The Dominion. MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 14, 1936. CHURCH, STATE, AND SOCIAL REFORM

Dominion, Volume 29, Issue 299, 14 September 1936, Page 8

The Dominion. MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 14, 1936. CHURCH, STATE, AND SOCIAL REFORM

In the work of social reform, Church and State, declares the Bishop of Wellington, the Rt. Rev. St. Barbe Holland, are interdependent. Social service, beginning with the simplest manifestations of humanitarianism, such as the care of the sick and afflicted, drew its earliest inspiration from the Church. _ From this has developed a community conscience that has grown in strength throughout the centuries until to-day it powerfully animates public policy and the course of social legislation. Such a development would have been impossible without the sustained appeal and influence of the Church, which carried the burden of social responsibility throughout that long period of the State’s development in which government concerned itself wholly with material affairs, leaving the direction of moral and social problems to the spiritual leaders. The appearance of government in this field is, comparatively speaking, a modern development. Charity, education, and the healing art, all offspring of the Church, are now important functions of the State. We may wonder sometimes whether the State in its humanitarian zeal, and in its apparent confidence in, its ability to discharge these responsibilities unaided, has forgotten their parentage. There is, indeed, a tendency in some countries to relegate the Church to an obscure position in the background, as a relic of a superstitious age. Even charity, which is a Divine instinct, is by.a process of legislative evolution being converted from a spiritual impulse to an obligation of citizenship expressed in taxation.- Political idealism, presumably imbued with the idea that human nature can be changed by Acts of Parliament, considers that the need for charity is a reflection upon the community, and that it can be removed by making its recipients wards of the State and thui independent of the favours of philanthropy. . . . In spite of the intrusions of officialdom,, however, the instinct for voluntary well-doing in the humanitarian field persists with surprising tenacity. The State, therefore, should beware of an excess of officiousness that might result in the atrophy of what is essentially a spiritual impulse. It should continue to look to the Church for inspiration, and for instruction in method, establishing thereby a co-partnership that should enable the nation to withstand the encroachments upon its religious sentiment of subversive radicalism, _ and the Church itself to strengthen its spiritual identity in the affairs of the community.