In the ageless contest with principalities and powers over the minds and hearts of men until Christ returns, the Gospel knows no greater antagonist than godless materialism. Of all organized forms of godless materialism, none is more virulent or dominant in the world today than Communism.

The National Association of Evangelicals recognizes the difficulty of maintaining a distinction between the humanity God so loved that He gave His only begotten son on their behalf, and the world systems which are at enmity with righteousness. We affirm the necessity to love the sinner even while hating the sin.

In the effort to establish and maintain concord in human relations the danger of compromising conviction for the sake of peace looms large. It is possible to confuse political friendship with ideological agreement — to abandon resistance to a hurtful way of life because the political winds of change have made a friend out of the organization or government representing that same hurtful way of life.

Today there is danger that the passionate search for peace will make Godly men more tolerant of godless materialism because it is the way of life of those among whom the servants of the Most High God would live in peace. For the sake of friendship Christians, even, may lower their guard against the virus of an evil ideology. Inadvertently, perhaps, they may yield to the blandishments of those who warn, “Better red than dead! ”

As evangelical Christians we greatly deplore the evidences of accommodation to the ideology supportive of Communism observable in America today. In the Church it appears in the insistence one increasingly hears that revolution, even violent revolution is inevitable in the process of social change. In the state we see this in the evidence of a growing disregard for the rights of the private sector and the growing acceptance of the doctrine, “from each according to his ability, to each according to his need” not as a Christian principle but as a fixed economic law. In both Church and state we see it in an obsession with total secularization as a way of life, and in the passion to eliminate distinctions or differences of any kind.

In such a time as this, when godless materialism promises to dominate a society which once was described as Christian, we urge the strengthening of those things that remain before darkness comes. On this account we reaffirm our unalterable opposition to every form of atheistic Communism.