Rector Of “Bow Bells” Church Visiting City

Press, Volume C, Issue 29633, 2 October 1961, Page 13

Rector Of “Bow Bells” Church Visiting City

With encouraging reports of New Zealand and Australian interest in his scheme for rebuilding the Bow Bells, silent for the last 20 years, the visiting Rector of the Church of St. Mary-le-Bow (the Rev. Joseph ■ McCulloch) arrived in Christchurch on Saturday. “My going around the Eng-lish-speaking world inviting people to participate in the rebuilding has had a great response so far,” he said yesterday. Although the recorded

sound of the Bow Bells has been used continuously as a recognition signal by the British Broadcasting Corporation throughout the Second World War, the bells themselves had been shattered in the London blitz of IMI. To rebuild them £263,000 was required, £83,000 Of which he was hoping to collect on his present trip around the Com monwealth, Mr McCulloch said.

Known as the "Cockneys’ parson," Mr McCulloch is also a novelist, broadcaster and writer. A former Liverpool shim child who became an Oxford scholar, Army chaplain and town councillor, he is noted for his work in promoting the church as a part of industrial democracy in answer to Marxism.

Discussing this yesterday. Mr McCulloch said that to a great extent church organisation was not really geared to the present-day stiucture ot modern society. “Since the Industrial Revolution the great question has been how the church can become more closely involved with the realities of modem industrial living,” he said. As a practical expert men' and demonstration of the church's part in community life, Mr McCulloch cited his work at the Medway (Thames) town of Chatham, where as rector he had tried to make the church a centre of communal life of which the “pubs and the clubs” were a part.

In Christchurch Mr McCulloch will address church and other groups on the history and significance of his church. They will include the annual meeting of the Anglican Diocese of Christchurch. After leaving New Zealand he will visit the United States and Canada.