CHURCH IN FLANNELS

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 20103, 23 March 1928, Page 6

CHURCH IN FLANNELS

SOUTH AFRICAN IDEA APPROVAL GIVEN BY BISHOPS. Following upon a train conversation, in which a young- sportsman maintained that if men were “allowed” to come to church in flannels many more would turn up, th e Bishop of Johannesburg, the Rt. Rev. A. B. L. Karli ey, D.D., has publicly stated that not only would they be allowed, but that he should, like to encourage it. “This Emphasis on clothes,” said Bishop Karney, “is bad, because people .sometimes stay away because iheir boots or clothes are shabby. Nothing could be more contrary to the will of God. It is really terrible this identification of Christianity with ‘respectability.’ As to flannels, if they are more comfortable, if they help a

man to forget that he has a body, so to speak, that is all to the good.” Interviewed with regard to this statement, Bishop Paget, of Southern Rhodesia, said that he .himself had fried tc introduce the idea into S<outh Africa. “I should bp. delighted,” he fai.l, “to see my cathedral full of people in flannels and golf kit. 1 should be very pleased if people came to early Eucharist in their sporting outfits and placed their golf clubs and tennis racquets at the end of the cathedral, if it helped them, so that they could go and play afterwards.”