FASCISM AND LIBERTY
CHRISTIAN PRINCIPLES OF GOVERNING OPINIONS EXPRESSED BY CONGREGATIONALIST The influence of dictatorships—which, ho said, should more properly be called tyranny, was one against which the Church must fight, and fight strenuously, said the Rev. F. J. Shaw in an address to the Congregational Union of New Zealand last evening. The unity that was the part of such forms of government was, said Mr Shaw, Rained by force and not by the power of common consent, and as such was anathema. "The people are only so many counters in the game, and in time of war only so much cannon fodder," he said. There was the horrible planning of other people's lives, and the noisy, brutal propaganda directed always by the leader. Fascism and Hitlerism were just examples of an inverted pyramid, with the leader as the base. Everything depended on the leader, and the whole strength of the people was based upon his strength. Such experiments, from the time of the Csesars, and the popes, the successors of the Caesars, had always eventually failed. They were a direct denial of the ideal of liberty. It must not be forgotten also, he said, that there were some in New Zealand who had plans for a limited dictatorship—an idea which was anathema to the teaching of Christ. The ideal was for government to be a pyramid, with common consent as a safe base, pushing natural leaders to the higher positions and with God at the apex—the Leader of all. "Christianity is no more on the side of socialism than it is of capitalism, that is in their popular interpretation," said Mr Shaw. "Both place reliance on the word 'grab,' whereas the one distinctive word in Christianity is 'give.'"
Permanent link to this item
Hononga pūmau ki tēnei tūemi
https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/CHP19350308.2.96
Bibliographic details
Ngā taipitopito pukapuka
Press, Volume LXXI, Issue 21417, 8 March 1935, Page 12
Word count
Tapeke kupu
289FASCISM AND LIBERTY Press, Volume LXXI, Issue 21417, 8 March 1935, Page 12
Using this item
Te whakamahi i tēnei tūemi
Stuff Ltd is the copyright owner for the Press. You can reproduce in-copyright material from this newspaper for non-commercial use under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International licence (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0). This newspaper is not available for commercial use without the consent of Stuff Ltd. For advice on reproduction of out-of-copyright material from this newspaper, please refer to the Copyright guide.
Acknowledgements
Ngā mihi
This newspaper was digitised in partnership with Christchurch City Libraries.