The Waipawa Mail. Published Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays. Thursday, March 5th, 1914. SECTARIAN DIFFERENCES.

Waipawa Mail, Volume XXXV, Issue 6161, 5 March 1914, Page 2

The Waipawa Mail. Published Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays. Thursday, March sth, 1914. SECTARIAN DIFFERENCES.

A month or so ago the average person had never heard of Kikuyu, but lately this insignificant village in British East Africa has leapt into prominence through its association with the bitterest controversy in the Church of England since the days of Bishop Colenao. In British East Africa there are three great proselytising agenoies at work, eaoh of whioh is trying to win the nation to its own faith. There are the Protestants and the Roman Catholics, and thirdly, there are the Mahommedans. The latter are not organised in the same way as the Christians are, but every member of the faith is a missionary, and the vigour of the Pan-Islamio movement throughout Asia and Africa is well known. Representatives of the Christian ohurches find in the Mahommedans serious rivals to their activities. It is obviously a case where a united front is necessary if sucoess is to attend their efforts, and the Roman Catholio Church presents such a united front. The Protestants, however, are less fortunately Bituated. They include in their ranks missionaries of diverse .sects, and it is just their endeavour to sink these minor differences for the sake of their common cause that has been responsible for the whole of the trouble. These various sects have worked in harmony; no doubt each preferred that it should gather converts to its own fold, but each respected and sympathised with the aims of the others. It was thought advisable to delimit the spheres of influence of the different missions, and a conference was held at Kikuyu, where this was done. The conference agreed upon oertain leading principles of doctrine to be inculcated, and as if to show that whatever their respective tenents might be, all were united in the desire to spread the gospel of Christ, the Bishops of Uganda and Mombassa administered the sacrament to those present. This aot has been the ocoasion for a vehement and an acrimonious controversy, which has been waged in pulpit and press throughout Great Britain. The immediate consequence was that the Bishop of Zanzibar charged his colleagues with heresy and schism, and requested the Archbishop of Canterbury, as head of the Church of England, to allow proceedings to be taken against them in the ecclesiastical courts upon these grounds. But the whole inoident raised questions of a wider significance than that. It has caused members of the Church of England to examine their consciences, and to ask themselves whether the precise tenents of their church come first or whether ecclesiastical dogma is of secondary importance to the great truths of which every Christian Church is trying to teach. The first phase of the dispute has now ended. The Archbishop of Canterbury has refused to allow proceedings to be taken against the “ offending ” bishops, and he points out that issues have been raised which effect not only Kikuyu, but many other fields of missionary enterprise. The whole matter is to be referred to a oonferenoe in July. What its verdict will be we do not presume to suggest. Considerations of a theological nature which the layman oan hardly appreciate, enter into suoh questions, but the layman feels that too much insistence on the mere forms of belief may stultify Christian endeavour where it is most needed. The field is so immense and the workers are so few ; moreover, the ultimate object of the workers, whatever their creed, is admittedly the same. It would be a thousand pities if sectarian differences are to stand in the way of the most effective propagation of the truths which all sects acknowledge. A writer in the Guardian has stated the position admirably. Borne form of working arrangement, he says, between the Church of England and the Great Protestant bodies of the Empire—even if its immediate cause were the necessity of unity in face of the appeal of Islam to the African races—would be the greatest religious event since the Reformation, and the heaviest responsibility would rest upon those who, for party or sectional ends, deliberately added to the difficulty of this wonderful consummation.