DISUNITY AMONG CHURCHES

Press, Volume LXXXIX, Issue 26998, 25 March 1953, Page 10

DISUNITY AMONG CHURCHES

INDIAN BISHOP’S VIEW QUOTED

(New Zealand Press Association) WELLINGTON, March 24.

The disunity of the churches was a scandal which could be compared only with what would occur if the membera of a temperance society were habitually drunk, Bishop Newbiggen, of the Church of South India, told the Lucknow conference of the World Council of Churches recently. His remark was quoted in Wellington today by the Rev. A. T. McNaughton, of Christchurch, who has just returned from the conference. The Bishop was in a strong position to make the remark, said Mr McNaughton, because the Church of South India was itself a fusion of Anglican, Presbyterian, Methodist, and Congregational churches, which had stopped discussing whether they would unite and had been together for five years. Mr McNaughton said that clerics in nominally Christian countries were not so acutely aware of the disadvantages of disunity as those in countries where Christians were in a minority. European ministers had learned a lot from the conference, he said. “We tend tOi say ‘in Christ we are united* and theri add in the next breath, ‘but you must be a Christian of such-and-such a denomination or else,’ ” Mr McNaughton said.