SUCCESSOR TO BIBLE-IN-SCHOOLS LEAGUE

Grey River Argus, 25 March 1949, Page 7

SUCCESSOR TO BIBLE-IN-SCHOOLS LEAGUE

WELLINGTON, March 24,

An organisation to provide for religious instruction in all spheres of education in the Dominion was set up in Wellington to-day, to be known as the New Zealand Council of Christian Education. This body will incorporate the present E?ible-in-Schools League, which was established nearly thirty years ago, and continue the League’s work on a much wider basis.

Discussing the new Council, the Rev. D. D. MacLachlan (Christchurch) and Mr FI. J. Mackie, President of the Canterbury Branch of the League said that, its establishment was tht culmination of suggestions made to the League in 1943 by the National Council of Churches.

These suggestions envisage carrying the League’s work, which was concerned with primary schools only, into the secondary schools, training colleges, and universities. Although most secondary schools had their own arrangements for religious instruction, the National Council felt that such instruction would be better implemented if it were part of a co ordinated plan. The new body, they continued, would call upon the Dominion’s leading educationalists to act as advisers in its work.

A committee for five members, two representing the primary schools, and three the higher institutions of learning, would be set up to assist the President, the Primate of New Zealand, Archbishop West-Watson, and his officers, who, in their turn, would represent all churches embodied in the National Council of Churches. Un- I til the new Council was fully estab-1 fished, the League would carry on its j work' in the primary schools, added I Mr Mackie. 1