USE BY CHURCH

Evening Post, Volume CXL, Issue 118, 15 November 1945, Page 8

USE BY CHURCH

MODERN PUBLICITY

DEBATED BY ASSEMBLY

(By Totesrapli—Press Associalion--Copyright.) Rec. 11.30 a.m. LONDON, Nov. 14.

A proposal by the Bishop of Rochester, the Rt. Rev. C. M. Chavassc, that the Church should use modern publicity methods, opened what members agreed with him in describing today as one of the most momentous debates which the Church Assembly has ever held.

As chairman of the Assembly's Commission on Evangelism, Bishop Chavasse introduced the commission's report to the Assembly.

"Today we confront a new phenomenon," it said. "A generation that has lost God and the whole spiritual dimension of life. Half of our countrymen are worse than heathens in that they believe in nothing, not even themselves.

"We have succumbed to a malady which has always threatened the churches. We have become infected with the spirit of the age. The Church has lost its vision, its vitality, its spiritual authority. Modern minds are massproduced.

"The stark fact is that the great modern agencies of publicity are the sole educators of whole masses of our people. It would be ridiculous to ask the Church to spend £1,000,000 sterling in the next five years on advertising the Gospel, but it would only be ridiculous because the Church could not afford it.

"There can be no hope for the conversion of England until England has become a network of prayer circles of every description." Bishop Chavasse explained that he would never regard the newspapers, the cinema, the radio, and the drama as being Evangelism itself. They would be used to prepare men's minds for evangelism.

Mr. Ralph Assheton, M.P., supporting the report, turned to the Archbishop of Canterbury, and said: "We ask you to appoint a man to lead this great crusade. He may be a bishop or a great soldier. I suggest that that way alone lies success." The Archbishop of Canterbury said the report had impressed not only the Church of England, but fellow Christians in Britain and abroad.

The Assembly passed a unanimous resolution commending the report.