Article October 18, 1952 Issue

Signs of the Times

with contributions from Brainard F. Gibbons, Robert J. McCracken, Alan Walker, Paul Scherer, Arthur W. McDavitt

Brainard F. Gibbons in an article in The Christian Leader Boston, Massachusetts

Only within the last couple of hundred years has man begun to emerge from the mass and the individual to be born. Following a long line of courageous pioneers who dared tyrannical power even unto martyrdom to think and act for themselves, man suddenly asserted his freedom and individuality in a series of revolutions, some bloody, some not, of stupendous significance to society. Human progress crawled at a snail's pace during the vast periods the individual was suppressed in slavery.

Once these bonds were broken and the individual was born, civilization surged forward at breakneck speed. In these few recent centuries, our rate of advance has been infinitely greater than ever, and some say that even the ground covered has been more than in all the previous ages of history. ... We must maintain the social soils in which experience has shown the individual can best exist and grow. The essence of such soil is freedom! Freedom for man to be himself, think and act for himself, govern himself, all the freedoms incorporated in modern ideals of democracy! Freedom to labor, own, and enjoy what he earns, all the freedoms flowing from enlightened visions of private enterprise! Freedom to call life and soul his own! ... We must never forget that any change which threatens freedom, however little, jeopardizes the individual. As Albert Schweitzer has warned, "the great problem of modern times is to safeguard the integrity of the individual within the modern (cooperative) state." So, whatever changes are to come, make sure that they do not destroy the individual.

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