COMMUNISM

Auckland Star, Volume LXIV, Issue 150, 28 June 1933, Page 16

COMMUNISM

CHRISTIANITY THE ANTIDOTE. SEIIMOX BY ARCHBISHOP. We have only to study what is happening, not only in Russia and Western Europe, but also in Turkey. China, and India, to realise that ( hristianity is ud against a greater problem than it 'had to face in the heathenism of the Roman Empire," said Archbishop Averill in delivering a sermon last night at the diocesan mission festival service in St. Mary's Cathedral. Ho asked if the life and death struggle taking place between Christianity and Communism was realised. j "The only antidote to Bolshevism, before it is too late, is real, thoroughgoing Christianity, which accepts what is true in Communism and rejects what is false." said the Archbishop. ''The Christians of China and Japan are making strenuous efforts against the octopus of Communism. The Church in China has embarked upon a 'five-year plan' of spiritual renewal within and evangelisation without. I believe that Japan is the strategic centre of the conflict to-day. If the Christian forces there were increased tenfold, the result would not be in doubt. The quartermillion Japanese Christians exercise an influence out of all proportion to their number, and Christianity is recognised as one of the three religions of Japan. Unfortunately, it is too weak to make itself felt iii times of crisis. Until Christianity can claim a million people it cannot be a creative force to fashion the nation's life ujion a Christian pattern." Archbishop Averill said a remarkable and alarming feature about Communism was the religious fervour it succeeded in kindling among those who espoused it. A Russian professor, now a victim of Communism, had written that its great attraction was due to the fact that those who held the real solution of life's problems—the professed Christians —had failed to grapple wholeheartedly with the social evils for which the proletariat was seeking .a religious solution.