BISHOP'S DRASTIC SUGGESTION.

King Country Chronicle, Volume XXII, Issue 2672, 29 December 1928, Page 5

BISHOP'S DRASTIC SUGGESTION.

DISESTABLISHMENT OF CHURCH. TO SECURE SPIRITUAL INDEPENDENCE. (Australian and N.Z. Press Assn.) (Received 9.5 a.m.) London, December 27. The Bishop of Durham, writing in the Nineteenth Century, advocates the disestablishment of the Church by consent, arguing that tho rejection of the Prayer Rook measure has created a situation in which the Church's first duty is to vindicate its spiritual independence. Ho adds that 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 majority. Disestablishment does not stand alone, but goes with a sinister and terrifying prospect of disendowment. Statesmen, in a friendly conference with the leaders of the Church of England and tho Free Churches, might frame a measure of disestablishment and disendowment, thus ending the immortal rehp tion of Church and State in England, which has now lost its justification and become unwholesome for both. This would secure indispensable freedom ■to spiritual society and it would not cripple the Church's work by the harsh measure of confiscation, nor would it bind devout Anglicans by the secular control of sacred buildings and the centuries Jong enshrining and worship in the Church.