CHURCH & WAR

Wairarapa Times-Age, 24 February 1940, Page 8

CHURCH & WAR

METHODIST ATTITUDE. CLEAVAGE OF OPINION. (By Telegraph—Press Association.) DUNEDIN. February 23. Evidence of cleavage of opinion among ministers and lay members on the attitude the Church should adopt toward war was given when, at the beginning of the business sessions of the centennial Methodist conference today, notices of motion, as well as a petition on the subject, were submitted for discussion next week. Considerable discussion took place on the question of setting up a suitable special committee to consider the views expressed in these submissions, and, while some members of the conference favoured two committees, representing different points of view, it was decided that the president, the Rev. L. B. Neale, and the secretary, the Rev. W. A. Burley, should set up a committee representing all shades of opinion, to bring in a report to the conference. A suggestion that the conference should send a “suitable” letter to a Wellington man, who was recently sentenced to one month’s imprisonment with hard labour for obstructing the police in the execution of their duty, was not adopted.

One notice of motion expressed the opinion that war was contrary to the spirit and teaching of JesUs Christ, and that the Church must declare the present war to be a sin against God. It suggested that members and adherents'of the Church should be urged to take ’no part in the 'war, but to give themselves to the making of a Christian peace, “and," it concluded, “we call our country and nation to repentance, to the immediate cessation of hostilities, and to the negotiation of a permanent peace.”

On the other hand, a petition signed by about 2500 members of the Church, asking the conference to reaffirm its loyalty to the Throne and nation, and to define the attitude of the Church, not in academic terms to war in general, but to the stern realities of the present war. The petitioners asked the conference to give careful consideration to the fact that the British Commonwealth of Nations had been forced into war for a righteous cause, expressed the opinion that the advantages of British citizenship should be retained at all costs, and finally, asked the conference to take steps “to prevent our pulpits and church organisations being used either to propagate pacifist doctrines or controversially to oppose them while our nation is at war. “Such disputations,” the petition concluded, “weaken New Zealand’s war efforts, grieve the parents of boys on active service, and lead to irritation, confusion of thought and disharmony among our churchpeople, to the great detriment of the best interests of the Church.”