BIBLE IN SCHOOLS

Manawatu Herald, Volume L, Issue 40010, 15 October 1929, Page 1

BIBLE IN SCHOOLS

INTENTIONS OF LEAGUE

Auckland, October 11

“Because the fetish of free, secular, and compulsory education has caught the popular imagination and proved a popular political slogan, the IChureli has been unsuccessful in its efforts to obtain the reading or teaching of the Holy Sei'ipture in the State primary schools,” said Archbishop Avoid 11 in his presidential address to the Anglican Synod yesterday. “Fo|r years we have endeavoured to get a definite acknowledgment of Almighty God,” added his Grace. “We are not so foolish as to suppose that the millenium would 'be in sight even if the State amended the Education Act and provided for the education of the whole child by recognising the value and importance of the spiritual side of the child’s nature, but we do make bold to say that children would be far •better equipped to face the temptations and pitfalls of life if they had some solid reason and foundation for living a moral life and some nobleir vision of the meaning and opportunities of life.”

The executive of the Bible-in-State Schools League was not submitting its Bill to the present Parliament, said'the Archbishop, but was still carrying on its work, and would endeavour to secure sffch amendments to the Hon. G. M. Thomson’s Bill, which advocated the Victorian system, that it might to a large extent cover the same ground as the lOhurch’s own 'Bill. The Victorian system Avas very similar to what was knoAvn as the Nelson system, and suffered from the same defects —\ T iz., religions teaching must be given outside school hours, and very feAv children in country schools could be reached bv it. In the meantime he re-

mimended the elergy to use such opportunities as they might obtain under the Nelson system of giving" some religious instruction to the children in State schools.