Bishop Warns Synod On Union

Press, Volume CVII, Issue 31502, 17 October 1967, Page 32

Bishop Warns Synod On Union

(New Zealand Press Association) NELSON, October 16. Agreement on Church union by theologians and negotiators had far outstripped the progress made at parish level, the Bishop of Nelson (the Rt Rev. P. E. Sutton) said today.

He warned the diocese of Nelson synod that if union was to be achieved it must be a general union which did not drive members to secede for conscientious reasons.

Bishop Sutton said regional church union committees had been formed in Nelson, but their work was only just beginning.

The other negotiating churches had the experience of generations of consultation together, but Anglicans began virtually from scratch in 1964. The bishop said one was often dismayed to hear remarks which suggested that most of the major issues be-

tween the churches could be resolved after corporate union had been achieved.

The joint commission, at the outset of its business, had determined to look first at the major questions that might prove to be insuperable obstacles.

Bishop Sutton, reviewing the history of the steps taken towards church union, said that the purpose of the Church as a whole was missionary, and because this was so its division into various denominations was "a scandal to the unifying work of Christ” He told the synod that Christians had no right to demand the same results in corporate union as the secular world could expect from business mergers of legal contracts.