CHURCH’S ATTITUDE TO WAR

Dominion, Volume 32, Issue 156, 28 March 1939, Page 10

CHURCH’S ATTITUDE TO WAR

Should Christian Men Bear Arms?

SERMON BY ARCHDEACON BULLOCK “There are madmen in tlie world today who. sooner or later, will have to be chained up, by peaceful methods if possible, but by forceful methods if necessary,” said the Ven. Archdeacon W. Bullock, referring to the attitude of the Church toward pacifism and war in his sermon in St Peter’s Church, Wellington, on Sunday night. , "Already there are signs of that acute disagreement which always arises about Christian men bearing arms,” be said. “However right they may think themselves to be in telling tlie world they will not fight, such people should at least answer this question: Are they willing to go on living in circumstances of freedom and safety at the expense of others who will light ?

“Whatever our Lord said about warfare, and He said very little, we can guess what He would say of the attitude of one who, iu the name of religion, shields behind the bodies of others. “Laboured For Peace.”

“'I laboured for peace,’ said the Psalmist, ‘but when I spake unto them thereof they made them ready to battle.’ Could anyone who is not incorrigibly perverse say that British statesmen for a decade have not laboured for peace? Whatever the faults of the Versailles Treaty, for which they were not solely responsible, they disarmed to the point of endangering themselves and others in order to set an example. Other countries have not followed that example, and so we have arrived again at a crisis.

“About war and peace there is much talk that is simply shallow and superficial. It is assumed, for instance, that war is war and always the same for everyone engaged in it. Is there no difference, no moral difference, between oiie who aggressively fights and endangers the peace of the world, and one who takes up arms not only to defend his own liberties, but to ensure just treatment for others? It seems to me that morally, aud from a Christian standpoint, there is all the difference in the world. “Even in our Lord’s day there were niadmen, and they had to be chained up. He sought to convert them, but there is no reason for thinking that He held it wrong for the community to protect itself. . Constructive Work. "What lias t 0 be done in the world as things now are is to build up carefully and slowly the edifice of collective security and the organization of international law. In that task all Christians who love peace ought to be leaders. At tlie moment tills seems to involve rearmament, aud if you deny tlie moral right to arm, if you refuse to take part in tlie formal sanction of collective peace, then you are weakening your country and your British Commonwealth in playing the part of constructive peacemaker to which God lias called it, and iu which you. as Christians, should rejoice.”