The Master’s Business

Dominion, Volume 29, Issue 196, 16 May 1936, Page 20

The Master’s Business

“The whole problem of the production and distribution of films is one with which the church must grapple if she is alive. Perhaps one generalisation on which travellers about the world to-day are agreed is the übiquity and importance of the cinema. In every land people are going to the pictures by the million. And what does the screen show them? What view of the white man has reached the Far East by way of films from Hollywood? What films does Britain send through the world to lift men nearer to righteousness and peace, to truth and God?” asks Dr. Albert Peel, editor of the “Congregational Quarterly.” “Are Christians once again ‘letting th.e devil have all the good tunes’? So impressed have I been with the power of the screen for good or for evil that I have begun to ask myself whether perhaps the church would not be doing a wise thing if for a time she were to devote all her resources to the production and distribution of good films. Certain I am of this—-that the church will be failing her Lord if she fails to baptise this magnificent instrument into the service of His Kingdom. “Is the church dead and'dated, or the Living Church of the Living God? One of the ways in which it will be evident, is by its ability to use in the Master’s business the means so amply provided in this scientific age.”