POLITICS AND CHRISTIANITY

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXV, Issue 23166, 12 October 1938, Page 14

POLITICS AND CHRISTIANITY

There is a modern tendency to repeat the old mistakes of the Jews and turn religion into political propaganda, to test Christianity by its applicability to this party or that party, whereas the true method is the reverse of this—to test the parties by their applicability to religion, writes Dr. Macdonald, the rector of St. Dunstan's in the West, in his book, "With Jesus in Palestine." We should not ask does Christianity agree with Conservative, or Liberal, or Labour politics? We should ask how far the policy of Conservative, or Liberal, or Labour is Christian? A Labour man may say, with justice, that his desiro to eradicate unemployment ist a Christian desire and has the sanction of Christ, but he has no right to say that Christianity is only another name for the programme of the Independent Labour Party, to the exclusion of tho Conservative love of old things, and the Liberal devotion to the sound national economy. No one political party is the elect of God, and to clawn that it is so is to reject Christ as He has undoubtedly been revealed in parts of the programmes of other parties. It is a function of religion to leaven politics, not of politics to leaven religion.

NAZI EXAMPLE AND WARNING We have a lesson in the recent history of Germany, an example of the organisation of a whole nation, the like of which the world has never seen before, writes Sir Wyndharn Docdes in a recent article Germany offers an outstanding illustration of what man can do and of what (according to the point of view) man should or should not do. It is a lesson for the Western democracies for apart from the reputed menace of Bolshevism from within and of threats from without one of the strongest contributory causes of the rise of National Socialism was the social and political. disintegration of Germany after the World War. Many persons are inclined to judge Germany superficially and to suppose thut il organises only for war. This is not the case It is organising also for the purposes of peace —social, industrial and cultural. Government implies the exercise "of responsibility. In National Socialist Germany responsibility is concentrated in the Fuehrer. In a free democracy we claim that it is diffused among the citizens at large. But for this two things are needed, money and a leisured class. Germany to-day has neither money nor a leisured class. Indeed, it may almost be said that the only peoples that can afford the luxury of free associations are the United States and the British Commonwealth of Nations. All the greater need to show what they are worth I Having none of these things, Germany, Italy and Russia say that for a nation to survive there is no other method than that of the totalitarian state.

LOVE QF A STORY • _i Do you enjoy n good story? asks Mr. J. S. Braithwaite, writing in the Christian Scfence Monitor. Who does not? Why are the cinemas and theatres crowded, and why do their audiences contain not only the frivolously-minded but many grave and serious people as well, all intent on being told a "story"? It must be because of thcif expectation of awakened interest in living which they hope will result from a privileged view of the dexterous inter-weaving of characters in the story they are about to see and hear. On stage or screen there are presented to them phases of human experiences, not necessarily true, but certainly suggestive, which temporarily, at least, let down the bars of tho 'drab prison wherein what they call their circumstances confine , them. The worst of it is that our storytellers so often weave a plot that is quite unrelated to actual experience, and being moreover unworthy of any analytical consideration wo emerge from these darkened chambers only too grateful that b,> lending our time and attention to such matters wo have not forfeited our right to the good light of day and to> norinul living. But once in a while we come away well rewarded, for the story which has been passing before us has called forth some deep inward response and may even have altered the course of our lives, if only by a hair's breadth. Naturally, the Rtorv which produces most effectively this kind of result is that one which, without affoctation or dogmatic preaching, touches most nearly the very fibre of true being, for it is true being that most nearly concerns each one of us, whether he likes to admit it or not.