YOUTH AND THE CHURCH.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVI, Issue 20438, 14 December 1929, Page 14

YOUTH AND THE CHURCH.

POSITION IN AMERICA.

DR. FRENCH E. OLIVER'S VIEWS

"The modern theologists are really preaching themselves out of their jobs, said Dr. French E. Oliver, an American Bible teacher and lecturer, yesterday, in discussing the attitude of modem youth toward religion. Dr. Oliver, who is visiting Auckland in the courst of a world tour, is a Presbyterian minister in the United States, and is the president of the International Evangelisation Society. In expressing an opinion on the attitude of American youth toward the Church, Dr. Oliver said that one of the first causes of the apathy which was noticeablo at the present timo was the fart that there were far too many preachers who accepted the modernist attitude toward the Bible, which reduced it from a divine revelation to a literary document of .uncertain trustworthiness. By thus robbing young people of their faith in the Bible, they •were taking away their respect for the Church. They were really preaching themselves out. of their jobs, and if this prevailed another generation would see the Church practically disintegrated. "Tfc is' interesting that the youth' of all nations will invariably respond to the heroic," Dr. Oliver said. "Modern theology produces mediocrity. There has never been one giant among modernists who can compare with Martin Luther, Calvin, Knox or Wesley." Another cause of the present attitudo was the widespread acceptance of the evolutionary hypothesis in the schools. The way to an atheistic creed of lifo was also very easy. The crime in which the two Jewish youths Leopold and Loeb murdered a young boy named Franks was declared in the Court to bo a direct outcome of the dissemination' of the Nielzschean philosophy and similar cults | throughout the universities.