CHURCH FRONT OFFENSIVE

Evening Star, Issue 24290, 3 September 1942, Page 4

CHURCH FRONT OFFENSIVE

CAMPAIGN FOR CHRISTIAN ORDER

Next week will see the opening of a period of unprecedented public activity by the churches of New Zealand, with mass meetings of citizens, simultaneous preaching from pulpits the length and breadth of the country, radio broadcasts, and many other forms of publicity. It might well be said that the churches will be taking the offensive in their Campaign, for Christian Order It was on March 22 of this year that the campaign was announced; then began a period of several months’ intensive preparation and planning within the churches themselves. Some evidence of this has, of course, already been seen, but it is next Monday, September 7, with a public meeting at the Christchurch Town Hall, that the active phase of the campaign will really begin. Thereafter, on each Monday in September, there will be a public meeting at one of the other main centres—in Auckland on September 14, in Dunedin on September 21, and in Wellington on September 28. Each meeting will be broadcast by the YA stations. The principal speakers at the respective meetings will be:— Christchurch: Yen. Archdeacon Bullock, ‘ Let Justice Be Done.’ Auckland: Professor F. Sinclair, ‘ Who Want’s Freedom? ’ Dunedin: Kev. H. J. Ryburn, ‘What About Politics?’ Wellington: Rev. J. J. North, Chaos or Christian Order.’ The Campaign for Christian Order is sponsored by the National Council, of Churches of New Zealand, the participating churches being the Church of England, the Presbvterian, the Methodist, the Baptist, and the Congregational Churches, the Associated Churches of Christ, and the Society of Friends. The Roman Catholic • Church has expressed its sympathy with the movement. In addition to the four main public meetings mentioned above, other centres are arranging gatherings along similar lines Following these meetings there will be, in October, a period of simultaneous preaching, when practically every pulpit in the country will echo the message of the camnaign that the Christian gospel has a solution to the world’s problems and is a necessary basis for a sew social and economic order and for a just and durable peace.