MODERN PAGAN TRENDS

Evening Post, Volume CXXI, Issue 78, 1 April 1936, Page 10

MODERN PAGAN TRENDS

ISSUE BEFORE THE CHURCHES ;

"The real bid for power on the part of the claimants for leadership in the modern world is increasingly a bid for the control of education and people's thoughts," said the Rev. F. R. Barry, Canon of Westminster, in a recent address. "A Hitler, a Mustapha Kemal, or any other leader of the modern fashion, knows his regime can hope to survive only,if he can get effective control of the educational system. All the pressure of forces in the contemporary world seems to make it clear that the State everywhere is bound by necessity to become increasingly totalitarian. Politicians, have begun to rediscover what Plato taught, that the ultimate key to politics rests in religious education. The inspiration of what is best in our country and the driving force behind most of its progressive social movements is still — whether avowedly or not—Christian. How long will this last? I find it hard to evade the feeling that the Churcnes are in tremendous danger of falling behind in the race for mind and soul of the modern man, and that, specifically, Christian education is in real danger of losing its initiative in the conflict The great majority of our countrymen are beginning to adopt an attitude to life that is a kind of pagan secularism, kindly tolerant, but wholly of this world. The supreme issue before the Churches is to recapture the minds of the educated classes, because we cannot hope for the cause of Christianity to win unless it is in possession of the minds of those who, in the long run, direct and run the country."