BIBLE IN SCHOOLS.

Manawatu Standard, Volume XLIX, Issue 269, 12 October 1929, Page 9

BIBLE IN SCHOOLS.

ACTION BY LEAGUE. Per Press Association. AUCKLAND, Oct. 11. “Because the fetish of free, secular, and compulsory education has caught; the popular imagination and. provided a popular political slogan, the Church has been unsuccessful in its efforts to obtain the reading or teaching of the Holy Scripture. in the State primary schools,” said Archbishop Ave,rill in his presidential address to the Anglican Synod. “For years we have endeavoured to get a definite acknowledgement of Almighty God,” added his Grace. “We are not so foolish as to suppose that the millennium would be in sight even if the State amended the Education Act and, provided for the education of the whole child by recognising the value and importance of the spiritual side of the child’s nature, but we do make bold to say - that children would be far better equipped to face the temptations and pitfalls of life if they had some solid reason and foundation for living a moral life and some nobler vision of the meaning and opportunities of life.” The executive of the Bible-in-State Schools League was not submitting its bill to the present Parliament, said the Archbishop, but was still carrying on its work, and would endeavour to secure such amendments to Hon. G. M. Thomson’s Bill, which advocated the Victorian system, that it might to a large extent cover the same ground as the Church’s own bill. The ' Victorian system was very similar- to what was known as the Nelson system, and suffered from the same defects—viz., religious teaching must be given outside school hours, and very few children in -country schools could be reached by it. In the meantime he recommended tho clergy to use such opportunities as they might obtain under the Nelson system of giving some religious instruction to the children in State schools.