FAMOUS BISHOP

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 1, Issue 207, 26 April 1932, Page 3

FAMOUS BISHOP

DEATH OF DR. GORE, FEARLESS ECCLESIASTIC CRITIC AND WRITER. DISBELIEF IN ADAM AND EVE. LONDON. One of the most notable figures for many years in the life of the Church has been removed by the death of Bishop Gore. He had been ill for some time and passed away at a Kensington nursing home as the result of influenza and pleurisy at the age of 78. Dr. Charles Gore was appointed to three bishoprics within seven years. He was Bishop of Worcester from 1902-4 an,d was the firsj; Bishop of Birmingham, to which he was translated in 1905. In 1911 he was appointed Bishop of Oxford, and he resigned the see in 1914 in order to devote himself to literary work, lecturing and special preaching. An an extreme High Churchman, Bishop Gore was a frank and fearless critic of the Scriptures, and it was his startling opinions on the suhject of Bible stories that brought him most prominently into the public eye. The freedom with which he presented entirely new views on commonly accepted doctrines caused widespread uneasiness among the more orthodox. "Adam and Eve never really existed in history," he wrote. "In the Bible they are merely the embodiment of every man and woman." Another challenging assertion of his was that the story of Jonah and the whale had no relation to history; it was simply 'a story with a moral meaning. Bishop Gore also creatfed a widespread controversy by his rejeetion of the belief in the material resurrection of the body. On one occasion he stated, "The spirit of the labour movement might he expressed in the phrase 'Not Charity, but Justice'." The Movement, he added, was inspired by noble and fruitful cries. He was a vigorous opponent of birth control, and his implacable enmity towards contraeeption almost led him to open revolt against the Lambeth Conference pronouneement two years ago. After the Armistice, Bishop Gore aroused eonsiderable antagonism both in this country and the United States by his advoeacy of "forgiveness of the Germans." As a controversialist he was always free from bitterness, and in public life and amid any national crisis he never hesitated about taking the unpopular side. By a coincidence a hook written by the late Dr. Gore, entitled "Refleetions on the Litany," was puhlished on the day following his death. In it is raised the question whether a dying man should he told that the end is near. "I think," he wrote, "the pressure of so many modern doctors to prevent their patients being told when they are in serious danger of death is nothing less than spiritual cruelty, and should by no means be yielded to."