Bible in State Schools League

Waiapu Church Gazette, Volume IV, Issue 10, 1 April 1914, Page 129

Bible in State Schools League

A special effort has been made to persuade the Bible m State Schools' League to abandon the platform to which the Churches have agreed and to adopt the Nelson system instead. The fact that the .Churches, after ample experience of the .Nelson system, had passed it by m iavour oi anothtr proposal, should have been sufficient to intelligent people to show that it is somewhat late m the day to talk about the Nelson system as a permanent solution of the problem. If .the same people who are now talking so loudly about it had shown a disposition m the past to make it general over New Zealand, it might have happened that the Churches would not have looked for the undoubtedly better system produced by the League. Much has been heard m Wellington urging the Nelson system, arid indeed one newspaper has consistently kept it before the public. Notwithstanding all this, Wellington itself affords the latest proof of the inadequacy and unworxableness of the .Nelson system. The Ministers' Association of Wellington South humbly and respectfully solicited m March the. gracious permission of the Newtown State School Committee lor one miserable half hour a week from 9to 9. 80 a.m., to give Bible Lessons, which of course under the iNelson system would be regarded as undenominational. Yet the School Committee quite turned down this very modest application, and lest the mere reiusal might not be sufficient to crush the boldness, of a Ministers' Association which desired a of addressing thechildren allowed to wandering lecturers, the Chairman of the School Committee rushed into print and wrote of " the attitude of the Ministers' Association m their sudden desire to invade the Schools during the hours set apart for secular instruction." He continued, "I real-

ly question if they are m earnest, and also whether they are not really looking for a refusal," and he proceeded with the question whether, "if permission was granted them for Bible instruction during School hours, they would carry on the work for any length of time without expecting some remuneration from the State for their services." The refusal was quite enough to show that the Nelson system is unworkable, but to that is added the insult by the Chairman of the School Cammittee offered to th» motives of the Ministers and the reality of their request. He was replied to by the Chairman of the Ministers! Association (who happens to be a Congregationalist not m favour of the League's platform, and who as a Congregationalist would not m any case be likely to be a party to anything likely to make for State aid). The Minissers' Chairman showed by his letter that so far from intending to help the League, the Ministers " believed that by demonstrating the feasibility of the scheme m one School, other Schools would be led to adopt it," i.e., the Nelson system. The demonstration has been not as the Ministers' Association m all sincerity hoped, but entirely one which shows that the Nelson system is no National solution of the problem for reaching every child m the Dominion. } The Churches which passed it by for the League platform have to thank the Newitown School Committee, and its Chairman particularly, for another testimony that the matter is one to be settled by the whole people of New Zealandl and not by • a Committee temporarily m a little brief authority.