RATING PLACES OF WORSHIP

Otago Daily Times, Issue 22268, 22 May 1934, Page 11

RATING PLACES OF WORSHIP

TO THE editoh. Sir, —In ray first letter concerning the rating of places of worship I applauded “ Methodist Layman ” for his stand, on principle, against being financially associated or “ identified with ” a form of activity in which he does not believe. When I instanced the glaring instance of rating people who do not believe in churches in order that churches may not be rated, our friend from the Methodist Church asserts, without an atom of proof, that churches are free from rating because religion is the safeguard of our morals' and our greatest bulwark against a return to barbarism and crime. May I ask him if the transformation of the Christian world for the better—a world indisputably improved morally, intellectually, and in various other ways—since the general decline in religious belief (which the pulpits lament everywhere) set in 100 years or so ago is to be regarded as proof of his statements? There is no possibility of dispute about the devout nature of our forefathers and the very real hold of religion upon them. There is as little argument about the crime, ignorance, poverty, and vice which abounded in those religions tiroes. Equally patent to all, who have eyes to see, is the great improvement, over ages of religious faith, of our own day even if we admit the long road we still have to travel yet before the evils we still labour under are finally removed. 1 leave it to your correspondent to reconcile these " facts ” with his preposterous assertions. I would also direct your correspondent’s attention to another fact about which, among reliable students, there can be no dispute—namely, that every single step forward in the march of civilisation was made in face of the opposition of the priests of religion. “ Methodist Layman ” compiled a very pretty little letter extolling and dogmatically asserting that which I know' to be the exact reverse of the true facts. Did he do this in the secure knowledge that, in what is termed a “ Christian community,” no effective or exhaustive reply to these statements would be permitted?

Now, Trill " Methodist Layman" address himself to the question originally put to him, •which was whether he thinks that Freethinkers and Atheists should be taxed to maintain what they do not believe in? He objected, on principle, to being rated, " in no matter what infinitesimal degree," to maintain that to which be objected. I make the same claim, as do all Freethinkers the world over.—l am, etc., E. W. F.