MISSIONS TO NATIVES.

Auckland Star, Volume LXV, Issue 22, 26 January 1934, Page 6

MISSIONS TO NATIVES.

I read with interest your extract from the report of Da*. Lambert, head of the Rockefeller Foundation health campaign in the Western Pacific. It is important to note that he says that the natives of Eennell Island are not Christians, but yet they live In great contentment. There is no rape, no adultery, no theft and scarcely a killing. The doctor lays great stress on the fact that Christian missions should not be allowed to visit the island, as they would only be followed by social maladjustment and its attendant disasters. We are at last getting made public facts regarding missions amongst natives, which have long been known to people who have visited foreign places or have read reports of people unattached to a religious body. Christianity and the present social order are absolutely interdependent, as the doctor knows, and it is surely time that thinking people realised that our religion is not a cure, but a cause, of the present economic depression. It teaches that we are all sinners in need of saving and points the way to another,world, when what wo want is a fuller realisation of the fact that there is good in all of us, and conditions can be improved if we will face facts instead of discussing supernatural theories, which science is slowly but surely undermining. A. E. KNIGHT.