SOVIET BLASPHEMY

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 924, 18 March 1930, Page 9

SOVIET BLASPHEMY

INTERCESSORY PRAYERS MET BY INSULTS NOISY SCENE IN NEW YORK E. nited P.A.—By Telegraph—Copyright LONDON, Monday. The Moscow correspondent of the "Daily News” saj's violent comment on the services of intercession in Britain and elsewhere appears in the "Moscow Worker,” ihe most largelycirculated newspaper in Moscow. The paper attacks the Archbishop of “Canterburyski” and “Yorkski” and "the rest of these hypocrites in priests’ vestments.” It applies insulting epithets to the Pope, whom it accuses of inciting “blackguards of all nations against the Soviet.”

Continuing the “Worker” says: "If Mr. God’s armies dare to cross our frontier we will give them a warm reception. Snuffling, praying men try to prove that their prayers are not political, whereas they are acting as an advance guard for the capitalists who are seeking to smash the Soviet’s five years’ plan.” A further message from Moscow says, while intercession services were being held throughout the world thousands of Russian supporters of the Soviet met in clubs, barracks and factories and passed resolutions condemning the interference of foreign clerics in the Soviet’s domestic affairs. The Society of the Godless at Moscow is making plans to launch a new campaign against religious observance during Easter. However, religious circles are most relieved by Stalin’s “climbing down” manifesto forbidding all violence against the churches. NEW YORK DEMONSTRATION A message from New York says a large gathering of Roman Catholics, Protestants and Jews assembled in the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, New York, today and prayed in protest against the Soviet’s religious persecution. At the same time 12,000 Reds gathered In the Bronx Coliseum. This meeting was marked by a blatant and noisy derision of religion. Red speakers called upon their listeners to rally to the defence of the Soviet again “Imperialists and their .tools, the Pope, the Rabbis and the Socialists.” Bishop Manning, in his address to the great gathering in the cathedral, said that never perhaps in the history of the world had there been such an effort to blot out and destroy all religion from human life as the present one in Russia. At a mass meeting in the Town Hall, Mr. Hamilton Fish, a member of the House of Representatives, characterised the activities of the Soviet as “horrible folly and criminal madness.”

SOCIALISTS’ PRAYERS CLERGY FRIENDS OF RUSSIA “CAPITALIST PROPAGANDA”. LONDON, Sunday. One of the most remarkable of the services of intercession held throughout Britain today against the religious persecution in Russia was that at the parish church of Thaxted, Essex. The vicar and the curate, both of whom are Socialists, drew up their own special prayers. These asked that the Russian churches and all other churches might recover the fulness of Apostolic faith, and a passion for social Justice. They sought God’s blessing for the Soviets’s efforts “to build up a Kingdom where the poor shall be raised up and exploiters kept low.” They prayed that Anglican bishops and clergy should “witness bravely the anti-social evils in their own land and teach the people to see the Bolsheviks’ efforts with the eyes of Jesus, instead of the eyes of millionaire owners of newspapers.” The vicar in the course of his sermon said they should be careful not to bear false witness against the members of the Soviet and not to join in the promotion of hatred and malice. Some allegations at present were being made deliberately with the object of stirring up the people in order that they might fight against Russia when the time came. CHECK ON VIOLENCE SOVIET SLOWS DOWN ON CHURCH PERSECUTION Times Cable. RIGA, Sunday. The Russian Communist Party’s central committee has sent urgent telegrams to its provincial committees telling them to abandon violence against peasants throughout the country, because it is discrediting the Soviet. Also, the provincial committees have been ordered to “slow down” the religious persecution of the peasants, and only to close churches where it is the wish of the majority of the inhabitants that they should do so. Tlijs change of policy is owing to the dangerous temper created by the former method of general suppression.