“Taranaki Central Press” FRIDAY, JANUARY 8, 1937. A GODLESS CONGRESS.

Taranaki Central Press, Volume IV, Issue 328, 8 January 1937, Page 4

“Taranaki Central Press” FRIDAY, JANUARY 8, 1937. A GODLESS CONGRESS.

Sixteen hundred delegates from 46 States will attend the Godless Congress in February. The agenda includes the formation of a central office to fight the Christian religion and the establishment of a Godless International. So ran a cable message from Moscow yesterday. Russia is taking one step nearer her goal of a complete world revolution, a revolution not only of our politic al and economic nrinciples, but also of the whole fabric of our social and spiritual life. It is that such a move as the formation of a Godless International should emanate from Rusia. At the last World Congress of the Communist International in Moscow last year, the veteran Soviet leader Manuilsky emphasised the necessity for a complete "dictatorship of the proletariat,” and if the congress wished to know how such a dictatorship worked, let them “look at at the Paris Commune" of the French Revolution. The Paris Commune and the French revolutionaries passed through a stage of Godlessness in their rabid and fanatical desire for a complete revolution. During the 70 days of the Paris Commune, the streets of that city almost ran with blood, buildings were burnt, churches were desecrated, priests were cruelly shot by the rioting revolutionaries. At the close of his address. Comrade Manuilsky was acclaimed, not only with the singing by the whole congress of the "Internationale," but also by the singing of the “Carmagnole," that same satanic song the men and women of Paris sang in 1793 as they danced round bonfires made with the loot of desecrated churches. As a writer in an American paper recently said: "As the singers and the dancers of the Carmagnole’ in Paris a hundred and forty years ago acclaimed a ‘Universal Republic’ and were exhorted to acknowledge ‘one God only, the People,’ so did the Communist singers of the ‘Carmagnole' in Moseev acclaim the Universal Soviet Socialist Republic, administered by the Dictatorship of the Proletariat, under which the hideous profanations and massacres of the French and Russian Revolutions would be faithfully repeated.” There is no question that from Soviet Russia an intensified attack is being prepared on both the democratic and religious freedom of the world. It is not an attack emanating from the people of Russia, but comes from the Communist Party under the leadership of Joseph Stalin. Soviet power to-day is an atheist power, and the Godless Congress is directly an outcome of the Russian revolution. In an interview published on this page to-day, a Stratford clergyman deals with the movement in a manner and from an angle that is beyond us. But we would point out that, serious as this Russian declaration is, to some degree it is but a passing phase in the revolution that country is still undergoing. When the Czarist regime was overthrown in 1916. it was a rising of the people. The erstwhile almost negligible unit, "the people," gained control through their revolutionary leaders of the whole nation. And as in Paris in 1 793, they ran riot. Mentally they are still running riot, and the worship of God has been replaced to a large extent by the worship of the People—" There is one God only, the People.” The move for a Godless International is but the outcome of the mental rioting of the Russian politician. The power of Communism must.stand above all else. Hence the antagonism to the power of God; hence the forthcoming Godless Congress. The pity of it is, however, that meanwhile the cultural life of the Russian nation, which as with any country is inevitably based on the spiritual life of the nation, remains stagnant. All is subordinated to materialism, a worship of man and his machine. There are few points of unity between the Soviet Powe r of Communism and Christianity.