Toleration Of Odd Persons

Press, Volume CII, Issue 30221, 28 August 1963, Page 14

Toleration Of Odd Persons

“Those who live in the great industrial communities of Britain have a breadth of outlook we New Zealanders don’t have. Ttiey have learnt, perforce through pressure of numbers, that they must tolerate one another. The person who is odd can survive among them There is an openness and frankness we don’t have m these small towns Of ours tn New Zealand " said Mr E A. Crothall. an industrialist and a Methodist lay preacher, in an address to a public meeting held in connexion with the North Canterbury Methodist synod last evening w The tolerance shown was i

purely detachment, however Mr Crothall added. “They tolerate the odd person, but they don't care, of course, if he dies in the gutter. Individuals are only commas in a huge page of statistics.” he said The vast majority of those who worked in these great concentrations of industry thought God irrelevant to their everyday life, and they had as much right to this opinion as Christians had r> the opposite idea. Mr Crothall said Accepting this was “a □rerequisite to (Christians* being hstened to in circles not accustomed to Church talk." Mr Crothall described the British “industrial life con-

ferences" through which persons at all levels in industry were coming to realise in what ways God was indeed relevant to their jobs. In workplaces affected by the movement, there was often a complete change of atmosphere—for example, where the newcomer was once left to find his own way by trial and pain f ul error, efforts were made to welcome him and warn him of any pitfails This was being brought about not because Christians "pushed their owp barrow " but because they made themselves available “as resources" to those who might need them, in terms others could understand and found acceptable.