CHURCH AND POOR.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXII, Issue 7025, 13 January 1910, Page 3

CHURCH AND POOR.

BISHOP OP BIRMINGHAM'S INDICTMENT.

As president of the Christian Social Union, the Bishop of Birmingham addressed a large gathering of working-n'-en at Bethnal Green London on November 7th, in connection with the Oxford House men's meetings. Remarking on the fact that such / a forge multitude of all classes remained in a very indefinite relation towards religion, Dr. Gore said it was partly because tho Englishman greatly disliked the trouble of definite thinking, but it was partly because, so for ’as the Church, of England, with which ho was best acquainted, was concerned, there was such a large number of causes of scandaland offence, which especially kept away those whom broadly they culled the workers. The Church of England had got itself attached on tho whole in the past to one particular class, to the wealthy rather than the poor. Tho unjust distribution of incomes amongst ministers of religion was a cause of widespread and very reasonable dissatisfaction, and another cause was the attachment of the most convenient pews to those who were prepared to pay. Ho was Mtaid there had been a general tendency in the' Church, of England in all the age-long conflict between the classes to be I‘ather on the side of tho rich against the poor, but they had reached a time when there was a very widespread determination! to find a remedy for this. There was only ono remedy—a deep and searching reform of their institutions, and that reform could only oomo from tho inside. His g l°r- at fw Pe *i for Churc h °f England was that tho workers who were really Churchmen would become a new moulding force within, so that their Church ™t‘ of H OUW •’S°P roßont «»» minded heart of the workers, and not the mind and heart which would approach the workers in a spirit of patronage.