CHURCH IN GRAVE DANGER

Taranaki Daily News, 29 March 1930, Page 11

CHURCH IN GRAVE DANGER

WARNING BY ARCHDEACON

PEOPLE’S'NEGLECT OF WORSHIP. DETERIORATION IN CHARACTER. “Our church to-day is in the gravest danger,” said Archdeacon F. G. Evans, at the afternoon in honour of Mrs. Evans and himself at New Plymouth yesterday. “There is a more insidious danger stacking our religion to-day than the anti-God campaign in Russia. The effect of the Soviet campaign is bound in time to produce a finer religion. Persecution all through the centuries has never destroyed the church.lt has only made the Church grow stronger.” “I do not like saying this,” said the Archdeacon, “but our own danger lies in people' making a niock of . religion.” “There were people who treated the Church with contempt. They wanted to be married by . the Church, and they wanted their relatives to be buried by the Church. But that was all. Was it possible, he asked, that at the present ■moment there were even 10,000 people in New Plymouth who really believed? People would . not go .to . church. Instead, it was the..picnic, the beach, or the mountain. No. person, ,no group of persons and no country could dare to ignore God without some reprisal and the punishment of the ungodly: was instantaneous. It was . this —that character deteriorated. .In New ..Zealand to-day one had only to take up the. papers to see this apathy reflected in the crime wave running over the whole country. National life was built up on character, and character was improved by real religion. Religion at its best held the hghest ideals of the heart and mind. Man was never, intended to be the sport of sin and suffering. “I want you,” he said, “to claim the real religion, not the mechanical, not the sham religion.” Even if they did not enjoy going to church it was their duty to go, and especally to . take their children. “Remember,” said .the .Archdeacon, “that the first sign of national decay is the decay in religion.”. .