Dominion May Have Own Prayer Book

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 347, 7 May 1928, Page 16

Dominion May Have Own Prayer Book

ELIMINATE STRIFE CANON JAMES’S ADVICE _ The likelihood of the compilation of a distinct Anglican Prayer Book For New Zealand Church requirements was mentioned by Canon Percival James at St. Mary’s Cathedral last evening. He referred to the General Synod’s unanimity in respect to the fundamental clauses of the Anglican Church constitution in the Dominion and favoured any suggestion toward this end. Canon James said the Synod had made its own mind clear, and would seek legal enactment to put the question beyond dispute, that the New Zealand Church could make her own revision of the formularies, under the most ample safeguards to prevent any departure from the doctrinal standard of the Book of Common Prayer. “I am sure we will not decide to adopt in toto the English revision,” he said, “even if that book survives the ordeal of the House of Commons, which is doubtful. Other branches of the Anglican Church have their own prayer books—Scotland, Ireland, Canada, South Africa and the United States—and doubtless other provinces of the Church will make their own revisions. “I believe it is not only good, but even necessary, that the genius of New Zealand Anglicanism should find expression in a distinctively New Zealand prayer book.” PARTY STRIFE The essential qualification to the success of any move toward the revision of the Prayer Book was the elimination of party strife. ‘‘lf we compare ourselves with the Church in England, or nearer at hand, in some of the Australian dioceses,” he went on, ‘‘we must need feel thankful for our comparative freedom from party strife and bitterness. If we are to leave our Church more ready than we found her to face the problems of a new age, we claim to be allowed to advance without the crippling handicap of internal strife and faction.

“Signs are not wanting that party bitterness is creeping into our household. To crush these ugly beginnings, it is time for the great mass of central Church people in New Zealand to declare quite plainly that they have no room here for the emissaries of those extremists in England, who, while remaining in the Church, treat Anglicanism as it has existed since the Reformation with open scorn.” “IGNORANT FANATICISM” “Nor is there room in the Anglican Church in New Zealand for extremists of the opposite type, who disgrace the name of Protestant, making it stand for a negative, barren repudiation of everything that might enrich the corporate worship of the Church and quicken the spiritual life of her members. There are no worse enemies of our Church than people of this narrow, persecuting temper, who are always watchful for some pretext for raising that favourite cry of ignorant fanaticism, ‘No Popery.’ Such people have little sympathy with Anglicanism; they are no more loyal to its tradition than the opposite extremists, for they deny the comprehensiveness which is one of the noblest elements in our heritage.”