LABOUR AND RELIGION.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLIV, Issue 13397, 28 January 1907, Page 5

LABOUR AND RELIGION.

AN ATTACK ON THE METHODIST

CHURCH

By Telegraph.—Press Association.—

Sydney, January 26. The president of the Sydney Political Labour League, in an address yesterday, made an attack on the Methodist Church. He referred with regret to the introduction of religion into politics- He elated that the Labour party had never permitted religious differences to enter their ranks, and he thought a. man's religion was a thing entirely belonging to himself. He regretted that the Methodist Church, together with the so-called Temperance Alliance, had been practically captured by the Reform Association. Looking back on the history of the Methodist Church it was, he added, a subject for regret and sorrow that it should allow itself to be used by a party of politicians against a movement of the people.

The president of the Methodist Conference, in a reply to these statements, said there was nothing unfriendly in the attitude of the Church to Labour. The Methodist Church was the friend of Labour's beat interests, taut herd itself free to have some judgment upon what these best interests were.