England’s Churches

Press, Volume LXXVIII, Issue 23813, 5 December 1942, Page 4

England’s Churches

The Archbishop of New Zealand, appealing to his clergy for their help in raising funds to repair the damage done to English churches by air raids, has been careful to say that the destruction has been “ so vast that anything we could do “here would be rather a gesture of “ sympathy than an attempt to “grapple seriously with the pro- “ blem”; but, he adds, the gesture is one which should be gladly made. New Zealand has been spared, so far, the “desperate trial of faith “and morale” through which the people of Britain held firm, while the walls of their family life, their work, their worship, and their history were shattered around them; but in their example of courage and faith, at a moment “critical for “the whole future of civilisation,” as Archbishop West-Watson says, New Zealand has a debt to acknowledge. Inevitably, attention has been concentrated on the destruction of Wren’s churches and yet older monuments of Christianity in England. Thus, of the four chief examples of mediaeval church architecture in London—Austin Friars, Allhallows-by-the-Tower, St, Bartholomew, and St. Helen, Bishopsgate—the two first were utterly destroyed in the autumn raids of 1940; and that merely opens the catalogue of irreparable ruin. Irreparable is the word for much of it, and it is a word of sad

finality; but it cannot turn attention away from the tasks of faith and duty—of restoration and repair and of reconstruction. These reach far beyond the limits of damage to churches of great age and beauty. They are not material tasks only. They will be undertaken as means and signs, also, of what Professor John Macmurray has called “ the “ creative Christianity of the “ new community.” New Zealand churchmen, and (it may be believed) many who do not call themselves churchmen, will welcome the Archbishop’s appeal, because it gives them an opportunity to contribute more than sympathy, more than gratitude, to tasks of great need and tremendous promise.