CHRISTIAN BASIS

Evening Post, Volume CXVIII, Issue 90, 13 October 1934, Page 13

CHRISTIAN BASIS

NEW IDEA OF SOCIETY

REV. J. K. ARCHER'S VIEWS

"My subject is the Christian basis — not bases—of the new idea of society. This subject was not chosen by myself. It was given to mo. In it there are two implications, one being that a new idea of society lias come into existence, and the other that for the new idea there is, or should be, and must be, a Christian foundation," said the I?ev. J. K. Archer in an address delivered last evening to the Baptist Assembly now in session in Wellington. "There is no doubt," ho said, "as to the existence of a new idea of society. It lias dawned upon the world's mind, and is gradually capturing its imagination and conscience It is, to borrow a phrase from Mussolini, that human beings must no longer be 'ego-centric' but must be community-centric. The unit of interest and consideration must be, not the individual, but the whole family. This does not mean the suppression or dwarfing of the individual. On the contrary each individual, and not merely, as now, an odd individual here and there as far as possible is to be made 100 per cent, man or woman but is to put the 100 per cent, into a common pool. "What was Christ's position? Was He ego-centric? Were His personalinterests the pivot around which His life revolved? Is not the opposite the case? Did Ho not come to serve instead of being served? Did He not make Himself poor in order that : we might be rich? Did He not refuse to save Himself in order to save others? Did He not call Himself the Son of Man—humanity incarnate? Was not His supreme interest the Kingdom of God, the rule of God over the life of man? Did He not place in the forefront of tho prayer which He provided "for the use of His disciples the request that God's will shall be done upon the earth as it is done in Heaven? Did He not summarise His teaching, as also the teaching -of the Old Testament, in the Golden Rule? Have not the best Christians tried to follow His steps? Did not the Pentecostal Christians operate the Golden' Eule when they said that none of the things which they possessed were their own, but had all things common? Did not the glorious Anabaptists of the sixteenth century do the same when they took the New Testament at its face value and treated the Golden Bule, not merely as a beautiful moral maxim, but also as the law'of life? GERMANY, ITALY, RUSSIA. "The modern world, with the aid of the Church,, or without it, or even against it, is returning to that view of things. By action, as well as speech, it is saying that the basis of society must be community-centric. The interests of the individual, or the group, must be subordinated to, or merged in, the interests of all. Russia is saying that. Italy is saying it. Germany is saying it. America is saying it. Wo ought to say it." Mr. Archer then referred to Lenin, whom ho described as ona of the twelve or twenty biggest men of history. Lenin, he said, had no personal ambitions, except the ambition to serve his people, and to establish a communal form of society. Approximately the same might be said of Mussolini. Personally, and in his idea iof public policy, ho was an apostle of community welfare. Fundamentally the same might be said of Hitler. His slogan was "The common interest before self." The thing t6 notice was, said Mr. Arcjier, that in Germany, as in Eussia and Italy, the ego-centric principle was being abandoned, and the community-centric principle adopted. A similar process was taking place in America. "FOSSILISED OLD MEN." "In New Zealand," remarked Mr. Archer, "we have a group of fossilised old men fogies at the head of affairs who cannot see further than the egocentric theory of life and whose remedy for the social unrest which prevails, is an enlarged police force, a secret police force, which means that henceforth -we must suspect every man wo meet of being a Government spy. Meanwhile chanßcs are coming. They must come. They shall come 'The expectation of the poor shall not perish for ever.'" '