CHAPEL STORM OVER SWEEP

Evening Star, Issue 20863, 5 August 1931, Page 7

CHAPEL STORM OVER SWEEP

DEACON'S WIFE WHO WON £IOO DENBIGH, July 20. A fierce storm, caused by the inllexibdity of the Welsh Nonconformist conscience, is raging over the sick bed oi Mr I. W. Jones, a Denbigh dentist. Because ho is the husband of a winner of a £IOO prize in the Irish Hospitals Sweepstake ho has been denounced from the pulpit of his chapel and threatened with tho loss of his offices as deacon and Sunday school tcachoi. Iho Rev. H. Davies, minister of the Swan Lano Congregational Chapel, startled his congregation last Sunday by declaring at the end of a denunciation of tho Irish Sweepstake: I would rather bo unfrocked and uneollared immediately than remain a minister in any church which tolerates running with tho fox and barking with the hounds on tlie question of sweepstakes in any of its accredited leaders. “If an affirmative answer is to bo returned to the idiotic question; ‘ls not all business a form of gambling? then gladly would 1 sweep and clean tho dirtiest lanes of Denbigh to get an honest living.” Sitting uncomfortably under this rebuko were several chapel deacons and leaders who had bought tickets for tho Irish Sweepstake, and a not’t who has oven won £25 in a local sweep. Mr Davies said to-day: “I had to make my position clear, as other religious denominations were asking whether I was going to tolerate gambling amongst my own chapel leaders.” Ho added that ho had no personal feeling against 'any of the offending members of his flock, and tho rmestion of their disndssal from membership had not been discussed. If Mr Jones bad not been ill his position in the chapel would have been challenged by now.