RELIGIOUS BROADCASTS.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIV, Issue 96, 26 April 1933, Page 6

RELIGIOUS BROADCASTS.

Quite a lot has been said in your paper on the pros and cons of. Divine services being broadcast. While we moderns'are apt tbturn up our noses and get really worked up when we hear a service from over the air, we should remember that there are millions of people who, though not churchgoers, find it a change to hear God's word in their own homes, though their views on religion may be unorthodox. But it is well to remember that 99 per cent'' of we humans in our last moments on this earth or when we think our life is; in.peril , invariably turn our thoughts to ; oUr and the hereafter. Having knocked round the world in many and varied social roles, from that of an affluent tourist to that of a "swaggie," inmate of a dozen hospitals, in the Hawke's Bay earthquake, etc., I have seen men and women in their agony of mind and' body praying earnestly regardless of the spectators to their God and Saviour, Whom hitherto they knew only in the vaguest way. Knowing this, I think we should at least leave the religious programmes as they are. I suggest to those who dislike the broadcasting of Divine services on Sunday evenings to dial over to KNX, Hollywood, or to K.T.M., Los Angeles, and they will then be able to listen to the very jazziest American Saturday night programmes. As to better secular- programmes, why could we not have more local orchestral renderings and so create more employment as well as enjoyment? When one tunes into Australian, American, Canadian and British stations and compares the class of programmes with our own YA's it gives one a bad taste in the mouth, especially as we pay the highest radio license fee in the world. MENEDEMUS.