DECLINE IN NUMBERS?

Taranaki Daily News, 5 September 1935, Page 4

DECLINE IN NUMBERS?

ATTENDANCES AT CHURCH LACK OF INTEREST SUGGESTED. EXPERIENCE AT NEW PLYMOUTH. “DOUBTS,” RADIO AND THE CAR.

No less at New Plymouth than elsewhere during the last few years the size of church congregations has shown so marked a decrease that it is said nowadays only the very old and the very young consistently and conscientiously attend Sunday service. Investigations of that impression as it affects New Plymouth brings to light the interesting fact that townspeople are, comparatively speaking, good churchgoers. Clergymen interviewed say that New Plymouth people show little tendency to neglect their churches, and those who do not attend at all have been affected chiefly b; the changing conditions of modern life. Various reasons have been ascribed for the decline in religious interest, a decline that has been particularly marked over the last quarter of a century. The wireless, the motor-car, the war, the growth of doubt and other causes have been advanced, and though, in the opinion of the New Plymouth clergy, there is some truth in the suggestions, the results have been less serious at New Plymouth than in possibly larger cities, where the difficulties of keeping congregations interested in works of vital interest to the parish are proving almost insuperable. The suggestion that the wireless has adversely affected the church is admitted in one I’espect—that it has taken away permanently those only casually interested in the various churches. But in another respect it has been one of the most useful adjuncts that religion could possibly have. It has served to interest people without taste in religion by the broadcasting of services every Sunday; it has been invaluable for the aged and the weak, and those casual persons who are not particularly interested have heard services and desired more. The radio as a means of disseminating rebgious instruction has, however, the weakness that it does not act as a corporate witness of the celebration of service. It is considered that the corporate witness of service is one of the fundamentals of the church. In admitting that middle-aged people attending service were showing a decline in numbers 01. > minister sponsored the theory that the war was chiefly to blame. The thousands of men killed, he said, would now be middle-aged and would, in the ordinary course of a peaceable existence, have retained their adolescent interest in the church to become regular attendants at service.

The huge and somewhat astonishing growth in the number of car-owners, said one clergyman, was responsible for the decline in the number of worshippers. Working men seized their only free day for recreation, in which the car played a large part. Families might drive out on Sundays, and a certain number were lost in that way.

The growth of doubt that Christianity was the greatest force in life was a problem that all churchmen admitted was difficult to contradict, said a minister. The doubters had. chiefly nibbled at the outer shell of religion and had not pierced to the inner core of beauty, truth and goodness, the fundamentals. The outer shell was described as theological, or attempts by man to explain Christianity. The poorness of their attempts, in many cases, was considered to be one of the reasons why educated people who had nibbled at the crust had failed to realise the significance of what lay inside.