ORGANISED RELIGION.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 20964, 1 March 1930, Page 24

ORGANISED RELIGION.

FALLEN ON EVIL DAYS. “THE FIGURES OF FAILURE.” (Froie Our Own Correspondent.) LONDON, January 21, 1930. “ Now that the statistics of organised religion for 1929 have been published, the spiritual balance sheet makes depressing reading. If it were the balance sheet* of a limited liability company there would really have been consternation among the shareholders and the calling of a special meeting to conwith brutal frankness, the desperate situation.” These remarks were made by Dr Douglas Brown, President of the Baptist Union, preaching in London. The previous week, he had said, when speaking at Norfolk, that if the present spiritual slump continued unchecked, and if the deplorable drift continued for another ten years organised religion, for all practical purposes, would be as dead as the dodo. They stood staggered and humbled before “ the figures of failure,” and it was no consolation for them to know that other denominations were no better off than they were. The generality of the gruesome facts increased their concern and deepened their anxiety. i CO-OPERATION NEEDED. His itinerations up and down the land among the churches had deepened his conviction that denominationalism must decrease its competition and increase its co-operation. It was-a pitiful sight to see half a dozen churches of various denominations in a tiny town all on the verge of bankruptcy, all struggling to make ends meet, all half paralysed by despair, all being propped up by central funds, which were fast being bled to death. Two of the six buildings would hold all thte Free Church worshippers. This denominational overlapping called for interdenominational enquiry and concerted action. There was dire need for co-operation instead of separation. They could not afford to ignore or explain away the statistics. Any denomination which could afford to remain unmoved, undisturbed, and complacent when its membership was ceaselessly declining and its young life drifting away .by the thousands, and which refused to face the ugly facts seriously and practically, was suffering from “ sleeping sickness,” which might in the end prove fatal. It was no use trying to befool themselves." Something was radically wrong. Organised religion had fallen on evil days. In many places it was nothing more than a self-preserva-tion society, manifesting symptoms of further dangerous relapse.