CHURCH AND WAR

Timaru Herald, Volume CXLVIII, Issue 21576, 12 February 1940, Page 6

CHURCH AND WAR

Methodists And Pacifists

‘‘Playing The Martyr” Further evidence of the reaction of the Methodist Church to the resolution recently passed by a conference of Bible-class members is given in the “Methodist Times" issued on Saturday. “We cannot but feel that the pacifist leaders of the Dominion, among whom are members of our own Church, are guilty of a very ill-advised policy in pursuing their pacifist propaganda under present circumstances," says the leading article. “We fail to unerstand what practical object they hope to achieve. They are straining the patience of the authorities, are causing dangerous public irritation, and are markedly alienating the sympathy of their friends.

“We cannot wonder that the Attor-ney-General . . . sounded a distinct warning note, and declared that disloyal and seditious propaganda must cease . . . And we do not see how it can be questioned that the guerrilla pacifistic campaign now being engaged in by certain leaders mpst definitely have the effect deprecated by the Attorney-General. Notwithstanding all the work of our pacifist friends in recent years, and notwithstanding the sincere efforts of honest statesmanship, here is the nation at death grips with an unscrupulous brutal, relentless tyranny, a tyranny which, if it had its way. w’ould ride rough-shod over personal, civil and religious freedom everywhere, as it has done wherever it has had the power.

“Where would the pacifist leaders be under the Nazi regime—that regime for which so many of them profess such strange admiration? The Gestapo would long ago have had them in its fell clutches. The country has a right to ask that pacifism should refrain from activity during the progress of the war. We believe the Attorney-General, to again quote him. is quite justified in asserting that ‘the Government and people of this country will not tolerate that freedom shall be perverted to impede the cause of freedom.’

“Our pacifist friends, we hold, are grossly abusing their liberty, and we appeal to them to cease so doing. They have no right to cause the tension they are now causing. They are playing the martyr needlessly.” In several places in the newspaper there are references to the indignation of Bible classes and church assembles at the resolution of the young men, to the departure for camp of members and office-bearers of the church, and to the formation_of patriotic groups to work for the Red Cross and similar organisations.

It is stated that the Auckland East Circuit will ask the Church Conference which is to be held in Dunedin shortly, to formulate regulations forbidding any society or organisation within the church to publish any resolutions that are not in harmony with the declared policy of the Conference, without first obtaining the consent of the president or a special committee appointed for that purpose. The Circuit meeting deplored the serious injury the church had suffered as a result of the Bible Class resolution.