INFLUENCE OF CHURCH

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LXIII, Issue 19070, 18 July 1936, Page 5

INFLUENCE OF CHURCH

BRITISH EMPIRE PEOPLES MESSAGE FOR THE WORLD (Per Press Association.) WELLINGTON, this day. The influence of the church on work! affairs was referred to hy Archdeacon 11. St. Barbe Holland, the Bishopdesignate of Wellington, in. an interview on his arrival from London hy the Akaroa yesterday. The world, he said, was in a very fluid condition. Old conventions had gone and everything was called ni question. The foundations of life wore uncertain for a majority of people. To his mind the British Empire was the one corporate entity in the world which did base its life on Christian principles, and for that reason the British people had a tremendous message to give. Whatever their attitude to the organised church might be, there was a very strong religious foundation to all life in England, although perhaps the people would not admit it. One could noi say the same of many other nations. The archdeacon said it seemed to him that the Christian ideals of national life were summed up in lhe League of Nations FAITH IN LEAGUE IDEAL. Despite the apparent failure of the League, he still held 1 that a form oi corporate life organisation, such as the League, was the only hope of averting the crash which threatened from all sides. At the present time, Christianity was the hope of the nations, even though organised institutions representing Christianity seemed to be fairly weak. He knew nothing about the church in New Zealand, so lie could not speak for it. Commenting on the attitude of the general public towards the church, Archdeacon Holland thought the conventional idea that it was respectable to be a Christian was waning, and those who asserted their membership of the churcn were really concerned about what the church stood for, and about spiritual realities. To day there was a more intelligent understanding of what Christianity meant. In the old days, people were members of churches because everybody else was. Now' they belonged to the*church because 'hey had me conviction that it represented the true thing of life. This was all for the good, because it meant that the old ionventions were dying out.