Laymen Condemn Assembly

Press, Volume CVII, Issue 31540, 30 November 1967, Page 26

Laymen Condemn Assembly

(N Z. Press Association). AUCKLAND, Nov. 29. More than 300 members of the New Zealand Presbyterian Laymen’s Association have condemned the Church’s General Assembly for acquitting Professor L. G. Geering of charges of heresy. In a resolution passed at a rally in the Auckland Town Hall, the assembly was, ac-

cused of failing to reach a decision “faithful to the true doctrines of the Presbyterian Church.” Unless members are satisfied with the result of a meeting of ministers and elders at Greyfriars Church on December 6, they will ask their executive to take further action. The resolution was passed after a debate in which several members attacked the General Assembly for having failed to consider public opinion. One said the assembly “avoided the whole issue by political manoeuvres.” Laymen had to be satisfied with a “pat on the head” and were then forgotten, he said, adding:

“I think the time has come for us to raise a strong voice and let them know how we feel,” he said. “This was a poor way to treat us.” Professor Geering, principal erf the Knox Hall Theological College in Dunedin, also came under fire for his controversial statements on the Resurrection. His beliefs were described, by one of the speakers, Dr F. R. Duncanson, as “a cancer which must be removed.” The chairman of the association (Mr R. J. Wardlaw) told the meeting that the falling social significance of the Church was a natural result of the decay in its spiritual fibre. "The responsibility for to-

day’s agnosticism now rests exactly where it should—not on the shoulders of a single scapegoat theologian, but on the whole Church, through its ruling section,” he said. Mr Wardlaw said the only hope for the spiritual integrity of the Presbyterian Church in New Zealand was to repudiate the assembly’s adoption of a dual secular standard of faith and the implicit denial of the spiritual standard. “That repudiation,” he said, “is only so many empty words unless the people of the Church prove their real faith by rising up in protest to replace those kindly, friendly, comforting unbelievers in many of its pulpits with true ministers of the gospel.”