THE CHURCH CONGRESS.

Evening Star, Issue 18281, 22 May 1923, Page 4

THE CHURCH CONGRESS.

The first Dominion Congress of the Church of England, which opens to-day in Christchurch, stands for an imitation of one of tlio best developments of Church influence in the Old Land. The first Church Congress in Great Britain was hold at Cambridge in 1861. Its value must have been plainly shown immediately, because the conferences of lay and clerical members, held each year in a different city, have continued without a break since then. The congress provides a forum for the expression of the best thought of the Church on matters religious, moral, social, and intellectual. All its different schools can express their views there, and the hearing of different views must bo the greatest stimulus to mental vitality'. The pride of Anglicanism has long been its union :n diversity. “The basis of union of this great and varied society,” it has been said, “ is the society itself, not any single typo of thought that is peculiar to it. All schools within it are equally loyal; they agree in it, though not with one another." A provision for the maintenance of this unity which is observed by the British Church Congress, and which, we may expect, will commend itself to the Now Zealand promoters, is that no question arising out of any papers read or subject treated at any meeting shall be put to the vote. In recent years questions of a social and economic nature have been especially prominent in the British conferences. The discussion of such subjects has served at once to quicken and make practical the Church’s interest in groat problems of the day, which require a Christian atmosphere for their solution, and to draw the Church and people into closer fellowship. The same benefits, it may bo hoped, will follow from the new departure which is being made in this country, with other advantages that are most desirable for the Church itself. More, perhaps, than any other denomination, as the result of the diocesan system on which it is organised, Anglicanism in New Zealand 1 has tended to be divided into watertight compartments, There has been far too little community between the dioceses. A general synod every third year brings a proportion of their lay and clerical representatives together; but the delegates who attend it from each diocese arc but few, and a general synod is no -more than a legislative assembly. It does not provide the discussions on every subject, the social as well ns intellectual quickening, which a Church Congress is supremely fitted to do. There is a danger of the isolation, mental as well as social, of many country clergymen, which the holding of regular conferences would do much to diminish.

The Anglican Church, in New Zealand as elsewhere, has notably shown how it can keep abreast with the spirit of modernity during recent years. Minor offices in its government have been opened to women, which moans that they will soon have admission to major ones. It has shown more than abstract interest in the “ now ” ministry of healing, which is not really more new than the Church itself. The variety as well as the importance of the subjects that will bo discussed at this week’s congress, which speakers from Great Britain, Australia, and India, as well as all the Now Zealand dioceses, will attend, should ensure that a lasting stimulus will be derived from it. The more the world tosses in its after-war uncertainties, the more it needs the Churches. The best wishes will bo felt by earnest minds of every faith for this Church Congress.