THE CHURCH AND THE NEW ORDER
AIMS OF CAMPAIGN ‘ The aims of the recently-launched campaign for Christian order were expounded by Pastor A. W.Grundy, president of the Invercargill Ministers’ Association, in a talk at yesterday’s meeting of the Invercargill Rotary Club. Pastor Grundy said that the campaign was a national one, in which all the churches were working shoulder to shoulder. It was not a confession that the churches had been mistaken in the essence of their teaching and were suddenly swinging over to something new, but an expression of the fact . that Christianity provided the only basis for a new order. The campaign was not an evangelistic mission, nor did it offer any blue-prints for society. The churches were not setting out to tell men of various ranks how to live their lives. The task of the Christian Church was to provide inspiration and driving force for the bringing in of a new order. The church said that the new post-war order must be characterized by certain things, the basis for which could be found only in the teachings of Christ. The church looked forward to the introduction of a Christian state of things; it felt that in many respects the present state of things was just as far from Christian as it could be.
RELIGIOUS CENSUS
Pastor Grundy went on to describe the origins of the present campaign in the various movements for world union of the churches. The Christian churches were being drawn together, he said, and out of that had arisen the World Council of Churches. In New Zealand a National Council of Churches had been set up, and it was this body which had initiated the present campaign. A mass meeting had already been held in Invercargill, and another would be held on August 26. A religious census was being taken in the city in the hope that those who were not churchgoers would attend their own churches again. A series of broadcast addresses was to be given in September, and in October all of the churches would address themselves to the same themes. “We hope that the campaign will result in a greater number of convinced Christians,” said Pastor Grundy. “We hope that out of the righteous spirit of this campaign there will come movements. One thing that is visualized as coming out of the campaign is religious education in the schools. That is not part of the programme, but we hope that the campaign will bring it about.” Chaplain Lieutenant-Colonel J. A. Thomson, who moved a vote of thanks, said that constructive work of the kind now being undertaken by the churches was necessary before the community could hope to build afresh after the war. The hope of those engaged in the campaign was to impress on the minds and hearts of the people that the new order miist be directed by Christian principles.
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Southland Times, Issue 24820, 12 August 1942, Page 5
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481THE CHURCH AND THE NEW ORDER Southland Times, Issue 24820, 12 August 1942, Page 5
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