BAY OF PLENTY BEACON Published Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. FRIDAY, MARCH 4, 1949 MORAL REARMAMENT

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 13, Issue 60, 4 March 1949, Page 4

BAY OF PLENTY BEACON Published Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. FRIDAY, MARCH 4, 1949 MORAL REARMAMENT

Laying the foundation stone of the new Church of England at Waihi beach last week, Mr F. W< Doidge, M.P., used a phrase that was once in the news the world over but which in recent years has dropped into disuse. At the end of a lengthy attack on materialism and Communism he said, “If we are to save the world, moral rearmament is more important than the atom Domb.”

Moral rearmament. A phrase that shook the world in the early 1930’5, battle cry of a crusade for better, more Christian relationships in all departments of our living; an idea that caught and fired the imaginations of people of all tongues, colours and shades of political opinion. Perhaps one of the greatest tragedies of the war is what it has done to overshadow that idea. It has been alleged in some

quarters that the Oxford Group movement was a subversive organisation, though no one has ever produced and published satisfactory proof that it was. Certainly there were those amongst its adherents who believed that the war could have been averted by the timely application of Christian principles. Whether their faith would have been vindicated had the type of appeal they suggested been made to the Nazis and Fascists is still debatable, but even if such an attitude were proved to be impractical, that did not necesarily make it subversive. It is true there were adherents of the Oxford Group movement who were Pacifists. There were also others who believed themselves “guided” to take the field at the first trumpet sound. This was a free association of j individuals, bound by no rules j other than their own guidance j and conscience. In its few years of prominence it gave a tremendous boost to constructive Christion thought and induced many aimless wanderers through life to place their hands confidently j 1 in God’s and allow themselves : ; to be led along the straight path I of Christian living. ] Mr Doidge’s mention of the ' 1 old, familiar phrase makes one J hope that perhaps this fine thing J is still in existence, though its , j voice has been muted by unjust r calumny. Never was the need c

for moral rearmament greater. Whatever the individual might think of the Oxford Group movement it rendered great service in boiling down the essentials of Christian conduct to four main points: Absolute honesty, absolute purity, absolute unselfishness, absolute love. Anyone who is prepared to let those principles rule his life cannot help being a fine citizen and a good Christian. And the world needs men and women like that badly today.