Challenge to Church.

Waiapu Church Gazette, Volume 36, Issue 7, 1 October 1945, Page 3

Challenge to Church.

The Church of the future would be the religious body to come out first with a practical social reform programme on a Christian basis, Rev. G. Kennedy Tucker, superior of the Brotherhood of St. Laurence, predicted when preaching at St. George's Church of England, Malvern, Australia. People were waiting for such a church with such a programme, and would rally round its banner, he said. The religious body that continued .to concentrate on its own affairs would become little more than a backwash m the stream of life. For the last 50 years the Church and State m Australia had acted the part of Dives m regard to slums. Dives might not have been a bad " man, m many respects he might have been a good churchman and a good citizen, but he had failed to do an obvious duty. He had been so taken up with his own affairs that he did not see the beggar at his gate. The Church and State should recall the fate of Lazarus. History had a habit of repeating itself. The. Government had a plan for slum clearance, but those responsible had said that they could not cope with the small section of slum folk on the lowest strata of social life, who became wastrels, unemployables, a menace to themselves and to society. These people could not be rounded up and exterminated, as would have been done m Germany. That was horrible, but, at any rate, , economic, which was more than could be. said for our method of leaving slum folk to continue to increase and to continue to become, to an increasing extent, a menace to society. After all, the German method was no more unchristian than ours of allowing innocent babes to die because of the verminous, damp and filthy quarters into which they were born. It was not Christian to allow boys and girls to be reared under conditions which would deprive them of the opportunity to become decent citizens. Before we criticised the methods of other countries we should set our own house m order. — Church Chronicle, Ballarat.