CONDITIONS IN WESTLAND

Dominion, Volume 23, Issue 5, 1 October 1929, Page 12

CONDITIONS IN WESTLAND

Sj r Having ministered for three and •i half years in a coalmining area on the West Coast of the South Island, I might be permitted to comment on the Rev. G. H Gilbert’s utterances regarding conditions in those parts. Idoso to establish the truth and (bus defend Mr. Gilbert against charges of extravagant and unjust speech. All Mr. Gilberts statements are true to my experience. Indignation is justified only because his particular instances have been applied generally to the West Coast, thereby doing a great injustice to a “splendid people.” It is perfectly true that hostility to the Church exists among the miners. Distinguishing between Christianity and “churchianity.” with its alleged capitalistic bias, a large section are openly antagonistic to organised religion. This being so, it is not strange that the Sabbath has for them no religious significance. It is the general sports day. In my time, in a township of some eight hundred people, two picture shows flourished on Sunday evening performances. Best programmes —Charlie Chaplin Fatty Arbuckle, etc. I—were reserved for that night and drew'taoach-loads of patrons from surrounding parts. Admission was not charged, but one shilling was the acknowledged price which the miner’s sense of justice led him to pay without demur; and that not (as Messrs. Holland and O’Brien would have us believe) for charitable objects, but for the picture show proprietor. While funerals without religious ceremony were not general, they did occur. I witnessed two —minus the bagpipes. There might have been more had the courage of the man who conducted the two not, at last; failed him. . . . At first sight such things shock one’s religious sense. In reality they reveal nothing worse than what exists in other parts. The frankly-stated ungodliness of the miner is simply the reflex of his mentality. In all things he is a man of decision and direct action —an extremist. As a rule, the religious miner is as fervent in his spiritual life as the irreligious miner is eager in his opposition. Having since worked among different sections of our New Zealand population, I am not sure that the miner’s attitude is not preferable to the dull indifference and supercilious disregard of religion that marks the ungodliness of other types of mind. The miner’s open hostility may be shocking and even alarming; but it has this to commend it —it is transparently sincere. Even his socialistic burials show a courage of conviction which, though it offends the religious sense, excites admiration. It is open to question whether they are not better than the unreality of taking to the Church the corpse of a person whose life has been a denial of God and a disregard of religion, to read over it irrelevant Christian sentiments.

The coalminer has many grave faults, but my experience with him has left a warm spot in my heart. —I am. etc.,

W. R. MILNE. Wairoa, Hawke’s Bay, September 26.