CHALLENGE TO CHURCH

Wairarapa Times-Age, 19 November 1943, Page 3

CHALLENGE TO CHURCH

MATTERS OF RELIGIOUS FAITH ATTITUDE OF MEN IN FIGHTING LINE. (By Telegraph—Press Association.) . HAMILTON, November 18. That in matters of religious faith the man in the fighting lines would rather receive what came out of Russia than what came originally out of Palestine was the assertion of the Rev V. R. Jamieson, Methodist chaplain to the forces, now on furlough from the Middle East, when -speaking in St. Paul’s Methodist Church at a welcome to members of the South Auckland Methodist District Synod. The speaker was referring to the attitude of men at the front to the Church. These men, said the speaker, were not in the main antagonistic to belief in God, but they did not have much opinion of the Church, which they considered to be complacent regarding wrongs, social injustices and inequalities and particularly what they regarded as the inequitable and indefensible economic system of present-day society. They considered that in the present crisis Russia was destined to save the world from its troubles and miseries and that organised Christianity had lamentably failed in its mission in this respect. It was urged by Mr Jamieson that the whole situation was a challenge to the Church to cease from troubling about the trivialities that too largely occupied its attention today, to get down to realities and to confront the ■world with a message that would make the Christian ethic and spirit really operative in world affairs.