ATTACK MADE ON ANGLICAN VIEWS

Star (Christchurch), Issue 19240, 29 November 1930, Page 28 (Supplement)

ATTACK MADE ON ANGLICAN VIEWS

LAMBETH FINDINGS STRONGLY CRITICISED. (Special to the “Star.”) LONDON, October 18. Marriage and birth control were among the subjects dealt with yesterday by Dr F. W. Norwood, when, in his address at the autumn assembly of the Congregational Union of England and Wales at Southend, he criticised the findings of the Lambeth Conference. Dr Norwood declared that in his judgment, so far as Nonconformity had dreamed of a closer union with the Anglican Communion, the findings at Lambeth might be reduced to four words: “No road this way.” To speak of marriage as a Sacrament was playing with language. Nothing had confused the issue more than the priestly assumption that character would be imposed upon marriage by ecclesiastical legerdemain. “The Christian ideal of marriage is sacred: it is the only worthy ideal. But the times call for a mere difficult but more adequate defence than the mere assertion that a marriage is .Christian because it was solemnised by Christian rites. We had better surrender the pretence of giving that character to it by means of Holy Orders. To make marriage worthy of the Christian ideal is the task of - the Christian Church. “A Scandal.” “The Bishops have created a mild sdnsation by pronouncing the awful words, ‘Birth Control.’ “Without control, birth would be a scandal. Society is only possible by | means of it. When a man restrains his natural impulses because he has not yet j found his true mate, he is exercising birth-control. When, having found his mate, he yet waits until he can establish a satisfactory home, he is again exercising birth-control. _ “Surely after that, he is not the victim of blind impulse. Will not the security of his employment, the state 'of his exchequer, the health of his wife or of the grade of education he thinks his children should receive, the incidence of taxation, his provision for the future, or a. score of other factors, make some difference to him? Must he surrender the highest of all functions to caprice, even if he calls it Providence ? “This is by far the most revolutionary thing said at Lambeth. In effect, it is an announcement that the Bishops have taken notice of what has been going on for fifty years, and now solemnly leave each couple to decide for themselves! ” “Futility.” Discussing war and self-defence as dealt with at Lambeth, he’ protested that it was futility when a great Church,, after saying that war was incompatible with Jesus and an outrage on the Fatherhood of God and the brotherhood 'of man, declared that for all that, on the two points on which alone it was ever likely to occur, war was right. “If you say that a system is incompatible with Jesus, then for God’s sake choose,” Dr Norwood exclaimed.