CHRISTIAN ORDER

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 05, Issue 78, 15 July 1942, Page 2

CHRISTIAN ORDER

CHURCH UNITY

BISHOP CALLS FO'R SINGLE

CHRISTIAN FRONT

A "single Christian J'ronl" to meet the challenge of the times was urged by the Bishop of Chicester is a striking address delivered in Edinburgh in the occasion of Scotland's

"Week of Witness" in which many different denominations co-operated to testify to the world mission of the Church. This Scottish venture, which was in many ways akin to the Campaign for Christian Order now being conducted by the New Zealand National Council of Churches, was so successful that it is now proposed to repeat it at the end of this year.

The following are some excerpts from the Bishop of Chichester's address: "We meet here to declare that the Church is larger and greater than any national Church, or denomination Church — a Church which includes men and women of all countries and races, of all classes and cultures, a Church that is suffering in the battle, and yet is above the battle, a Church that can reconcile enemy with enemy through the Cross of Jesus Christ, and a Church with a mission to mankind ... It is, I 1 think, extraordinarily important that we should keep the conception of the Church with a mission and the Militant Church and in the very centre of our thinking. There is an intensity in the conflict with evil of which men have seldom been aware before. I see the evil in the blindness and selfishness of all nations, including our own, between the two Avars; I see it in the idolatry of Avealth; I see it in the passive acceptance for years of the unemployment of millions, of the iUhcusing of millions, of the stanration of millions all over the world; I see it in the bitter nationalism which sets people against people; I see it in the totalitarian State . And while I see it in all these forms, I cannot fail to sec it, concentrated in a sjjecial form, in the Avar, Avhich is not a Avar of the British and Russians against Germany, conceived as an imperial or national Avar, but is a Avar betAveen God and the spirit of evil for the possession of the soul of Germany, sick and maddened Germany, and the soul of Britain and Russian, and the soul of Europe and of the whole Avorld-. The evils are rank and vigorous and full of poAver . . . They have so terrifying a strength that the AA'hole Church must be in arms . . . We (the (Churches) haA'e not seen the indispensable need for combined action. We haA r e got to make a revolution in our thinking."

Dealing with the progress already made toward united action, the Bishop continued-: "There is hoav -1 movement in Avhich the Roman Catholics in England and in certain other countries have joined, Avith the encouragement and sanction of the Pope, shoAving for the first time a readiness to co-operate on equal terms Avith Christians of other communions. I ask you to recognise this neAv Roman readiness for cooperation. But . . . it is co-opera-tion, not unity, that is sought. . .

I mention these facts as some evidence that there is already a breeze stirring in different quarters Avitliin the Church . . Right across the national barriers, Christian speaks to Christian. In Holland, in NorAvay, 1 in Belgium, even in Germany itself, a Synod, a body of bishops, a cardinal, a pastor, Avith hundreds of thousands, many millions, behind them, dare to giA-e their Avit-» ness and speak out for God . . I see the UniA-ersal Church steadily unfolding, not as a great totalitarian society, Avith its officers and organisations. but as an innumerable company of living human beings."