THE ANGLICAN CHURCH.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXIX, Issue 3778, 30 November 1907, Page 2

THE ANGLICAN CHURCH.

— The annual report of the Church of England Association, at its meeting held in Sydney this week, deplores the decadence of church attendance, the love of pleasure, the permeation of schools and colleges with the so-called new theology, and urges that the churches have become transformed into ecclesiastical music halls and organ recitals. Solo-singing and tricky advertisements are, according to the report, the order of the day, while the simple, plain evangelical service is put in the background. Ritualism, too, has become a very real and great danger in England, and the number of ritualistic institutions in the shape of convents and sisterhoods is so great that it would incline one to think that England was a Roman Catholic country. South Africa is also strongly permeated with this ritualistic craze, and New Zealand is said to be following on the same lines, while it has a strong hold in the Commonwealth. Clerical autocracy is dragging the Church of England down. When these alarming statements were cabled, a Dominion reporter was told off to interview the Bishop of Wellington, who said he did not regard any of the evils complained of as seriously affecting the Church in New Zealand, and considered the report a wild exaggeration. The Vicar of St. Paul’s (Wellington), Rev. T. H. Sprott, shared the same view, and attributed the decadence of church attendance to the spirit of indifference so widely prevalent, allied with the gambling spirit of the age.