MODERN YOUTH

Dominion, Volume 25, Issue 94, 15 January 1932, Page 2

MODERN YOUTH

Bishop Defends Them FRANKNESS & FREEDOM In the course of his presidential address to the Liverpool Diocesan Conference, the Bishop, Dr. A. A. David, defended modern young people.’ People must face the fact, he said, that large numbers of young people of all classes stood aside from thc Church find were not attracted by its message. They questioned its standard of conduct and neglected its worship. i “To some of them,” the Bishop said, “it seems that the Church cares nothing for the interests of life, which seem to them real and engrossingscience and art, recreation, sport mid fellowship—but is preoccupied wWh questions narrowly ecclesiastical, often in a bitter partisan spirit, which they declare to be wholly un-Christian. Therefore they hold aloof from organised religion.

“This estrangement is part of what is called the ‘Revolt of Youth. Undoubtedly it is u fact. But it Is not peculiar to this particular time. The young in every generation have rebelled, not against discipline, but against what they regard as arbitrary rules, the principle of which they do not understand. Not against sacrifice, if sacrifice is asked, for great and worthy ends; hot against ideals, but against methods of approach to the ideal which seem to them to spoil it; not against Christ, but against a view of life ami of religious life which they feel sure,He does not share. 11l all this there is nothing new. But there are two features which are new in their attitude to-day.

“Y’oung people nowadays express themselves both in speech and conduct in their relations to one another and in their attitude to us with a frankness and a freedom which is al-, together new. Ido hot regret it. Let us beware of being personally offended by what seems to us a lack of reverence or even of reticence. \Ve can use it if we will—and here humour will help us—for their good and for ours.

"Before wo criticise their outlook or condemn their conduct let us study them. We cannot do that by recalling our own young days. Wo must let our imagination Icarry us into their actual conditions now. That is always the way of them that seek in love.

“I trust that we shall waste no time in deploring and lamenting the weakness. .the selfishness, the waywardness of our young people. Nor, on the other hand, am I inclihed to join in that mther fulsome glorification of their virtues which from some quarters is lavished on them to-day. The truth is that in themselves they arc no better and no worse than we were. They have the same temptations to drag, them down, the same possibilities of sound and hopeful growth. If we have found the secret of deliverance and development if is because our eyes were opened to it by people who understood us. Let us seek a like share in opening theirs.”