Anglican calls for care

Press, 16 July 1986, Page 3

Anglican calls for care

A head of a national Christian organisation has disputed comments in “The Press” yesterday about the nature and role of fundamentalism.

"Christian teachers should be more careful in the public statements they make about the faith,” said an Anglican official, Mr Les Brighton. Mr Brighton is general secretary of the Latimer

Fellowship, an Anglican organisation which has a library and study centre in Christchurch.

He was commenting on assertions by a visiting theologian, Professor James Barr, that “fundamentalism is just a stage people go through like adolescence.” Fundamentalism was a convenient label which tended to be used to denounce those who disagreed with you, said Mr Brighton. The use of woolly and derogatory terms like “fundamentalism” tended to polarise and did little to help discussion on the authority of the Bible. “We need to be careful when tempted brand other people’s f®th as simplistic and nallfe,” Mr

Brighton -said. Those who had such a faith might see more than the experts for all their scholarship and learning. Much that Professor Barr had written was helpful, and conservative Christians had much to learn from him, Mr Brighton said.

Professor Barr had apparently failed to see why it was that the Christian had historically valued the Bible so highly. It was because through it, they had had a life changing encounter with God.

“As people read it, the living Jesus speaks and acts powerfully in their lives. This is why the Bible is valued so highly by them and defended so ardently,” Mr Brighton said.