UNION OF CHURCHES

Dominion, Volume 31, Issue 144, 15 March 1938, Page 14

UNION OF CHURCHES

Congregationalists’ View Explained By Telegraph—Press Association. Auckland, March 14. “Congregationalists have ■' always sought to recognise and develop the essential unity of spirit and common faith and objective which is the true basis and motive of this wider fellowship.” said the Rev. A. C. Nelson in his presidential address to the Assembly of the Congregational Union of New Zealand. “The London Missionary Society is a splendid and significant demonstration of this spirit, but our genius is against mechanical union,” he added. “We cannot bring ourselves to contemplate a union contrived through expediency, economic urge or any such accidental pressure. Such a union would be to us a flight from reality, a counsel of despair, a denial of all that we hold most dear and a far-reaching calamity for the Church of God. Let it be said, however, that in being loyal to our own distinctive witness we respect the .creeds of the other man and the men ,of other creeds.”

The speaker, in referring to some vital needs of the church to-day, said a clear definition and demonstration of the relevance of the church to society was needed. He said they had to face the fact, that a new age had been entered and that readjustment and reconstruction were necessary in religion as in all else. The lack of a spiritual equivalent to material progress was a challenge of supreme moment which they dare not neglect