NEW PAGANISM

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXVI, 10 April 1934, Page 2

NEW PAGANISM

NEED FOR RELIGION Dr Guy Warman, Bishop of Manchester, stated in a Lenten address that tlie need for religion was just as great to-day as ever it had been, for it. controlled man’s whole personality and power. “In Russia,” he said, “the State takes the place of God as the religion of the people. Some of our English teachers have invented a word for it —one of the ugliest words I know —totalitarianism.” It was a religion frankly pagan, because it dispensed with God. In Italy, on the other hand, the new religion took God and Christ into alliance. Fascism had made its peace with the Vatican. It was not sufliciently self-centred to do without God. Nazi Germany also had fitted religion into its plan. He.thought that there is a real danger that this new paganism might set itself in antithesis in England not only with the Christian religion, but with all that they loved best. The new paganism would not have arisen if the Christian Church had not so often misinterpreted God. Sometimes he was not surprised that Karl .Marx described religion as opium for the' people. If the State must be totalitarian to be ell'ective so must leligion. The issue with which they were faced was.a world order based on Christ or a world order based on the exclusion of all religion.