CHURCH CONGRESS

Press, Volume LXVI, Issue 20086, 15 November 1930, Page 2

CHURCH CONGRESS

DR. NORWOOD ON LAMBETH DISAPPOINTING FINDINGS. (molt out owjj conaasposajsst*.) LONDON, -October 9. In an address to the autumn assembly at Southend* of the Congregational Union of England and Wales, Dr. F. W. Norwood referred to marriage and birth control, and criticised the findings of the Lambeth Conference. He declared that in his judgment, so far as Nonconformity had dreamed of a closer union with the Anglican Coinmunion, the findings at Lambeth might bo reduced to four -words: "No road this way.'' ' Dr. Norwood said that to speak or marriage as a Sacrament was playing with language. Nothing had confused the issue more than the priestly assumption that character would be imposed upon marriage by ecclesiastical logerdemain. "The Christian ideal of marriage is sacred; it is the only worthy ideal. But the v times call for a more difficult, but more adequate, defence than the- mere assertion that a marriage is Christian because it was solemnised by Christian rites. "We had better surrender the pretence of giving that character to it by means of Holy Orders. To make marriage worthy of the Christian ideal is the -task of the Christian Church. The Highest of all Functions. "The Bishops have created a mild sensation by pronouncing the awful words, 'Birth Control.' Without control, birth would be a scandal. Society is only possible by means of it. When a man restrains his natural impulses because he has' not. yet found his true mate, he, is exercising birth-control. When, having found his mate, he yet waits until he can establish a satisfactory home, he is again exercising birthcontrol. "Surely after that, he is not the victim of blind impulse. Will not the security of his employment, the stato of Uis exchequer, the health of his wife or of himself, the' grade of education he thinks his children should receive, the incidence of taxation, his provision for the future,' or a score of other factors, make some difference to him. Must ho surrender the highest o£ all functions to caprice, even if he calls it Providence? "This is bv far the most revolutionary thing said at Lambeth. In effect, it is an announcement that the Bishops have taken notice of what has been going on for 50 years, and now solemnly leave each couple to decide for themselves!" Discussing war and self-defence, as dealt with at Lambeth, Dr. Norwood protested that' it was futility when a great Church, after saying that war was incompatible with Christ, and an outrage on the Fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man, declared that for all that, on the two points on which alone it was ever likely to occur, war was right. "If you say that a system is incompatible with Jesus, then for God's sake choose," Dr. Norwood exclaimed.