ARCHBISHOP PROTESTS.

Horowhenua Chronicle, 8 October 1931, Page 3

ARCHBISHOP PROTESTS.

CHURCH i£NNOUNCEMENTS. USED FOR ADVERTISING. The opportunity for free advertisement afforded by announcements in church is protested against by Archbishop Averill, Primate of New Zealand, in a letter to the Church News, ■Christchurch, It is remarked that he found that this opportunity was being abused,'and he was-inclined to believe that in many cases it was under pressure from the laity that so many secular announcements were jumbled up with the spiritual notices proper to the service.

“I am well aware,” he wrote, “that the clergy are often put in a difficult position with , regard to the notices they are asked to give out in church. I receive constant requests for permission to send round,‘pulpit notices’ on almost evei’y conceivable subject, but I invariably refuse to do so, inasmuch as in my judgment the public services of the church should not be regarded as an advertising medium for all and sundry to use. There is a danger of regarding the church as a cheap advertising agency, and many of the notices given out in church are quite un. suitable and often most distracting—sometimes, I fear, bordering on the ludicrous.

“I am quite prepared to hear that we need to associate the everyday life of the people as closely as possible with the church. I am quite prepared to hear that all these whist drives, jumble sales, etc., are part of the stock-in-trade of the social and financial life of modern Christianity, and that they are indispensable for obtaining support for the church in these quid-pro quo days; but I cannot think it right that the church should publicly and ostentatiously advertise all kinds of ways and means for supporting the work of the church, when that support should be given by the freewill offerings of the people, quite apart altogether from the chance of winning a doll or a cake or by estimating the number of peas in a bottle.”

Most of the advertisements of the non-spiritual activities can, he says, well be advertised in the daily papers, the parish news sheets, or even in the porches of the churches.