MALIK,
CHARLES HABIB

(1906–1967), was the Ambassador to the United Nations from Lebanon. He was a member of the U.N. Security Council, 1953–54, and President of the 13th Session of the United Nations General Assembly in 1959. The Honorable Charles Habib Malik, in his Farewell speech upon his retirement, stated in 1958:

The good (in the United States) would never have come into being without the blessing and power of Jesus Christ. … Whoever tries to conceive the American word without taking full account of the suffering and love and salvation of Christ is only dreaming.

I know how embarrassing this matter is to politicians, bureaucrats, businessmen and cynics; but, whatever these honored men think, the irrefutable truth is that the soul of America is at its best and highest, Christian.3550

In an address before the Washington Federation of Churches, Dr. Charles Malik expressed:

The United States is new to the world scene. It suddenly finds itself able too wield unprecedented power. It is natural, therefore, for some people who do not fully know you to be afraid of you: they feel you are not sufficiently seasoned in the exercise of power.

They do not know that there are in the classical American character wonderful reserves of humanity, humility and humor, and that in the fundamental accent upon the dignity of the individual and his worth you have a real salvation from the possible abuse of power. …

The world rightly expects the revelation of what America ultimately really believes in. Nothing is more needful today than the adequate articulation of this message. … It requires the greatest possible sense of responsibility to truth, to God and to history. …

Then the weight of America will be informed and sustained, not only with politics and power, but with truth, with vision, and with holiness.3551

Dr. Charles Malik stated:

If I were asked to choose between the dialectical materialism of the Soviet and the practiced commercialism of the West, I’m not sure I would choose the Western brand. … We have lost the sense of the eternal battle raging between Christ and the devil.”3552