Manawatu Herald THURSDAY, MARCH 4, 1920. THE CHURCH AND INDUSTRIAL UNREST.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLII, Issue 2098, 4 March 1920, Page 2

Manawatu Herald THURSDAY, MARCH 4, 1920. THE CHURCH AND INDUSTRIAL UNREST.

AT Auckland on Sunday, the Rev. ( A. 15. Chappell, dealing with “The Church in Relation lo Industrial Unrest,” said lhal industrial unrest was really our expression for the growing pains of the world’s family. Where unrest was there life abided. Unrest, however, might be so fraught with unnecessary acuteness and violence that it might cease to lie a symptom and become a disease, a bi’inger of death. In our own land to-day (here was as markedly, as in Russia, a determination on the part of Labour to have a, more direct share in the management*and direction of the great policies of industry, and great changes in that respect were imminent. It was not. the place of the Church to formulate remedies for the ills that undoubtedly existed. Hut he suggested (hat Christian t,uen and women might do something by personal and combined study to replace ignorance, of the'problems of to-day by knowledge. Some of these subjects might, he taken up at a week-night meeting, instead of having a prayer meeting—not that he decried prayer, but they ought to do something under the aegis of the Church when it was concerned so much with the Christianising of (he conditions existing between Labour and Capital. It would involve secularising the Church, bringing it in touch with the community, but the alternative was a ' monastic! Church. \\ hatever might be said of agitators, Jesus Christ was a creator of unrest, and a disturber of the peace. Christ, did not regard the status quo as a thing to be maintained at any price. He trained the Apostles as apostles of Upheaval, and they were charged ivith turning the world upside down'. The sympathy the Church had to show was not with the employers or employees, but with Right. There must be questions of Right rather than of Rights. The outstanding lack at the present time was the “team” spirit. Production was proceeding without any organisation. The Church could tell employers and employees “All yc are brethren.”