SCIENCE AND RELIGION

Greymouth Evening Star, 3 August 1929, Page 12

SCIENCE AND RELIGION

DR BARNES'S BELIEF.

How science has come to the aid of religion by diminishing extravagant beliefs and superstitious credulities was explained by the Bishop of Birmingham (Dr Barnes) in a sermon preached on June 9 last in Westminstei’ Abbey.

The application of exact inquiry to the Gospels has led, he maintained, to an increasing disbelief in miracles, and the churchman was now completely free to examine the Bible in the light of. the knowledge of his era. The preacher chose for* his text: “Seek ye first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness.”

Although this is an age of religious unrest, and the elaborate dogmatic systems of the past have broken down, there is widespread sincerity, the Bishop declared, and he saw few signs that institutional religion is rapidly decaying.

The present movement, towards simplicity and even austerity in religious belief is largely due, he continued, to the influence of our men of science; the physicists have now become the guides, just as the biologists were rather more than a generation ago.

“The men who can speak with authority of the implications of the doctrine of relativity, of the quantum theory, or of the new astronomy, receive, when they discuss the philosophico-religious aspects of the knowledge of ignorance, an attention denied to official divines . . .To a vision of ever wider horizons science leads us to-day; and men turn to science because they believe scientific leaders to be honest guides, free from the temptations of orthodoxy.”

THE WITCH OF ENDOR.

The result, he suggested, is commonly an unformulated creed by which people guide their lives,', and although it may have withdrawn men from public worship, the increasing authority of science since the war has been of great utility. During the war violent emotional disturbance brought into existence strange beliefs. Primitive religious fancies awoke to new life. In our own church there was a deplorable outburst of what we usually term medieval beliefs.

“Queer types of credulity also flourished under the name of theosophy. Descendants of the Witch of Endor found numerous clients . . Bishops found it hard to restrain their clergy from superstitious irregularities in worship. Even in their prayer book proposals, the Bishops made what are now generally seen to have been, in effect, copcessions to religious barbarism.

“These proposals made it possible to teach that a priest can convey spiritual properties to inanimate matter. The idea was discredited at the Reformation. But it tends to revive in every period of religious reaction. We need the controlling influence of science, with its appeal to experiment and reason, to prevent such recrudescence of ancient superstitions..’ While the influence of exact inquiry had diminished religious extravagance it had led to an increasingly widespread disbelief in miracle. “Now the issue is between the uniformity postulated by natural science and the miracles of the New Testament. “A recent commentary on the Bible, in which Bishop Gore’s influence has been paramount, concedes evolution and seeks to retain miracle. The concession, which virtually no one disputes, undermines that authority of the Bible on which the whole Anglican position is built.’ The commentary to which I refer has been subsidised by one of the largest partisan organisations within the» church; it has been published by the society which is the semi-official publishing body of the church.

“In consequence its rejection of anything approaching Biblical infallibility leaves every Anglican clergyman or layman completely free to examine the Bible in the light of the knowledge of our era. . . . It is certain that the vast majority of living churchmen who have felt the influence of the scientific method find miracle no aid to faith.” Many of the younger clergy, who accept the name of .Modernist, are, explained. the Bishop, not prepared to deny, but regard themselves under no obligation to defend the miraculous records of the New Testament. The scientific attitude towards miracle aids the destructive criticism now being applied to the Gospels, but modern inquiry does not touch the religious insight and spiritual elevation of Jesus. “In fact, the Christ-sirit which was in Him runs through the world, its great redeeming force ... I see in it the possibility of a basis of union between the divided unions of Christendom.”

Dr Barnes then urged the need for attracting the best of our young men to the ministry. “We are often told that there is no dearth of candidates for Holy Orders. But unfortunately, many of those who now come forward are inadequate alike in mental capacity or morale. “Some wish social advancement; they should be rejected. Others have the lamentable confidence that the seminary produces. Too many men ordained during and since the war cloak ignorance and inefficiency beneath an extravagant sacerdotalism. Such men are a weakness alike to the Church and the cause of Christian progress.' “To remove misunderstanding,” the preacher concluded, “we need constantly to expain that, while old standards of belief have crumbled,' no new orthodoxy has been officially set forth. A young man enthusiastic for all the new knowledge of our age, can to-day, without dissimulation or hypocrisy, become an Anglican clergyman. A group of such men .would have a golden opportunity of useful service.”