“HOTBEDS OF INTRIGUE.”

Hawera Star, Volume XLVIII, 3 October 1924, Page 5

“HOTBEDS OF INTRIGUE.”

. THE CHURCH CRITICISED. STUDENTS’ DENUNCIATION. BY CABLE—PH ESS ABSOC.I VI’ION —COPY ttl» H'| LONDON, October 1. Young undergraduates off both sexes, who are attending the Church Congress, roundly criticised modem church tendencies. Speakers declared that there is no place for young people, in the majority of the nations, and that youth is completely indifferent to religion. They wanted reality, and they harboured a suspicion that parsons were paid to preach doctrines tliey had long ceased to believe in. Most congregations, it was asserted were hotbeds, of intrigue, jealousy and backbiting. Churchwardens’ wives were hypocritically friendly at committee meetings and cut one another in the street, while youths were not favourably impressed when they saw professing Christians gambling' on the stock exchange, underpaying employees, and drawing revenues from slum properties..

The Church had adopted three Pharisaical virtues —comfort, popularity, and success. Students had threatened to start a campaign to set hymns in a lower tone, as the young men of today , found church music oitclied too high.