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PASTOR GENERAL'S REPORT, MARCH 1, 1985
PAGE 11
So Washington chose to regard Hawke's mishandling of the MX af
fair as a minor irritant--and hoped it was not a signal of worse
to come.
Writing in the February 17 SAN DIEGO UNION, P. Edward Haley, director of the
Keck Center for International Strategic Studies, added the following in his
article "ANZUS: New Zealand Pulled Plug on Pacific Pact":
Australia is the critical factor, not New Zealand•••• These
[ above mentioned] facilities are of enormous value to the United
States. They make Australia a target of Soviet nuclear weapons.
Finally, Australia could prohibit the transit of U.S. nuclear
armed ships and planes through its waters, ports and airfields.
At present, U.S. "hunter-killer" nuclear attack submarines call
frequently at Cockburn Sound in Western Australia. Generally,
there is one American sub at Cockburn 25 percent of the time (for
one week each month) to allow replenishment of supplies and rest
and recreation for the crew. U.S. nuclear-armed ships can use
their Australian ports because the Australian government over
rides local protests by resorting to its constitutional foreign
policy powers. American B-52s make regular use of the RAAF air
base at Darwin in northern Australia for reconnaissance flights
and conduct other types of flight training over northern Queens
land.
The refusal of "transit" rights would seriously harm the ability
of the United States to project its naval power into the Western
Pacific. The nearest alternative facilities are in the Philip
pines, and the political situation there is not encouraging. The
loss of surveillance, communications, and transit facilities
would endanger the security of the United States itself, for it
would undermine U.S. capabilities to deter Soviet nuclear attack.
Religious Tradition Changing
On a totally different topic the following article excerpted from the NEW
YORK TIMES NEWS SERVICE last December shows the changes that have taken
place in religious belief in the United States:
Americans are turning away from the dictates of organized reli
gion and are drawing upon spiritual feelings of their� to de
fine their faith, a leading researcher in religious values has
found. Dr. William J. Mccready, program director of the National
Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago, told a
group of philanthropists here that the shift represented a major
change in the nation's religious character.
Religious faith remains strong, Mccready said, but for growing
numbers of people an individual search for meaning has become the
central religious experience, replacing unquestioning obedience
to religious authority. "The transition is not from authority to
anarchy but to conscience," he said•.••
McCready's research [shows] •••that 60 percent of Americans re
cently surveyed rejected the concept of "absolute moral guide
lines." Ten years ago, only about 40 percent of Americans held