DISESTABLISHMENT

Hawera Star, Volume XLVIII, 29 December 1928, Page 5

DISESTABLISHMENT

CHURCH OF ENGLAND.

ADVOCATED BY BISHOP. 'SEPARATION FROM STATE. (United Press Association —By Electric Telegraph Copyright.) (Australian Press Association—United Service.) Received 9.35 a.m. to-day. LONDON, Dec. 27. Bishop of Durham, -writing in the Nineteenth Century, advocates disestablishment by consent, arguing that the rejection of the Prayer Book measures created a situation in which the church’s first duty is to vindicate its spiritual independence. ll<> adds: “The loss of national status would, for many churchmen, be a wounding experience, but establishment has ceased to be an object of regard for the majoritj'. Disestablishment does not stand alone, but goes with the sinister and terrifying prospect of disendowment. Statesmen, in a friendly conference with leaders of the Church of England and of the Free 'Church might frame a measure of disestablishment and disendowment, ending the immemorial relation of church and state in England, which ha 3 now lost its justification and become unwholesome for both. This would secure indispensable freedom to spiritual society, It would not cripple the work of the church by a harsh measure of confiscation; it would not -wound devout Anglicans by secular control of sacred | buildings centuries long enshrining the < worship of the church.”