check to the administration. Already of course there has been loss of control as far as our immigration policy is concerned. In 1963, Castro was given the privilege of designating fifty perfect of the migrants to the United States when he demanded it, the State Department agreed. The purpose of these immigration policies is, of course, the unity of the godhead, to unite the world, to make mankind one, and its premise is not economic, because we certainly do not need immigrants. His purpose is religious, to unify mankind in terms of this goal of the United Nations.

A second basic requirement of an effective theology is the ‘omnipotence of the godhead.’ A god is not god if he is not all-powerful. Sovereignty and creative power must reside in the source of certainty and agency of control. Omnipotence has, for years, all power total sovereignty been steadily transferred from God to the state, and it is now going upward from the states of the world to the world-state. Similarly, a third aspect of any doctrine of god is that god be all-knowing, omniscient, that he have total knowledge, because total knowledge is necessary to total sovereignty and total government. God is not truly god if we can shut him out of our minds, if we can say that... “...yes God exists in the outside world, but in my heart, in my mind, I am completely free from God, I can think what I think and he doesn’t know a thing.” Then I would be God in the inner world. So that if a god is not all knowing, he is not god. No god, therefore, can be truly God if he does not control the mind of man. And his sovereignty transferred from the God of Christianity to the UN Power if flowing more and more from God to the state and from the state to the total state. John Bell, in his report of December 25, 1964 refers to this, calling it; “...the hateful paradise.”

“Followers of Christ know one thing, though we try to turn our backs to the fact, God knows our every thought, our every action. He knows all about us; past, present, and future. Though he looks no more on the past which has been erased by the blood, we have an intermediary to defeat our transgressions of the present, and He is able to keep His own for all future. But He is our Creator, we are His slaves, and He knows our very thoughts before we even think them, and we cannot hide from God.” “I know that Thou canst do everything, and that no thought can be withholden from Thee…” said Jonah. “Shall not God search this out, for He knows the secrets of the heart?” sang David. “The eyes of the Lord are on every place, beholding the evil and the good.” “Hell and destruction are before the Lord, how much more then, the hearts of the children of men?” asks Solomon. The Lord told Jeremiah; “...I the Lord search the heart. I try the reins even to give every man according to his ways and according to the fruit of his doing.” Paul was very definite; “...for, the Word of God is quick and powerful and sharper than any two edged sword piercing even the dividing asunder of soul and spirit and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.”” If we look to Christ Jesus as our Savior and redeemer then we know what is best the truth, that we are slaves to Christ. That He knows all and everything about us, this is his right. Now let’s reverse the point, if we look to the state as our keeper then the state has every right to know all, there is no balance. We cannot serve two masters; and if we accept gifts or aid from the state, then we must serve the state by letting state become the discerner of our very thoughts. We must allow the state to substitute the I.B.M. card for The Book of Life, and we must confess to state all our sins and shortcomings, our strengths and our weaknesses, the thoughts and intents of our heart. We cannot have it two ways. Either we must accept Christ or state as master. We must answer to God or the god, or the I.B.M. card. We must have a name written in heaven, or a number punched on a card at a data-processing center. We can have one of two big brothers, Jesus or I.B.M., we cannot serve both, else we will hate one.”

The state today is speaking this total knowledge, and the United Nations is setting up agencies toward that end. It speaks that total knowledge in three ways. One, by control of all education, and there are few schools that have been missed by U.N.E.S.C.O. Second, it seeks this total knowledge through mental-health programs. Third, it seeks this knowledge, this total knowledge of us, by controls over our privacy. But to continue, every god also requires worship and sacrifice, and, if you want to know what you really worship, examine what it is you really sacrifice for and what you sacrifice to. That is your god. Today we are increasing compelled to tithe and sacrifice to the state and the one-world order. A tithe of our money goes around the world, and better than a tithe, to provide for this one-world order. And today God is getting only the leftovers from most people. Moreover, this one-world order already has developed its list of martyrs. Its Saints, and the references to them are definitely religious. Hammarskjöld, and others as well, and certainly of late, John F. Kennedy.

In a book published recently, a collection of poems by various modern poets in honor of Kennedy’s death was entitled; ‘Poetry and Power.’ His death is seen as a sacrifice for the world of tomorrow, this brave new world. To quote just a few sentences from the poems in this book, to give you an idea of its character. Kennedy is spoken of as a man, but more. Another poet repeats over and over again in one long poem this sentence “the man is gone on a Friday” The world you see has a new Good Friday. He is called by another poet; “...an Apollo, a Caesar, young god without wound...” Then the poet goes on to speak of him as being killed; “...by the hate-filled priests of the old religion.” He is also spoken of as, “...an incarnation of democracy who lived to be concentrated to Demos.” And another poet says; “...he was nailed on the cross of a rifle site.” There’s one sentence however in the book which I thoroughly liked, the only sentence indeed in what was otherwise a rather distressing and painful book, and it was this; “...we are stained by his blood.” And I thought, indeed yes. Our Christian faith says that we are cleansed by the blood of Jesus Christ, but all of the adherents of this new religion can say when they present this young god nailed on the cross of a rifle site, that we are; “...stained by his blood.” This religion cannot cleanse.

Moreover, to continue our analysis of our doctrines of the godhead which are applied to the UN A god must be the source of law. God is not under law, He is law. Law is the expression of His being, and wherever our higher law stops, our Supreme Court, there we have our God. When the constitution was written, it was definitely written, according to Corwin, who is a liberal, under the thesis that there is a higher law above and beyond The Constitution, the law of God. This doctrine has disappeared in our courts. We no longer have a higher law above and beyond the courts. The courts themselves now represent the highest law and the world court is seen as the world law, and the UN Charter as the source of the world law. Law stops therefore, with the one-world order. The one-world order, this religion of humanity, becomes the source of law. It has affected even laws in California, which have been ruled constitutional or unconstitutional in terms of it. The new god therefore, is the one-world order, and the economics of this new order again reflect the belief that this order is god.

An economics in which man; a creature, and God the creator is an economics of scarcity. Man is limited to his God given portion; whereas an economics resting on the divinity of man and his order you have an economics of abundance. Because the world state is god, it is able to create out of nothing. Therefore the basic problem in such an economics is not supply, but distribution, the order to create. Therefore, the only problem is to gain total power, and then distribute, because it is a creative force.

Again, basic to any doctrine of God is the doctrine of the transcendence and incomprehensibility of God. We as Christians believe that God is incomprehensible beyond man's imagining, and yet truly knowable, because he reveals himself. So that we can truly know God, but we can never comprehend him. He is too great, beyond us, it would take the mind that is equal to God to comprehend God. Thus the word; ‘incomprehensibility,’ has historically been a theological word, attached to the doctrine of the Godhead. In recent years it has been coming down, being applied to men. Thus Robert E. Sherwood in his book ‘Roosevelt and Hopkins,’ spoke of Roosevelt’s “...incomprehensible power.” Recently, Eric Sevareid called President Johnson; “...a complex character...,” compared him to Julius Caesar, and others have hinted of Johnson’s incomprehensibility. Similarly, the United Nations is spoken of in similar terms, and we are continually told that we are judging foolishly, we are unable to comprehend the profundity and the wisdom and the great ramifications of every activity of the United Nations, so that we judge rashly when presume to pass judgment upon its deep and incomprehensible workings.

This, then, to bring this matter to a conclusion is a religious faith. The United Nations is a religious dream. Its origin is in the apostasy of Western man from Christianity. His creation of another god, a golden calf. When, for men, there is no certainty, and as for Tennyson;

“Nothing stands but the very hills are shadows, and they flow from form to form.”

Man; a religious creature makes himself a god, and the United Nations is that new god being shaped. It’s easy to point to the absurdities of the United Nations, and at its adherents. For example, recently, according to an anthropological journal, a UNO delegate to New Guinea, going over a territory which only in the past few years has been weaned from head hunting, and which is completely backward and primitive, and these missionaries have just barely established a semblance of respect for order, the UNO delegate inquired quickly why no university had yet been put up!

Again, at the beginning of this month, the IDA, the ‘Institute for Defense Analysis,’ in its report declared that intelligence-gathering is a hostile act. Therefore, we as Americans, in having spies throughout the world are guilty of hostility. And therefore, since hostile acts are wrong we should demonstrate that we believe in a one-world order, and in world brotherhood by opening our intelligence files to the Soviets by giving them in fact the privilege at any time of asking our submarines to surface wherever they are in the world and identify themselves, we will thereby prove that we are friendly. Absurdities of this sort can be numbered without end. It is easy to ridicule the United Nations. It is easy to point out all that it is planning to do, and all that it is doing. But you cannot destroy man’s faith in it very readily, because it is a religious faith. They have to have an area of certainty and an agency of control, because they do not have the living God. It is a religious dream, and a logical one. And because man is inescapably religious, and order and meaning are necessary who ‘cannot live by bread alone,’ he will either have God be his God, or he will create a God and worship Him.

In the last century capitalism and industrialism gave man a life of remarkable material comfort and ease. But, because our culture became secular, irreligious, it left man wide open to the command of new and demonic religious forces. The conspiracies indeed are real, but more basic is man’s religious need, and these dreams of a world-state meet man’s religious need for certainty and an agency of control. the UN, therefore, meets apostate man’s religious hunger for more than bread, and the dream of the United Nations will not abate until men surrender themselves and their every hope in institution and order to the sovereignty of the Triune and only God. What we are confronted with is religious warfare between a world order which has become god on earth, and the living God. And in this battle:

“If God be for us, who can be against us?” 8

We have the assurance of victory, but we cannot have it unless we stand and fight in terms of our faith. Thank you.

1 “The Play.” In Demeter and Other Poems. London: MacMillan and Co., 1889.

2 “In Memoriam,” CXXII, Alfred Lord Tennyson

3 https://www.un.org/en/about-us/un-charter/preamble

4 https://www.un.org/en/about-us/un-charter/preamble

5 The Future Growth of World Population, p. v, preface..

6 The Future Growth of World Population, p. 7..

7 The Future Growth of World Population, p. 16..

8 Ro 8:31.