CHURCH LEADERSHIP

Otago Daily Times, Issue 24633, 14 June 1941, Page 2

CHURCH LEADERSHIP

When the world has long trusted in its own righteousness, and has fallen under the ensuing judgment, it -is apt to turn angrily to the Church, asking where is her leadership and why is she not rushing out to wave blue-prints for Paradise in the van of the modern movement, writes Miss Dorothy L. Sayers in World Review. But the Church is not concerned with new movements but with eternal truth; and it is pretty safe to say that whenever she is to be found in the van of the current movement she is not leading it, but merely being swept away by the current. Her real leadership is being exercised by her prophets, elsewhere and unnoticed. In her worst moments the Church is never without her witnesses, and to-day the best Christian thinkers are writing and speaking of world events with an insight and profundity which make the ablest efforts of the secular reformers look like schoolboys’ essays. Whether the Church appears to be before or behind the times depends a good deal on the way the times are going; the man in the right place will always be behind the man who is running full tilt in the wrong direction. But it is nearer the truth to say that all error moves in a vicious circle, and that when its revolution of destruction has fulfilled itself it will see the truth standing where it has always stood—neither in front nor behind, but at the centre.