NEW STATE WORSHIP

Wairarapa Times-Age, 7 June 1939, Page 5

NEW STATE WORSHIP

RELIGION IN GERMANY. In days when we all fear war and prepare for war, we should not perhaps expect great interest to be taken in the religious situation of another country, writes Dr. W. G. Moore in the "Congregational Quarterly.” Yet that of Germany is not far from being the most important question in Europe. Its importance lies not only in the fact that what happens there is bound to affect us not only in the fact that features of that situation are discernible in our situation also, but in this further fact, that the conflict between Church and State *which has raged in Germany for more than five years is the first phase of a real crisis in Europe, in comparison with which the crisis of last September was as a cracker to a bomb. It is a conflict in which our whole civilisation is involved and in which compromise is unlikely. In the end. neither religion qor the modern State can compromise. Whenever the State can only ensure its existence by giving power to parties who make its service into a religion, then and there will this crisis begin. The end of such astruggle can only be either a new State in which religion is a vital partner, or a new religion of the State. And through what blood and tears must Europe go before that question be decided?