REJECTED PRAYER BOOK

Hawera Star, Volume XLVII, 18 June 1928, Page 11

REJECTED PRAYER BOOK

LATE EDITION

A CHURCH IN CHAINS. DISESTABLISHMENT UNLIKELY. DANGER IN SUCH A PROPOSAL. (Australian Press Association —United Service.) Received 9.55 a.m. to-day, LONDON, June 17. Mr. Garvin, writing in the “Observer,” states': Thermos no chance for a deposited book in thp next Parliament. The established Church, has been exhibited for a second, time in the .House of Commons as a - Church in chains. Whatever else*kappens, it must •be ruled and .ordered like all other communions by our members. Either it must stand humiliated, discredited, and weakened in repute and endeavour, or it must, at any cost, atssert and achieve that equal right to spiritual self-government which it was believed was finally conceded when it adopted the present representative constitution. The Church must free, itself from the terms of connection with the State such as are injurious to both; it must be emancipated from the intolerable political tutelage of those not belonging to its fold t It is necessary for the whole moral life of the Church to secure the political and religious equality enjoyed by every other sect or concession. Disestablishment will only “come if Parliament imposes it. We cannot imagine any party taking the initiative. If either Labour or Liberalism puts the issue in its programme for next general election, the whole existing political situation will be transformed, with incalculated results. The cries, “Religion in Danger,” “Church in Danger,” would be raised, and the election would be the and most violent for many years. We do not fear that the present troubles will have a tragic issue; it is more likely that the Church will remain established and become spiritually free. The whole of the Conservatives are against tlisendowment, and neither the Labourites nor the Liberals are likely to favour disestablishment with or without disendowment.