MUST COME OFF FENCE

Evening Post, Volume CXXIV, Issue 13, 15 July 1937, Page 10

MUST COME OFF FENCE

WAR AGAINST EVIL

CALL TO THE CHURCH

TRUE LEADERSHIP

BISHOP HOLLAND'S ADDRESS

"We must come off the fence, and take sides .in the great fight between the forces of God and the forces of evil in the world," declared the Bishop of Wellington (The Kt. Rev. H. St. Barbe Holland), addressing: the Wellington Diocesan Synod this afternoon.

In countless ways, he said, the Church could exercise that true leadership in the nation which Earl Baldwin saw to be necessary, but it could be done only if its members put first things first and became outstanding examples of the power of Christ to influence and control human life.

In a wonderful speech to the youth of the Empire, said Bishop Holland, Earl Baldwin had emphasised that if democracy was to survive it must have leadership. That leadership he had described as "a leadership of faith and character."

' What body, asked Bishop Holland, J could more truly give that leadership than the Church whose very foundation was faith in God and whose fruit was the Christian character? We were utterly disloyal to our heritage if we failed to recognise and to respond to this call to leadership at the present moment. The issues were so momentous, the chaos of our social order was so menacing, the whole future of so-called Christian civilisation was so clearly in the balance, that without effective leadership from the Church the hope of salvation seemed very slender. That, leadership could not be put into commission; it could not be left to bishops and clergy; it could only be forthcoming if the whole body of those who would call themselves Church members got an entirely new vision of their high vocation and by yielding their lives more fully and unhesitatingly to the lordship of Christ made their Church a more effective vehicle of God's redemptive power.

WAYS OF HELPING.

There seemed to him two directions in which this leadership was badly needed and could be supplied by a Church whose members were avowedly and unreservedly Christian.

"We have been shocked and appalled by the revelations of moral laxity in the recent disclosures of a Government Committee," continued his Lordship. "I have not time to deal with this problem in any truly constructive manner; I am not here concerned with what we, as a Church, think the Government should do or should not do to remedy the state of affairs, but I am gravely concerned with what we as a Church should do, and I am only making one suggestion even in regard to this. The Church has links with all grades and ranks of society through its members.

Cannot these members as they take their place in the social and business life of .the nation stand firmly and uncompromisingly for Christian standards? Are they not all too prone today to give a presentation of Christianity from which the note of sternness has been eliminated, suggesting in Father Honald Knox's phrase: 'The milk of human kindness beaten up into butter and

served in a lordly dish.'

"The virtues of kindness, tolerance, and ' broadmindedness have been extolled out of all proportion to the sterner virtues. I want to recall the whole Church to a new understanding of what an influence it would exercise if all its members were willing in their contacts with ordinary life to admit that they stand unflinchingly for a Christian New Zealand.

A DETHRONING OF SELF,

"I long to see the younger married men and women losing none of their gaiety or love of life, but at the same time showing to the younger generation that they, want their own lives and those of their friends to be controlled by the outlook and spirit of Christ. I want to see the younger men of the Church given unstinted service to the freedom-loving and adventurous boys of today in recalling to them the glory and the joy of Christian manhood. I want to see the younger married women not leaving the work among the girls of this generation to those older than themselves, who cannot fully understand them, but giving themselves to active service, in their private friendships and through organisations such as the Girls' Friendly Society, whose rebirth is marked by instructions issued to its brandies to burn all its literature which is more than five years old, in order that they may help to re-establish the Christian view of sex, marriage, and parenthood. In fact we must all dethrone self in this day of crisis and regard ourselves as men and women called to be all and do all that Christ would have us be and do in the saving of the world."

USE OF LEISURE

The second point made by his Lordship was that the Church had a notable opportunity of giving a lead in the tremendous problem of training the coming generation for the use of its new-found leisure.

"What a worthwhilencss," he continued, "it would add to life if many of our younger and gifted men and women could escape from the weary and ultimately unsatisfying: round of the cocktail party, the bridge party, the piclures, the dances, and the Sunday golf, all of which have their place in life, into an atmosphere of service for a compelling; cause.

"God made us in His image; God is essentially creative, and unless we are striving to create instead of to enjoy we are missing the end of life. What a glory for the Church to take the leadership in this nation in creating in the coming generation a new desire, and new opportunities for a deeper cultural development, for thought and activity along the paths of art and literature, and above all, for the cultivation of (he things of the spirit, for the discovery of God's will and way for men in a tortured and distracted world. ..."

creased to that extent. That amounted to a form of inflation. The speaker was not an inflationist but an equationist and that was all that the compensated price amounted to.

Mr. L. O. Oakley (Mid-Canterbury) questioned whether the Government could give a compensated price to an industry that it did not control.

The hope that any decision reached would be unanimous was expressed by Mr. W. J. Poison, M.P. (Stratford). The more indefinite the union was on the means of implementing the compensated price, the better it would be for the case of the union. He was not an inflationist. All that was asked by the union was that the primary producer should be placed on the same footing as other sections of the community. The unionists had obtained higher wages and the manufacturers had secured protection. Why then, should not the primary producer be similarly treated and not. left as the chopping block .tor the rest of the community?

The motion set out above was egrried practically unanimously.