CHURCH’S NEED

Dominion, Volume 25, Issue 272, 12 August 1932, Page 7

CHURCH’S NEED

Call for Individuality REPLY TO CRITICISM New Zealand Spirituality The suggestion that New Zealand should not look so much to England as to herself in her spiritual as well as her economical development is made bv Bishop West-Watson in his open letter published In the “Church News.” “There seems to me,” he writes, “a real danger to our spiritual life in watching and copying England; we need more individuality; more courage to experiment and adventure for the good of our own people.” “I notice that the leader of our Ottawa delegation has felt it necessary to controvert a suggestion of the Canadian Press that ’New Zealand’s chief industries are unemployment, riots and financial extravagance,’ ” says the Bishop. “We are sorry, of course, that such an impression should have got abroad ; it is not very helpful criticism, but we are not seriously perturbed by it. In the same way generalisations .about our Church life made by a passing visitor after a very brief tour in the Dominion ought not to encourage or discourage us too much. “I received lately a letter from a New Zealand clergyman who is visiting England in which he gives his frank opinion of the preaching in London churches, blit I should be sorry to accept it as more than the personal expression of an unfortunate experience. None the less, criticism does us good, for it stirs up to a dissatisfaction with things as they are, and a determination, God helping us, that they shall be better. Father Tribe Incorrect. “I am inclined to think that Father Tribe expetted to find English conditions reproduced'here and was disappointed. But that does not quite account for his verdict of •complacent sleepiness,’ which seems to me an incorrect diagnosis. I suggest that, so far as the clergy are concerned, ‘insufficiently fruitful activity’ would be nearer the truth, and so far as the laity are concerned, 'inadequate appreciation of the opportunities and responsibilities of churchmanship.’ If I may refer in passing to the suggestion that, the accentuatalon of our extremes would foster spiritual life, I would remark that we obtain our extravagant variations in England by segregating many of our ordinands into ‘party’ theological colleges, where they are apt to be permanently distorted into the delusion that their party. Catholic, Evangelical, ' Fundamentalist or Modernist, is the only real purveyor of the truth. The result is reflected in our so-called religious press. We excuse these deplorable results as being a sign of life, but It is rather a barefaced apology. The fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace, long suffering and so forth. I can .only say that the ‘bro-therly-love’ of the New Zealand clergy seems to me a gracious and holy gift of God, and much more vital than the controversial spirit.. “But, before criticising a church in another country, one needs time to appreciate the atmosphere in which that church grows and works. In England the Church draws upon the cultural wealth of the great universities; it draws on the material wealth of very large endowments; it draws on the spiritual wealth of generations of holy men and women, and, more than that, of men and women often whose circumstances have enabled them to devote their lives to church life find work. “In New Zealand we have little if any of these things. We are far away from the great centres of learning, the outstanding teachers and leaders of the Church hardly ever visit us; we have to scratch for nearly every penny needed for our support; we have hardly any leisured class, we work fqr our living, and the material' side of things is very much- In ’evidence. Further, many of our citizens have grown- up in ‘backblocks’ where Church and Sunday have made very, little impression on their lives. We have not even, as in England, the excellent syllabus of religious teaching which is there given in nearly all schools, church; or council. “Inelastic in Mind.” “English people visiting' or coining to live in New Zealand are sometimes strangely inelastic in mind. They cannot appreciate what has been done in the face bf very great'difficulties; they expect all they had at home. And New Zealand is not, and never will be, England. It is a ' country where all sections of the population are much nearer to one another; there are not the extremes of poverty and wealth, of culture and ignorance, of aristocracy and democracy,, which marks English life. And the nature of the country is reflected in the general outlook of the Church, which is more homogeneous than- at Home. Is it presumptuous to suggest that'we.shall do our' best, work, not by trying to reproduce exactly the English Church, but b., ' trying to give - expression to the highest and noblest aspirations of New Zealand people, through the historic Church, but in a way natural do.a new land and people!” ■