FIGHTING FAITH IS NEEDED NOW

Dominion, Volume 35, Issue 50, 22 November 1941, Page 10

FIGHTING FAITH IS NEEDED NOW

Churches And Wishy-Washy Minorities AN ORDINARY MAN’S VIEW OF THE WAR (By Obseuver.) Resolutions by some of the ecclesiastical assemblies in session during the last few days are setting people asking questions. Whether by tactical vagueness designed to satisfy all shades of thought in the Churches or woolly thinking about the issues involved some of these resolutions have left the taste that the Church authorities concerned are more exercised over the rights of conscientious objectors than of the right of free men and free Christendom, facing the threat, of extinction by militant paganism, to remain free. To be fair to the majority of those who sat in assembly or synod it may be affirmed that they are as anxious as those directly occupied with the war effort to see the triumph of the Allied cause. At the same time certain motions have betrayed a minority -whose speech and vote have thrown up a query as to how deeply their heart and will are in the struggle. There is evidence that some of the younger ministers, backed by a following of youthful laity, are making a bellicose creed out of pacifism and are colouring or seeking to colour the official pronouncements of their Churches The question of conscientious objection and solicitude for objectors is not the subject of this, commentary. All straight-thinking people will agree with their representative Church leaders that genuine conscience must be respected and safeguarded. We leave it to the Nazis to destroy that respect and safeguard. What is here considered is the larger issue of pacifist indoctrination of young men of the Churches and its ball-and-ehain drag on the war effort by its irritation of the public mind. If anyone applauds war as war and imagines it glamorous or . amusing he ought not be allowed in public except with his guardian. All men of responsible mind agree on tliat. What all ought also to be agreed on is that this particular war could have been avoided only if the world—the Christian world no less—consented to the obliteration of everything Christian by giving Hitlerism the right of way to trample down painfully won Christian civilization and rebuild ou it his rotten creed of pagan barbarity. It passes the understanding of 91) people out of 100 how the hundredth can be a pacifist of any sort in the face of the admitted alternatives to fighting this war with Hitler to a finish. The philosophic and ethical goal of that damnable evil called Nazism, its scorn of Christian pity and charity as pap for “inferior” races, is documented to the hilt both by the words and acts of Nazi “new orderers.” The doctrine of force is lauded. Christian tolerance, brotherly love, its insistence on the sanctity of the individual soul, its proclamation of peace and goodwill among the nations—all these are derided as stuff for the weak and mentally incompetent. Daventry reported yesterday that the famous Strasbourg cathedral has been turned into a Hitler youth centre with the crooked cross of Nazism replacing the Christian cross ou its spirt) and the bust of Hitler is on the high altar. Propaganda and fine words about war aims and ideals apart, tincold truth is that Britain and her Allies have taken up arms against downright pagan rottenness. There is no known way of destroying it except by force. pacifism is absolutely bank rupt of practical alternatives to > the course we British chose on Septem ber 3, 1939. The Most Dangerous Book.—The pacifist quotes the Bible from the pulpit or witness-box before the Armed Forces Appeal Boards. Used by immature minds the Bible is the most dangerous book in the world To read it is not enough. You can do anything with the Bible —prove anything by yanking a phrase, a sentence, a chapter out of its context as a whole. You can disprove the same point by flipping tlie pages and rooting out another text. To anyone who has listened to the Manners Street orators on pacifism or read the Press reports of the tribunal proceedings this is entirely obvious. The trouble with the pacifist element in some of our Churches is that they are the inhabitants of an intellectual and spiritual backwater. In spiritual discernment they are two years behind England. Before they saw where they were going British pacifists came within an ace of wrecking Britain and bringing down British Christianity in the crash. Why? Because of their championship of the Peace Pledge Union and similar bodies they induced a state of mind in the public that resisted rearmament till it was all but too late. But as the facts of German aggression and ambitions became plain there was wholesale retreat from an untenable position. Maude Boyden, A. A. Milne, Professor C. E. M. Joad, Lord Bertrand Russell, among other pacifist leaders recanted. All then declared that force alone could destroy force.

Knotting the Lash.— When in (he military march of the Nazi philosophy a German lout causes hurt to some peasant child he symbolically pushes the Saviour Christ in the face. Decent men feel the blood warming in their veins in slow and terrible wrath. They don’t bandy texts but quietly knot a lash and make ready to cleanse the world temple. In other words they take wings, tommy-guns and tanks, matching force with force. The Christian chivalry in them rises above footling quibbles whether war is right. All that they care is that evil is wrong and that certain evils are worse than war. Is pacifism Hie type of Christianity for which our fathers and theirs before them bled on a hundred battlefields? It certainly is not. They bequeathed us a religion that is worth fighting for. It is now up to the New Zealand Church bodies responsible for Hie vapid resolutions to state unequivocally where they stand in relation to lhe minorities whose attitude is, lo say the least, not helpful in the defence of Christian civilization.