CHURCH PRAISE OF BROADCASTING

Hokitika Guardian, 23 March 1931, Page 2

CHURCH PRAISE OF BROADCASTING

DEVOUT LISTENERS-IN. PSYCHOLOGY FOB. HEALING THE SICK. LONDON, January 22. The Church has accepted the fact that listening-in to a service has come to stay. This acceptance is shown in a report just issued and presented to Convocation on the religious value of broadcast services. There has been a certain fear that the wireless services would act as rivals, an honest dread on the part of many of the popularisation of a form of Godliness that lacked the Church’s power, of the substitution of an emotional appeal at the fireside. The committee reporting to Convocation at Church House was quite frank. It advised clergymen to take a lesson from the 8.8. C. clearness oi voice and tone in the standard of preaching. Th e report, said the Bishop of Ely, referred to the mannerisms, tricks and curious little habits which clergy hud got Into in their pfeachiilg, aiid suggested that the reading aiid singing which came over the wifeless were worth studying, aiid in a reasonable WUy imitating. CLERICAL AFFECTATIONS. The report itself says;—“Wo don’t suggest that it is reasonable for the laity to expect to find in every country church the standard of preaching and reading represented by picked men. But they have the right to expect their clergy to read clearly and intelligently, and this is not always the case. Indistinctness, affectation and mannerism can spoil the beauty of the finest liturgy in Christendom.”

vMy Lord of Ely, indeed, recommended Convocation to send a message of thanks and appreciation to the 8.8. C.! Which, By the way, was carried.

The Bishop of Ely dissented from the view that wireless services had made for neglect of attendance at church, and he denied that there was any evidence that people who listen-in in their homes sit in their armchairs smoking pipes and take the services “casually” without any reverence in their attention. People do put their pipes down; they do sit up and do attend and behave reverently.

The church is equally alive to the claims of. psychology. in its relation to healing th e sick. It was resolved to set up a joint committee of both Houses of Convocation, to draw up and. submit for approval a provisional service for unction and imposition of hands for temporary use until a permanent and fully authorised form could be issued under synodical sanction , FAITH HEALING. It was stated that the primitive rites of anointing and laying hands upon the sick with a view to their recovery were in extensive and increasing use, for the most part with full episcopal approval. The aid, therefore, is being invoked of therapeutic psychology conditions for the effective' administration and reception ol the rites.

Canon Knight, in supporting the declared: “I want it for a bulwark against Christian Science which is still growing in this country.”

it was pathetic, declared another clergyman, the helplessness, doubt and difficulty of the parochial clergy on the subject. “I am continually receiving invitations to go about the country and show the clergy precisely how these rites should be performed according to the most approved methods. It requires a good deal of spiritual preparation. You want to tell the parish priost how he is to prepare himself and his patient. It does not do any good simply to lay your hands on a man’s head and expect something to happen, because it won’t happen,”