Vigorous B.B.C. Debate On Morals And Religion

Press, Volume XCI, Issue 27563, 21 January 1955, Page 11

Vigorous B.B.C. Debate On Morals And Religion

(Rec. 9 p.m.) LONDON, January 20. Mrs Margaret Knight, whose recent broadcast on “florals Without Religion”'began one of the biggest broadcasting controversies for years, and Mrs Jenny Morton, her challenger, fought vigorously on the 8.8. C. Home Service last night for their respective views.

Mrs Knight, a lecturer in psychology at Aberdeen University, and Mrs Morton, wife of the deputy-leader of the lona Community, a Scottish sect, agreed on one point—that love is the all-importarit thing in bringing up children.

But Mrs Knight, who startled Britain in two radio talks denying the existence of God, was adamant in her final programme. In her debate with a “firm believer,” Mrs Knight said talk about the loving purposes of God was a “bit beyond a child.” Mrs Morton said the scientific humanism which Mrs Knight advocated left unanswered the “question of that reasonable hope which is demanded by all of whom great efforts are expected.”

Mrs Knight said her quarrel was wkh dogmatic theology—the doctrines of incarnation, the atonement and the resurrection. What she was primarily criticising was instilling dogmatic religious belief into children. Surely any modern child must feel there was something morally wrong in the idea of God giving his only son as a sac-

rifice as the price of man’s redemption.

Mrs Morton said: “Perhaps I stress hope so much because in the 1930’s when I lived under the Japanese occupation in China and learned for the first time and at close quarters about modern prison techniques of brain washing and torture I was overwhelmed by the question—who am I? Am I able to withstand the unbearable pain? I

“So I do understand that people have difficulties, intellectual difficulties and moral difficulties, not to be made little of by easy answers. But as I tried to go on, I found God’s love met me in ordinary life.”