CHURCHES & POLITICS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 25 September 1942, Page 4

CHURCHES & POLITICS

DISCUSSION IN AUSTRALIA AN IMPORTANT CONVENTION. MUCH COMMON GROUND FOUND (Special Australian Correspondent). SYDNEY, September 16. Agreement among church leaders that’the churches must not stand aloof from politics and the ordinary life of 'the people was one of the important trends of an Australian Religion and Life Convention just concluded. “Democracy grew out of Christianity,” said the president of the Convention, the Rt Rev F. de Witt Batty. Anglican Bishop of Newcastle, “and unless we can get democracy Christianised and informed by Christian principles it has no hope of survival.” Representatives of the Anglican, Roman Catholic, Presbyterian and Methodist churches discussed such con troversial subjects as religion and education, family life, industry, internationalism, theology and politics. A remarkable degree of unanimity was reached. The convention’s “platform” was based on the five peace points of Pope Pius XII.. and the five principles laid down by the Oxford Conference in 1937. These embraced:

The right of all nations to life and independence, free from molestation by any other nation; spiritual as well as material disarmament; a system of international confidence to enable the real needs and just demands of nations and racial minorities to be adjusted equitably; abolition of extreme inequalities in wealth and possessions; equal opportunities of education; preservation of the family as a social unit; use of the resources of the earth as God’s gift to the whole human race.

The harmony marking the convention was well illustrated in,the admiration expressed by Archbishop Wand, Anglican Archbishop of Brisbane, for the “sacrifices made by Roman Catholics to provide their children with Christian education.” He declared that if members of other denominations did the same as the Catholics with regard to education, the whole tone and tenor of education would be raised far above its present, level. One of the outcomes of the convention was the decision to form a League of Decency for Films and Radio. The league is designed to serve a constructive purpose “to assist in the uplift. of films and radio, and not to concentrate on mere criticism and faultfinding.” On a few questions, particularly those of divorce and family life, however, views among delegates were widely divergent .. . “In so many things the trouble is,” said Archbishop Batty, “that directly we begin to speak about collective Christian action, we are faced with the unhappy fact that Christendom is rent with divisions. They are very real—and very important. Despite that, however, this convention has proved there is a considerable amount of ground common to all Christian denominations upon which full co-operation is possible. I believe we would be failing in our duty if we did not exploit that possibility to the full.”