United Nations

The United Nations is an intergovernmental organization founded in 1945, with stated aims that include promoting cooperation in international law, international security, economic development, social progress, human rights, civil rights, civil liberties, political freedoms, democracy, and the achievement of lasting world peace. Theosophists have been supportive of the United Nations since its inception.

Theosophists anticipating need for United Nations

James S. Perkins, President of the Theosophical Society in America from 1945-1960, spoke in a public lecture in 1942 about the need for an international structure:

If the postwar world establishes a federation of free peoples, strong enough to promise the end of military aggression, “we will have a world in which human intelligence will organize and distribute the ample resources of Nature and devote itself to human progress rather than to destruction,” James S. Perkins, vice-president of the Theosophical Society in America, said in a lecture at the society’s rooms here last night.
“But tomorrow’s world,” he cautioned, “will inevitably grow out of today’s acts. Since human progress advances or falls upon the moral and spiritual integrity of the main body of its individuals, the condition of tomorrow’s world rests squarely upon the question whether men in their daily lives are giving expression to those universal principles which are the ethical foundations of any great and enduring world order.”

James and Kathrine Perkins of the Theosophical Society in America, at lower right, at United Nations conference for intergovernmental groups