GREAT DISAPPOINTMENT

New Zealand Times, Volume LIII, Issue 12602, 12 November 1926, Page 6

GREAT DISAPPOINTMENT

RELIGIOUS EXERCISES BILL WHY IT WAS DEFEATED REPORT TO ASSEMBLY “A profound and unexpected disappointment” is how n report to the Presbyterian Assembly describes the last minute defeat of Mr L. M. Isitt’s Religious Exercises in Schools Bill, which wns rejected by two votes in the Legislative Council last session. ‘‘The fetish of ‘secular’ education,” the report went on, ‘‘lias so many worshippers even among religious people that it is no easy task to get the Bible into our schools, but it is distinctly encouraging to see the advance that, has been made. If we do not succeed with this Parliament the league and the churches comprising it will have to consider whether we must not come right out and fight a political battle. Indeed, the materialising effects of the system of secular education are becoming so apparent in the growing paganism all around us that the Church will have to face this whole matter of education. “Education is really a spiritual business, and cannot be completely undertaken by the purely secular State. The monopolising of the time of the children by the modern school system with lessons and organised sport is so great that neither the home nor the Church has much chance with them. PURCHASED TOO DEARLY. “A uniform system of State education may have many advantages, but these can bo purchased too dearly if they are to mean the progressive paganising of the rising generation and the absolute control of the thinking of the children by a system entirely devoid of religion. The present Bible-in-Schools platform is a minimum, for in order to make it as acceptable as possible to the whole community, the churches have not asked all that most of them consider really necessary, but if even this minimum is to he met with such unabated hostility we will be forced to go much further in the direction of seeking to give the children an education in which due and fitting place is found for the Bible and religion.” MR ISITT AGAIN.' The Hon. L. M. Isitt, M.L.C.. addressed the Assembly upon the merits of his Bill, and declared that the opponents of the measure were opposed to it merely because they feared the removal of State urants to denominational schools. He declared that he had been beaten in the Legislative Council because those on the other side had refused to pair when one of the supporters of the measure was away ill. (■Cries of “Shame.”) He knew that he had a majority of 13 in the House of Benresentatives pledged to vote for the Bill. He wanted a plebiscite of the parents. The Rev. D. Milne (ThanMfc) said the two opponents of the Bible in schools were the Labour Party and the Catholic Church. What was the benefit of continuing the present differences? The effective manner of doing awav with the various points would he to begin with the children. It lay at the door of the Catholic Church to meet the other churches in this matter. ■ The Rev. Gray Dixon (Wellington) declared that the children of New Zealand. although splendid physieallv And intellectually. were as spirituallv ignorant as if t.hev had been brought up in Central 'Africa. Their parents had been brought up under a desolating secular system of education. The report was adopted.