CHRISTIANS MAY FIGHT

Evening Star, Issue 22526, 19 December 1936, Page 22

CHRISTIANS MAY FIGHT

PRIMATE’S LEAD TO CHURCHMEN The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Lang, on October 11 gave an impressive lead to Christian opinion in England on the duty of churchmen to take part in defence. In an address to the diocesan conference at Canterbury he declared that: The force of an army used; for the defence of the people was right; tliat defence would include trade routes; the church made no departure from any Christian principles in laying it down that it was lawful for Christian men to wear weapons and serve in wars; and some would never be impressed by non-resistance. They would only take advantage of it. The Primate said that it was useless to deny that the aspect of the world, at any rate in Europe, was very sombre. “ It almost seems,” he said, “ as if some malady of madness was affecting Europe, with which we are so closely bound.”

He referred to the problem which was besetting the minds and consciences of many earnest men at the present time—whether there was not a call to every professing Christian to refuse to countenance the use of force at all, and whether the Christian way was not sacrifice always and force never. This complete pacifism, he said, was urged with great and passionate could be commended with great impressiveness, but if pressed to its logical conclusion it must lead to results which could not be right. It would bring about greater evils than those it sought to avoid. If all men were honest, just, and peaceful, the difficulty would not arise, but there were always mean men in any community who were dishonest, unjust, and violent. They would not be impressed by non-resistance; they would only take advantage of it. Were they to be left to work their evil wills upon the community P USE OF THE SWORD. The State was not an individual. It was the community organised for government; it was the trustee for multitudes of individuals; it existed to give them protection. The use of force of the sword by the State was the ministry of God for the protection of the people. (Cheers.) It that were true of the State in its domestic relations, it was equally true for the State in its international relations. It all depended on the motive or intention with which it was used. If tho force of an army were used for national aggression, or acquisition, or self-assertion it was wrong. If it were used for the defence of the people, it was right, considering all the forces of aggressive and almost irresponsible nationalism which were at present rife, it was idle to suppose that a State would not be attacked merely because it announced beforehand that it would offer no resistance. Let them remember that the word “ defence ” went a very long way. In our own case it would include not only defence of territory and of the homes and lives of the people, but also the protection of those trade routes on whose freedom the very subsistence of our people depended. It ought to include the protection of those liberties and of those free institutions which were our heritage and trust. Again, we dared not so isolate ourselves as to be indifferent to the security of international law and order. We, too, depended on the strength of that order, and if it were imperilled we might well be called on to defend it. Those seemed to him to be some of the reasons which made it clear that the Church of England had not departed from any Christian principle when it laid it down in the 37th Article of religion that it was lawful for

Christian men at the command of the magistrates to wear weapons and to serve in wars. It was, indeed, most unfortunate that in the English text a very important word of the Latin text had been omitted. It was the word “ just,” as conditioning and limiting the wars in which it was lawful for the Christian man to engage. Within those limits, the forces and armaments in our own country must bo adequate. He was sure_ that those principles were not inconsistent with any Christian principle. The absence of the word * just in the 37th Article of religion in the Church of England to which the Archbishop referred was described by a noted ecclesiastical authority as being a point of “ considerable importance,” ... “ The word ‘ just ’ relating to wars in which Christians can participate is certainly contained in the Latin, he said. "The omission of the word can be made to have a very vital meaning. " Oversight on the part of the translator is the only explanation I can advance for the' failure to include the phrase ‘ just war ' in the English translation of the Article.”