SERVICE TO STATE

Wairarapa Times-Age, 9 December 1941, Page 6

SERVICE TO STATE

AND LIBERTY OF CONSCIENCE ATTITUDE OF OAMARU PRESBYTERY. CALL FOR CLEAR STATEMENT (By Telegraph—Press Association.) OAMARU, This Day. The Oamaru Presbytery today passed a resolution recording deep concern that publicity given to a resolution of the General Assembly about the rights of conscientious objectors had given an impression that the Presbyterian Church condoned the attitude of a negligible number of pacifists who refused service to the State as combatants. In pledging support to those who, for conscience sake, refused military service, the Assembly merely reiterated its historic regard for liberty of conscience, apparently forgetting that it was quite gratuitous to do so at the present time, when the State was engaged in a desperate struggle for the defence of the fundamental principles of the Christian conscience itself. The Oamaru Presbytery calls on the church authorities to give a clear and unequivocal statement of the church’s whole-hearted adherence to the cause in which the Empire is engaged and to enjoin members to make any sacrifice required to achieve victory over the enemies of Christianity and democracy.