ABOUT CHURCHES

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LVI, 17 January 1925, Page 7

ABOUT CHURCHES

AMATEUR AND PROFESSIONAL

“G. B. S.” ON CLERGYMEN

Mr Bernard Shaw lectured for over an hour recently at Eccleston Guldhouse on “Churches, Amateur and Professional.” Miss Royden presided. \ ; Mr Shaw said that the great difference between a Roman Catholic priest and an English clergyman was the former was unmistakably a professional and the latter an amateur. The professional cleric always wore a tall hat-, a long black coat, and had a certain, expression of voice which sounded like a gramaphone with a sore throat. There was no greater authority or inspiration in a religious assembly than in, to take an extreme example, the House of Commons.

There might be a perfectly - genuine psychological realtiv about which was called the descent of the Holy Ghost, but it descended where 7 it listed. A Roman Catholic or Protestaut church, or Eccleston Guildhousc, or Parliament, or the Fabian Society. Sometimes it descended on very humble individuals who •have not had a university education, perhaps could not even read or write, and sometimes it quite frankly scandalised the church by descending on a, woman. / The clergy were a professionalised, clcss, because, many of them only went into tlie church because they were sons of their fathers. If this country had a reasonable social system, and everybody had tho same opportunity of training and education, there would be no lack of .suitable candidates for the Ministry. (Referring to the Athanasian Creed, Mr Shaw said that people had an incc tangible habit of saying that if a man lias a good heart it. does not matter howbig a fool he is. But the Creed made a startling assertion that people will be damned for intellectual inferiority. They uoght to be made to think, and tlie Creed merely meant that a man who did not use his brains was a damned fool. He thought that only a very generalised form of religion should be taught to children. It ought to be a crane to proseetytise them in any way. When they grew up they should be shown the different forms of religion and churches and told to take their choice.

Mr Shaw mentioned that when his mother died, being a religiously-minded woman, she was indifferent about the funeral ceremony, but he had the Church of England service read over her. While there were some beautiful passages in it he felt Iks did not wish to hear it (again. When Iris sister was cremated at Golder’s Green no arrangement was made for a service, but feeling that something was lacking he conducted a service himself. He said he liked to go to church, but not on Sundays, because then there was something always going on that interferred/ with his religion. When he went into a' church it was because he wanted to be alone with God.

Tli lecture closed with a strong protest against the division between scientific and religious thought-