ALLEGATIONS DENIED

Wairarapa Times-Age, 3 June 1940, Page 4

ALLEGATIONS DENIED

STATEMENTS BY RECENT VISITOR SPREAD OF COMMUNISM IN NEW ZEALAND. PRESBYTERIANISM TOUCHED WITH MODERNISM. By Telegraph—Press Association—Copyright. SYDNEY, June 2. The Rev Dr J. Gibson Inkster, of Knox Presbyterian Church, Toronto, interviewed by the “Sun” after a visit to New Zealand, said the extent of Communism in New Zealand shocked him. He was surprised to find that half the students at Victoria University College, Wellington, were tinged with Communism. Dr Inkster added that New Zealand Presbyterians were “touched very seriously with modernism.’ Sometimes it seemed to him that Karl Marx was replacing the Bible, he said. The Rev Dr Inkster supplied the pulpit of one of Wellington’s leading Presbyterian Churches, St John's Church, Willis Street, for eight months 1 till a week ago. I UNIVERSITY’ REJOINDER DR INKSTER ABSOLUTELY WRONG. (By Telegraph —Press Association.) WELLINGTON, This Day. When the cablegram reporting Dr Inkster’s statement was referred to him last evening, the Principal of Victoria University College and ViceChancellor of the University of New Zealand, Professor Sir Thomas Hunter, said he had no comment to make. An authority of Victoria College said Dr Inkster’s statement was absolutely wrong. “What is the use of answering a man who makes such a wild statement?” he said. “So far as I know he doesn’t know anything about the college. It was a cowardly thing for him to wait till he got to Sydney before making the statement.”

MODERATOR’S REPLY

WELLINGTON, This Day.

The Moderator of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church of New Zealand, the Rt Rev J. Lawson Robinson, Christchurch, in an interview last night, said: — First, he did not think that Dr Inkster was in a position to judge the theological views of the Presbyterian Ministry in New Zealand. Secondly, he was quite certain that there was no sympathy in the Presbyterian Ministry with the Communistic views of Karl Marx’s “Das Kapital.”