Christianity Not ‘Going It Alone’

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31120, 25 July 1966, Page 12

Christianity Not ‘Going It Alone’

(New Zealand Preet Association)

AUCKLAND, July 24

A tradition had grown up in England that one could be a Christian without being an active member of the Church, Canon Hugh Montefiore said at a final lunch-hour lecture at Auckland University.

He did not believe one could be a lone Christian, Christianity seemed to be the very opposite of “going it alone.”

“If Christianity were merely a matter of my relationship to God, it would be a form of higher selfishness, a sort of soul-culture which I personally would find so abhorrent that I would have nothing to do with it,” he said.

In many ways he hated the Church because of its permanent Victorianism, but for Christianity the Church was He felt that, instead of being small and strict, the Church should be open to all, because the Christian faith was meant to be for all men, for saints as well as for forgiven sinners. The Christian gospel was meant to be for all men and dared not set its sights lower than the whole human race. Once we began to exclude people on grounds of orthodoxy or conduct, we were contracting the area of grace and seemed to be more exclusive than our Heavenly Father, he said.

“We are hardly in a position to sit in judgment upon others, or those we regard as hypocrites. We may sit in judgment on actions, and we must, but hardly on people.” The Church’s function was not wholly different from that of the Communist Party in Russia.

“No-one thinks that everybody will be members of the Communist Party: yet the Communist Party is there to help and to usher into the world the classless society. “In the same way, it is only wishful thinking to suppose that everyone will ever be a member of the Church. “There is no real need to found Christian societies or charities. There is a colossal need for Christians to influence all kinds of secular societies and charities,” he said.