REAL RELIGION

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXV, Issue 23134, 5 September 1938, Page 12

REAL RELIGION

PROBLEMS FACED TO-DAY APPLYING CHRISTIANITY AMERICAN CHURCHES' STAND Some of the crucial problems that tho Christian Churches of America are facing to-day in their struggle to make tho Kingdom of God a reality in the lifo of the world were outlined last night bv Dr. Ralph Harlow, of Smith College/ Massachusetts, when preaching in St. David's Presbyterian Church to a crowded congregation. Dr. Harlow is visiting New Zealand as the holder of a Carnegie Peace Endowment Fellowship. . Dr. Harlow recalled how on the night of -tho Armistice 20 years ago ho preached to a great congregation of New Zealandcrs in an old French barn that had been used as a German hospital. Ho took as his text, 1 s<n\ ;i, new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth were passed away." "Wo believed then," he said, "that the 10,000,000 young men who had laid down their lives had purchased with their blood the right to a better world. \\ e know how disillusioned wc have since become. We know that this is not a new world, hut tho old world with its selfishness and exploitation and greed and hate."

Retort to Missionary As a missionary in Turkey, the preacher continued, he used to say that while Mohammed came with sword and battle, Jesus went to the Cross and that great sacrificial love could alone redeem mankind from sin and shame and suffering and strile; but he was sometimes told 1:o go back to his own country and teach them the principles of Jesus. Dr. Harlow recalled a great student convention of some years ago at which a feature was a large map of the world. India, China, Japan and the islands of tho sea were coloured a Stygian black. Catholic countries were in red, and Moslem iu green. The l.'nited States, England and Germany and New Zealand were the whitest of whites, and from the centre of America went out golden rays of light to the dark world. "You could not put a map like that before any group of students to-day," he said. "They would not stand for it. They know that Chicago has gangsters and racketeers and that the land of Ghandi is not all in Stygian darkness." Freedom of Conscience The Christian Churches of America believed that the world belonged to Christ, and they had a struggle on their hands, a task that called for all the utter devotion of the early Christians under persecution. The issue was being raised as it was in Germany whether God was supreme. Was the lajv supreme above all Christian eonscience? Had the State the right to demand what they believed that, only God had the right to? Among the problems he described were the refusal of the Government to grant citizenship to anyone who would not pledge himself unconditionally to support- the country in war. the problem of the proper treatment of the negroes, and tne social problem of the extremes of wealth and poverty. On such issues the Churches were standing for the principles of the Kingdom of God.