CHURCHES AND INDUSTRY.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIII, Issue 183, 4 August 1932, Page 23

CHURCHES AND INDUSTRY.

I read with interest and appreciation your report in Monday's issue of the address given by Mr, W. J. Jordan, M.P., on Christ and the industrial question, in the Otahuhu Baptist Church. Surely it is time such questions were dealt with from a practical point of view by the Church. To my mind, the Church, on the pretext that politics should not be discussed in the pulpit, has too long held aloof from the social problems of the day. Every age has ite peculiar problems to face, and it is recognised that the social question is the problem of this age. Is it not a fact that the Church in the past has been content to deal only with the evil fruits of our present economic system, instead of facing the root causes? Surely God never intended that there should be poverty and misery in the midst of abundance. Had the Church dealt boldly in the past with the evil of the unequal distribution of the world's wealth, we would not have been faced with the conditions of to-day. To my mind, it is impossible for the golden rule to love your neighbour as yourself to be carried out under the existing economic system. That does not mean that the "•olden rule is wrong, but it does mean that our present economic system, to be just, must be radically altered. Surely the Church would not be going outside her province if she denounced the present wicked process of deflation that is one cause of our present poverty and misery. Thinking people know that deflation is in the interests of those who have, and against the materially weak who have not. If Christ were in the world to-day He would have a great deal to say about such questions as unemployment and their real cause. I entirely agree with Mr. Jordan when he says that if the Church cannot develop the spirit of love in the human family it must surely die. When the spirit of co-operation and brotherhood is substituted for the spirit of greed and selfishness this world will be a happy place to live in, arid all virtuous people will'have enough and to spare. , JUSTICE.