Presbyterian position on union

Press, Volume CXII, Issue 32971, 18 July 1972, Page 16

Presbyterian position on union

(N.Z. Press Association)

AUCKLAND, July 17.

Unless the position on the Presbyterian Church union vote was clarified, attempts would be made to have the voting declared invalid, a Presbyterian minister warned today.

Presbyterians throughout New Zealand will be asked to vote for or against union with the four other churches, based on the plan for union, between August 6 and 13. But opponents of the plan in Auckland have strongly criticised parts of a pastoral letter from the Moderator (the Rev. L. H. Jenkins), which accompanies the voting papers.

They claim the letter is misleading, and gives Presbyterians the impression they will vote on the principle of

union rather than on whether to go ahead with union based on the plan. One sentence in Mr Jenkins’s letter says: “Thus, the question your vote will answer is: do you or do you not believe that it is the will of God that the churches should unite?” In reply to the criticism, Mr Jenkins, who is now in Hamilton, issued a statement today. But the Rev. S. Clark, of Papatoetoe, said the statement did not clarify the position. Unless more effective action was taken, he said, attempts would be made to have the voting in the referendum declared invalid. “The last thing we want is controversy,” said Mr Clark, “but we feel strongly that the Moderator’s letter will mislead many people when they come to vote.”

In his statement today, Mr Jenkins said he drafted the

pastoral letter, and the words were his own. Its objects were:—

To urge all members and adherents to vote. To emphasise that the churches had reached the point where the issue was church union based on the plan for union. “We are not being asked to accept or reject the plan, which has been agreed on by the negotiating churches, and commended to our membership by the General Assembly as an acceptable basis for union. The question before us is not, ‘shall we accept or reject the plan,* but shall we go forward to union on the basis of the plan? This is clear from the actual wording on the voting paper.” To urge Presbyterians conscientiously to seek, in

their vote, to express the mind of Christ as they understood it, and to accept that, however individuals voted, they all sought this object before anything else.

TTr Jenkins added: “I understand some people feel that one sentence implies that those who were not in favour of union on the basis of the plan did not believe in the fundamental unity of the Church in Christ.”

This inference, he said, was never intended.

Mr Clark said today the last point mentioned by Mr Jenkins had not been raised by anyone else. The clerk of the General Assembly, the Very Rev. S, C. Read, said from Wellington that he felt the criticisms of the pastoral letter were answered in Mr Jenkins’s statement.

The sentence in question in the pastoral letter should be read in context, he said.