WHAT IS WRONG WITH THE CHURCH ?

Southland Times, Issue 20201, 11 June 1927, Page 9

WHAT IS WRONG WITH THE CHURCH ?

To the Editor. Sir-Many of your readers would no doubt be interested in the subject introduced in the columns of your paper by the Rev. J. Chisholm of Knox Church regarding the problems of the church. The preacher apparently considers the question as to what is wrong with the church as a hackneyed one, but I fail to see how this disposes of the question one way or the other. All the evidence from leading church divines, with the solitary exception of the Roman Catholic Church, affirm a steady decline of church membership and church attendance. Now a reasoned opinion by Mr Chisholm would have been more illuminating to your readers as well as to church attenders. The address as reported by you said that one could expect the wrongs of the church being discussed in trade union halls. May I inquire why a trade union should discuss the question more than any other organised body? Has Mr Chisholm ever been in attendance at a trade union meeting to know this? Why did he not include the Farmers’ Union, the Chamber of Commerce or associations of land agents and stock jobbers? These might just as well have been included in the assumption that the church is being unfairly criticised by outside groups. Criticism is only the exercise of reason and ought to be invited by the church in order to prove itself and to disarm opposition. Criticism, higher and | lower, is applied by scholars to the Bible | with the best of results to the reasonable [mind. Without the exercise of the critical

faculty one cannot tell the writers of the different books of the Bible nor the time of their production and place. It appears to me that the church is not suffering from an overdose of criticism, but just not enough. There has settled on the human mind an apathy to the church and its problems, which is very disquieting. Does this indifference arise from the fact that the church is not worth troubling about or that the exponents of the church are not taken seriously? The speaker made an unfortunate comparison when he alluded to parliaments. Parliaments have simply grown out of human needs in order to maintain some measure of government. On the other hand the church came into being by Divine fiat when Christ said, “On this rock I will build my church.” Parliaments come and go and evidence appears in abundance that we are now passing through a transition stage and will eventually arrive at a readjustment of the functions of parliament to serve the real needs of the body-politic. The church then is in a different order, and if there be anything wrong with it, it is not at the foundation but in the superstructure. Again the superstructure may be altered from age to age, but the basis stands unalterable. Now let me respectfully ask if Mr Chisholm is perfectly satisfied with the building resting on this unchanging substructure ? Is the church right and healthy? I would venture to say that those who stand for the abolition of the church are an insignificant minority of the people and not worthy of serious consideration; yet there are many who believe in the need for the readjustment of the church to provide adequately for man’s deeper needs in the twentieth century and which are co-extensive with the races of the earth.—l am, etc., “GRAPHO.”