CHIEF ENEMIES OF RELIGION

Press, Volume LXXII, Issue 21809, 15 June 1936, Page 12

CHIEF ENEMIES OF RELIGION

SERMON BY CANON PARR ROTARIANS ATTEND SERVICE The chief enemies of religion were intellectualism, neo-paganism, and absolutism, which were all denying God, said Canon S. Parr in a special sermon at the Cathedral last night,' which was attended by members of the Rotary Club of Christchurch. Intellectualism, the speaker said, was largely the outcome of natural science, which had put such enormous powers into man’s hands that he had come to call himself omnipotent. But this gospel of humanism had been badly shaken lately. The old idea that evolution was taking one happily alono- to the millennium was shattered by the war; and the confidence of man I in his own inventions had been under - { mined by the collapse of his economic i systems. i One of the greatest thinkers to-day, i Berdiaev, considered that the humanl istic or scientific way’ of looking at things was bankrupt. He called it the end of the age. Science had given people the powers of super giants for body and intellect, but she had ignored or denied the soul which was to control those powers. This had caused the world trouble, said Canon Parr. Religion supplied the soul of the world, and God must come back. Unfortunately the world was flooded by cheap so-called scientific literature, hostile to religion, and unfortunately religion made no reply. Its case went by default. The second enemy of religion, neopaganism, was a superior pose of many, borrowed from Bertrand Russell, 'Aldous Huxley, and others. For it there was no God, no sin, no future life, no heaven or hell, and no morality. It looked like an excuse to go back to the jungle. But man could not live by bread alone, or bv husks either, as the prodigal found out. There were indications already that this sort of philosophy was losing its vogue. There was also the enemy of absolutism —the claim of a government to control one’s religion, and to say whether there should be religion or not, and what kind of a God one should have. There was only one country so far that had altogether exiled God. She had learnt her mistake, but other countries were almost as bad. It had to be remembered that people were children of God, and not children of a machine.There were other enemies of religion to-day: they were formidable enemies, but they were not insuperable. There was too much defeatism about. One was apt to think of the good old days—a golden age of Christianity. Some might imagine that things would gradually get worse, but there never was a golden age of Christianity. The best was yet to be, the speaker said. The church had never been so strong or effective as she was to-dav. The world needed a God and needed him badlv. It was the work of the church and of organisations like Rotary to put God back in the world. St. James said that real religion was to visit the orphans and widows in their affliction, and on this definition Rotary was clearly religious, as it did a great deal of that sort of thing. The annual official church service of Rotary was a significant and welcome thing, because it was an admission by Rotary, that it was dependent on religion. And this was welcome because religion did not always receive acknowledgment from those whom she inspired. So greatly had Christian principles been accepted in the world that one was born half Christian, and unconsciously followed the standards and Ideals which came from Christ. The Rev. F. P. Rawlc conducted the service, and the lessons were read by Rotarian E. Hitchcock and Canon Parr.