WORLD AFFAIRS

Evening Post, Volume CXXVI, Issue 12, 14 July 1938, Page 11

WORLD AFFAIRS

PRESENT BACKGROUND

FIGHT FOR LIBERTY

UNITED CHURCH NEEDED

Speaking at the opening of the Wellington Anglican diocesan synod this afternoon, the Yen. Archdeacon Bullock, vicar-general of the diocese, said he did not think a synod address should •be without some reference to that wider world, which, eyen New Zealand must try to understand, and in the life of which it must play its part. Mr. Bullock said that a united world was impossible without a united Church.

"To be concerned solely ■with its own immediate affairs is hardly consonant with the Christian duty of any part of. God's .vineyard," Archdeacon Bullock declared. "Neither is it beneficial. So in making notes for this address, I put down first—'the background of world affairs at this time,' and thought that against such a background we might the better envisage the importance ■ "and significance of some events and movements within the Church. But time will permit of put a few short words. 'Alas for the rarity Of Christian charity under the sun' — to use Hood's words —that background presents an even darker picture than j it did twelve months ago. The internecine strife in Spain continues, and brother struggles with brother in deadly combat, while over 50,000 of their women and children, driven by the gusts of fear' or the pinch of starvation, cry for mercy in a cruel world. Austria having changed her national \ emblems overnight, was.led captive in a day, while God's ancient people, the Jews, still suffer senseless and barbaric persecution. The rape of China pro-j ceeds, /though the courage of her sons i presents a picture worthy of Thermopylae or the tortured hillsides of Gallipoli. CLASH OF INTERESTS. "Through and in all this that is happening, civilised: society is today experiencing a tension'that is torturing to some and threatening to all. I mean the tension that is created by the clash between the interests of the individual and the interests'of the community of which he is a part. The root of all: the political dislocations with the attendant chaos we have witnessed in different countries, lies just here. And it has proved all too easy in many] places to find a solution of the problem which makes the State supreme in such a way as to leave the individual little room for spiritual growth. Those areas are being niched from him where iie once exercised that freedom which }s his as a child of God. Absolute freedom never was, nor can be. But what the world sorely needs today is a new definition of the freedom that rightly should belong to individuals and to States—with responsibilities which attach thereto as well as rights—and with a new moral courage and strength to keep such freedom inviolate, cost what it may. "The new slavery may take a whole nation captive and the people love to have if so. We can no longer take it for granted that all men of good will will agree that such slavery as is witnessed today is immoral, and it is no longer easy to persuade the citizen to claim or value his inalienable rights. For it becomes daily more I fashionable to believe that though man was born free, it is good for him to be everywhere in chains. THE GREAT CONTEST. "This doctrine of man's necessary enslavement is not peculiar to any one political type, party, or outlook, and for that reason is all the more dangerous; and more so because it has advantages for Governments, economists, and political philosophers, who may desire a neat and ordered universe in which men and women can be ticketed and kept in their proper pigeon holes. But for the Christian the doctrine of man's cultural as well as eco-. nomic enslavement must be for ever anathema. I mention this because I am convinced that the great conest that faces the Christian sooner or later is just this fight for man's proper liberty. And perhaps then the -Church will renew her youth again, as she stands to meet the challenge that now gathers weight and grows daily as the over-arching menace of the world.

"And if we need encouragement, we can remember that the Christian Church has seen many Empires shiver and fall. In spite of persecutions from without, and unnumbered betrayals from within, the Church of God outlasts the powers and principalities of this world, and preserves for all who will that freedom wherewith Christ has made us free. But before modern civilisation, or even democracy, can come to rest on firmer foundations, men have still to learn more of the meaning of that Pauline paradox—the j Perfect Law of Liberty. For, as I hinted, freedom is only possible for a man or a world ready to enslave himself or itself to the Perfect Master. More and more should we Christian J men and women look into the truth of that snatch of an old mission hymn, 'Make me a captive, Lord, and then I shall be free.' THE NEED FOB CHURCH "UNITY, j "For many years, I have felt, while pondering on the difficulties that attend all efforts to afchieve world unity through leagues and pacts, that it is not so much the machinery that is faulty, as a spirit that is lacking. I believe that there is sufficient wisdom among human kind to provide the proper guiding lines for friendship among the nations. "But the will is not there for the simple reason that the spirit is not there. I do not cavil at those who have worked to perfect a League of Nations. What I regret is that it is a body without a soul. "A united world is impossible without a united Church, with an organic unity that is the outward arid visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace of friendliness and tolerance. Surely the Lord of all good life cannot but suffer when He observes the tardiness on the part of Christian people in making towards a more active and effective unity. A united world demands, as its essential condition, a united Church, but I mean unity without uniformity."