CHURCH'S VOICE

Evening Post, Volume CXXXVI, Issue 11, 13 July 1943, Page 4

CHURCH'S VOICE

THE POLITICAL ARENA

RIGHT TO BE HEARD

"I cannot understand the man who says that the Church must keep clear of politics," said the Rt. Rev. H. St. Barbe Holland, Bishop of Wellington, during the course of his presidential address to the Anglican Diocesan Synod which opened its sessions today. "Politics is the only avenue through which social betterment and the true ordering of national and international life can be achieved. How, then, can the Church fail to be interested in politics?

"All the prophets of the Old Testament were. Very often it was a particular political situation which called forth their utterances. They claimed the right to speak because they believed that they had a message from God and had an insight into the demands of righteousness which they must pass on to their fellow-citizens; only they never attempted to gain power for themselves,,nor does it seem that they allied themselves with any party or faction in the State. This is surely the guidance we need. But have we always followed it? History sometimes gives us an affirmative answer: history tells us that it was Stephen Langton, Archbishop of Canterbury, who headed the Barons in farcing King John to sign Magna Carta, the very root of that freedom for which we are fighting today. That incident is a vivid example of the Church uttering a prophetic note and inspiring the nation in one of the greatest creative actions of its history. How can anyone in face of that say that the Church should steer clear of politics?

WHERE THE CHURCH HAS ERRED,

"Yet, unfortunately, from our own and the world's point of view, our Church, on the other hand, has not always stayed clear of party politics; it has for a long period been not what it was in its early life, a creative faith, but a conservative religion, allied closely to political parties which stood for the maintenance of the status quo and even for reaction. That is how our Church looks to many today—in John Macmurray's words —'the enemy of progress and the bulwark of reaction.' There have been many glorious break-aways, but their story is pathetic; an the nineteenth century nearly the whole of the Bishops voted against Wilberforce in his first attempt to free the slaves, and the whole of them against Shaftesbury in his great crusade for the earliest victims of the machine age. This is an illustration of how the Church has strayed from its rightful place in politics to its wrongful place in party politics. "What about today? We are approaching a General Election. I can see many things the Church has a right and a duty to say in regard to politics, though it must express itself through a medium outside party alignments. How can we talk of democracy when the issue is largely going to be settled not by political principles, but by the pressure of economic groups on this party or that?

"It is time that we suggested to the nation that the welfare of the community as a whole must come first and that the political issues involved cannot find their true solution until God's programme for human life takes precedence of the self-interest and greed whether of the capitalist or of the worker.

"The National Campaign Committee has felt this so strongly that it has decided to publish a manifesto to the nation, not putting forth a political programme, not telling the voter for which party he should vote, but laying before everyone on whom the responsibility of electing the Government of the country falls our analysis of the biggest issues of the day as seen from the standpoint of those who know that God cares for man in all the varied activities and relationships of life. It must, and it does, talk of the structure of social and economic life. How can it do otherwise? The Beatitudes, our standard of life, simply cannot be practised in a milieu which is not favourable to them. Surely, then, that milieu must be Christianised as well as the men and women whom, through the proclamation of our Gospel, we ask to follow Christ And remember that democracy can only be a true democracy if it depends for its stability on a common fellowship of man with man, separated by no class or racial or economic barriers, and unless it learns that grace of toleration whose only root is in the Christian faith. Christianity is inherently a revolutionary religion, the Magnificat and the Parable of the Good Samaritan are proof enough of that, seeking the achievement of community, a community that cuts across every barrier that stands in its way, and it is for such a Christianity that the campaign is going to stand this year."