MAORI DIOCESE

Evening Post, Volume CXII, Issue 68, 17 September 1926, Page 12

MAORI DIOCESE

HOPE OF THE FUTURE

POLICY OP THE ANGLICAN CHTJECH.

"Indigenous racial churches are the hope of the future in missionary lands, and their development the deliberate policy of our church," said Bishop C. West-Watson, in expressing his views at the Christchurch Synod on the formation of a Maori diocese. "As you know, General Synod agreed to the constitution of a separate, selfcontained Maori diocese in 1925," s_>_ Bishop West-Watson. "I think that some here felt the same anxiety as I felt in England on learning that what seemed like the race question was to be raised in New Zealand. I confess that further inquiry on the spot has largely reconciled me to the proposal, for I find that under the present conditions the Maori Churchmen are very little represented on diocesan or general synods, and being largely without leaders of their own race find it hard to make their special contribution to the interpretation and expression of faith. For the present, having regard to the different cultural standard, they feel that they Could do better work if organised apart. A request of this sort from the side of the Maori Churchmen is, of course, an entirely different thing from a suggestion of by the pakehas. "The circumstances here are peculiar, but the practically unanimous desire of a race is hardly to be denied, and it is increasingly plain that this is the Maori desire. When the Bishops in Wellington last August met the Maori bynod, for the election of a B:shop, they were faced with the request for a Bishop of the Maori race. My colleagues were clear that, though not explicitly, yet implicitly, General Synod had contemplated a pakeha for the first Bishop, and felt that they could not grant the Maori request. At first there seemed to be an impasse, but after prayer and discussion, it was unanimously resolved to ask the next General Synod to sanction a Bishop of the Maori race who should be Suffragan to the Archbishop, but should have his own synod and representatives in GenT „^ y? od- ™8 wonld B^e the Archbishop just that right of supervision which would in the time of building up keep the new diocese in line with the s old faith, and might, if all went well, lead on to a self-contained Maori Diocese as a unit in our provincial system. I would commend to you this solution of a most intricate problem, and ask your support if the matigog?, 11168 before General Syn<>d in