Dear Sir

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 12, Issue 20, 10 February 1948, Page 4

Dear Sir

Letters to the. Editor must be clearly written on one side of the paper only and where a nom-de-plume is used the name of the writer must be included for reference purposes. The Editor reserves the right to abridge, amend or withhold any letter or letters. DOES CALENDAR REFORM THREATEN RELIGION? Sir, —Your article on calendar reform broaches a matter of unusual *>. significance it involves religious liberty and is more than a question of convenience. The week, an institution as old as creation is being tampered with. It may be well to have your birthday always fall on the same day of the week, and to have public holidays always coincide from year to year, but dare we do this at the expense of an institution as old as Christendom? Sunday keeping is not dead, even in Whakatane. A gentleman in our town recently gave up a lucrative position because it interfered with his loyalty to Sunday observance. While the new calendar will still have a day call “Sunday,” it will be misnomer, because to call Saturday, Sunday in 1951 can never make it so in fact. A wandering Sunday that travels through the entire week and changes its colour ' every year (in leap years biannually) is a prostitution of its significance. The problem is identical.. in its application to the Mohammedan Friday, the Jewish Saturday, or the Christian Sunday. A sense of frustration will come to the followers of these world religions as the passing of years relegates their respective holy days into oblivion. Within a generation, only an experienced chronologist would possess the ability to sort through the years and identify the original days of the creation week. Our civil government has a duty to perform in this important question. Will it take its stand on the side of enlightenment and religious liberty, or will it follow a precedent of the dark ages by .interfering in a matter of religion? This question involves the whole structure of our Christian worship. Will the church accept the disgrace of placing convenience in worldly business before its sacred trust? Why should United Nations at this late hour be side tracked by calendar reform, when the wasting cause of peace is ominously being precipitated to the brink of a third world war? Yours etc., “FUNDAMENTALS FIRST.”