RELIGIOUS REPORTS

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31076, 3 June 1966, Page 6

RELIGIOUS REPORTS

Church Policy

Attacked

Many churchmen would not welcome “intelligent, probing, interpretive reporting” of church news, and this was why most newspaper editors assigned “their youngest and callowest reporters” to collecting it, according to an article by Mr D. McEldowney in the “Outlook”, the official organ of the Presbyterian Church.

Praising the symposium on religion by seven writers in the March issue of “Landfall”, Mr McEldowney says “religion is not usually thought worthy of serious study in secular journals in New Zealand.”

While newspapers give plenty of space to church news “what editors typically think of it” can be judged from the junior staff they generally assign to it. “And, on the whole, such journals of opinion as we have, have followed suit,” says the writer.

The attitude of the press and churchmen has resulted in “almost nothing being known about religion in New Zealand, except at the most elementary level,” says Mr McEldowney. “Nothing is known about just how religious New Zealanders are, how or whethei religion affects their lives, or whether religion in New Zealand is taking any regional form.”