CHURCH AND HYPOCRISY.

Press, Volume LX, Issue 18195, 4 October 1924, Page 16

CHURCH AND HYPOCRISY.

LOCAL CHURCHMEN'S OPINIONS. Although young undergraduates attending the Church Congress in London have claimed that modern Church tendencies are not all that they should be, as to reported in a cable message received from London yesterday, the position in New Zealand is nothing to be alarmed about. This reassurance is given bv a number of prominent Christchurch church people, who were approached on the subject, but who, in the main, agree that there is eertainly room for improvement. Archbishop Julins, Primate of New Zealand, when approached in the matter, said that a great deal of the contentions of the undergraduates was true. Beyond that he refused to comment on the message. A prominent Chureh of England worker also stated that there were certain truths in the allegations. There was a tendency, however, on the part of the undergraduates to overrate the position. Everyone knew, he said, that there was hypocrisy inside the Church as well as outside. There always had been and he thought there always would be. For that matter there was hypocrisy everywhere where human. beings met together. It was a failing' of the race and was as old as mankind. On the other hand youth was prone to make mountains out of molehills. It was probably overlooked by some of the Undergraduates who had spoken ut the conference that there might have been some sort of hypocrisy even amongst their own numbers. He thought that the statement that most congregations were hotbeds of jealousy, backbiting and intrigue was an exaggeration. This might certainly prove true in some cases, but there were always exceptions to the rule. The congregation of a church was comprised of human beings, as was a football, a golf or a tennis club, and as such must contain people who possessed the ordinary human failings. None was perfect, but a point such as this had apparently been overlooked; or perhaps the undergraduates were willing to set themselves up as an example and provide a separate class to which other of their more ordinary fellow humans eould look for guidance. The snbjeet of the cablegram was treated with sorno seriousness by another prominent Christchurch church worker, who was approached last evening by a representative of '' The Press." He said there had always been a tendency towards hypocrisy by some Church members. It was distressing, that such a case should have arisen in England, as was quoted in the cablegrams, but nevertheless in certain phases the same conditions existed everywhere. There seemed to bo a tendency towards an undesirable bigotry, and if the Church were really to attain its objective this must be stamped out. To-day conditions were vastly different from those existing in the "Victorian era, when even if people wero somewhat smug, they were nevertheless more easily handled. To-day the youth of the nation had more of a, tendency towards an independence which was not possessed by the generation which had now passed, and if the Chureh was to secure these people it must set an example which was based on fact not on fiction which covered a mass of hypocrisy. "It is very niifortnnate that a good many excellent people who do not go to church should have such views," said the Rev. W. Arthur Hay, of the Durham street Methodist Church. "They seem to think that the Church is insincere. My opinion is that a .closer contact with the Church would dispel that idea." He was not blind to the fact, he said, that the more tho Church . attempted to draw outsiders the more its action was looked upon as a kind of sop to them. "We know we have the goods," he concluded, "and the best thinking people in. the Church are very much disturbed that such errors of judgment concerning it should be made by so many of the public.'' The Bev. N. L. D. Webster, of St. Andrew' 3 Church, said there certainly was hypocrisy in the Church, but not to such an extent as the cabled message would make it appear. For every hypocrite in the Church, however, there were a thousand to be found outside. With regard to the statement that the Church was out of touch with youth work, Mr Webster said that such was not true of the Presbyterian Church. In Christchurch, for instance, there were over 100 young people associated with the various Church organisations connected with St. Andrew's. The cabled statements, continued Mr Webster, were those of undergraduates, who thought they could put the woTld right in five minutes. When they had lived a few years longer, their viewß, he had no doubt, would be altogether different. Mr Webster pointed out that the Church Congress was an Anglican Congress, and had nothing to do with the Presbyterian Church. This was clear from the reference to churchwardens, which term was not used in connexion with the Presbyterian Church.