CORRESPONDENTS' VIEWS

Auckland Star, Volume LXXIV, Issue 82, 7 April 1943, Page 2

CORRESPONDENTS' VIEWS

CHURCH AND SCHOOL To The Editor Tour Saturday contributor is a High Church Anglican and till lately a militant pacifist. Both of these factors stare through his last Saturday's hotchpotch (his own deserip. tive word for the work of those teaching voluntarily in the State schools). No one perhaps, but one in whose blood these two currents run could have produced his inaccurate, and, from his own church standards, heretical mix up. Who has ever pretended that this is a holy war? Who has supposed that is it pure Christ against pure devil? That the basic principles of the Allies are in the line of the Christian ethic is all that is claimed. Your contributor belittles the Bible. He makes it secondary to the clerics and to their dogmas. He holds that common men are entirely incompetent to recognise Christ in the Gospels or to understand Him, without the aid of a clergymen and a creed. He denies that wayfaring men armed with the plain promises of the Book can find their way. The Bible secondary forsooth! And secondary to priests of doubtful lineage, forsooth! The Fathers of the Anglican Church were otherwise minded. To them Scripture is the supreme authority, by which all Church doctrine and practise must be judged. For an Anglican it is not the Church which judges the Book. The Book judges the Church. That is regular Protestantism. Our country is sick of sheer secularism, and the doors of the schools are now being opened for the teaching of those common factors which are the basis of our religion. Your contributor ought to know that England is sick of the denominational school. He ought to know that the output of the denominational school has been no more impressive morally than the output of schools, in which the simple elements of religion are contained and taught. Neither church schools, nor State schools with a religious basis, can guarantee results, for religion is "caught, not taught," but a'very great deal is possible if that which has been begun in recent years is continued on an increasing scale of efficiency. Nothing at all will be done along the lines suggested by your clerical contributor. J. J. NORTH.