CHURCH UNITY

Auckland Star, Volume LXXIII, Issue 114, 16 May 1942, Page 8

CHURCH UNITY

I CAMPAIGN FOR ORDER

AIMS 6f the movement

It was a,man who knew a great deal about'publicity campaigns who is supposed'to have said to "I don't care what'you say about: me so long as you say something,"? and so the organisers of the New Zealand Campaign for Christian Order should perhaps be grateful to the Rev. C. W.\Chandler for drawing : attention, in his column in last week's Star, to what he considers are the defects in the campaign, states one of the leading organisers of the movement. Mr. Chandler's chief complaint is that the Church is always like a "thousand-pounder" firing "three-o-threes," but it might with equal truth be said that Mr. Chandler has himself gone -to the butts with a .303 rifle and a" pocketful of .22 ammunition. It is not surprising that he has several times shot wide of the target.

But not always. Let it be quite clear that the organisers of the campaign are as fully aware as anyone of the many grave defects - in ; the Church and its present relation .to daily life—they would hardly have launched this campaign if theyweren't. The very fact that the campaign is not to be launched on the public till the;spring, after several months of intensive preparation within t the churches, doing what they can to set their own houses in order first;and get their ideas clarified, is proof of that. Or, to continue Mr. Chandler's warlike simile, they are now busy reboring their big guns, seeing to their fuse caps and getting their powder dried out.

Pre-jiulging the Case

Our critic reveals the weakness of much of "his own argument when, with reference to the campaign's officia 1> book let, "For Faith and Freedom," she says, "Even before I read) ltvli knew?itiwould not contain onef syllable byway of courageous pro-' test; against.anything." v What would Mr.'Chandlerj-think of a wha madetup»his .mindsbefore he heard; the evidence?,#. But what is his In this case, as it hap-' pens,i it. is* truer in? a - sense - that the real purpose• of:this.;particular book-' let is not a propagandist one; its design is to make positive . suggestions about things that should be done, rather than protests about things that have already been done or left undone, to adduce the broad principles upon which Christian Order must be founded, and to explain the campaign for those people who are taking part in it now within the various churches.

But the outside public, and Mr. Chandler, can take it from us that when the time comes there won't be any lack of protests. We hope to cause plenty of explosions and blow up quite a lot of rotten fabric of the status quo. That is necessary before the proper rebuilding of a Christian social order can really begin. And when the time comes to judge results, it will be as well to remember that the Church is like the State or any other organisation in that it can only be as good as the individuals in it (which includes Mr. Chandler).

The Archbishop's Bombshell

There's a great deal of this necessary demolition work going on in Great Britain alreadv. The report of the Malvern Conference last vear made one big breach in the status quo, and the appointment of Dr. Temple as Archbishop of Canterbury has made another. Mr. Chandler's claim that the Church usuallv lags behind human progress and that it is solidly on the side of the "big guns" or the "brass hats," is true in part, but it is certainly not borne out by the appointment of the newArchbishop of Canterbury. It would be as well if the public got it right out of its head that Dr. Temple has gone to his new position with the full approbation of all the members of his own church or of all the "official" leaders of Great Britain. Probably no such appointment has ever been less unanimous. From the viewpoint of the common people, this lack of unanimity is encouraging, as are also the very real signs of panic in conservative financial, political and religious circles. We Are Not Pessimistic One of the criticisms made against the campaign by the New Zealand National Council of Churches is that "multi-headed organisations are incapable of movement." Yet the Church of England itself, for example, is multi-headed, and it certainly looks from the above that some of the heads are by no means content to stay resting comfortablv on the pillow. And what is true of Great Britain is largely true of this country. Although this campaign is being carried out by those who want to be up and doing, there will be others within each branch of the Church who will prefer to go on sleeping. By our success in waking them up, the ojutside public will largely decide whether to accept Christian leadership in the task of blowing up the rotten parts of the present social order and rebuilding a better one. If it is true, as many of our leaders have reiterated, that this war is being fought for Christian principles, then it is even more true that a just peace can only be based on those Christian principles that have always existed but have never yet been tried.