THE LORD'S PRAYER

Evening Post, Volume CXXX, Issue 98, 22 October 1940, Page 8

THE LORD'S PRAYER

(To the Editor.) Sir, —Professor Gould is very concerned about the harm the Wellington Education Board is doing to democracy by encouraging our young people to acknowledge God. He forgets that it is the irreligionists who, during the past few years, have sabotaged democracy by trying to divorce it from God. As one who has to smart under this doctrine I can say that some of them have spread their gospel from high places. The only point on which I agree with Professor Gould is that it is no use mrncing matters. It is time for plain speaking about the attempt to separate religious faith from our ordinary life. That is what has brought democracy almost to its knees. God has been kept out of our schools long enough. There can be no true enlightenment without a simple faith in something Divine, just as there can be no true democracy without it. Most ordinary people free-

ly acknowledge that, but this large body of opinion, which is not much concerned with abstract theories of education, but with the child himself, has remained inarticulate, while the irreligious radicals have lost no chance to preach their gospel. Professor Gould is anxious lest encouragement to recite the Lord's Prayer in schools be subversive of democratic institutions. Should he not be more concerned about the effect on our daily lives through failure to obey Divine laws, or does he postulate democracy, a political system, as the supreme institution in human existence? Those who, amid all their learning, keep a simple faith in God, should proclaim it as a counter to irreligion. If democracy is to survive, must it not openly ally itself with Divinity and must there not be a kind of militant evangelism to proclaim the union?—l am, etc., TEACHER AND PARENT.