OPPOSING VIEWS

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31628, 14 March 1968, Page 3

OPPOSING VIEWS

Movement from the local church to one where there was more spiritual nourishment should not be done with any sense of rejection, the Rev. D. White said at the inter-church school in Christchurch yesterday. “This should be done willingly and in the belief that God’s work is done in a variety of means,” he said. Mr White, the director of Presbyterian Christian Education in New Zealand, was taking part in a panel discussion on whether persons should, out of duty, be loyal to the local church when they could find more spiritual nourishment elsewhere. The Roman Catholic Bishop of Christchurch (the Most Rev. B. P. Ashby) said that loyalty to one church also resulted in development of the community, and provided spiritual bonds nourished by work together. Mrs Lieutenant-Colonel P. L. Smith, an officer with the Salvation Army in Wellington, said that loyalty was tremendously important in the church and without. “I think it is also verydangerous to move churches often and we should be careful not to become sermon tasters,” she said. Other topics discussed by the panel included doctrinal beliefs of Christianty, faith in God and in the Church, the right of Christians to evangelise members of pagan religions, the age at which Christian teaching should begin, and guidance by the Holy Spirit.