CHURCH TAKES THE OFFENSIVE

New Zealand Listener, Volume 7, Issue 167, 4 September 1942, Page 4

CHURCH TAKES THE OFFENSIVE

National Radio Link-up For Meetings In Christian Order Campaign ADIO will play a large part when New Zealand’s Campaign for Christian Order, sponsored by the National Council of Churches, is launched on the general public this month with a series of broadcast meetings. This is the second phase of the campaign, which up to the present-has been largely confined to preparation within the churches themselves: from now on there will be greatly increased public activity up and down the country. The first of the four main public meetings will be held next- Monday, September 7, at Christchurch and thereafter at other centres on following Mondays this month, with a different speaker on each occasion. The meetings will be on the air between 8.0 p.m. and 8.45 each Monday, with the four. main National stations linked up each time. Here is what the leading speakers look like, together with some details about them, and also where they will be speaking and what they will be speaking about:

ARCHDEACON W. BULLOCK says that his chief interests are religion and politics, which he believes to be inseparable, since religion is "a way of life," and he feels therefore sympathetic towards the Russian experiment. He was born in Derbyshire, England, in 1885, and was educated at King’s College, London. After serving as a chaplain in France during the Great War, he came out to New Zealand in 1919, being appointed vicar of Masterton in 1922, and of St. Peter’s, Wellington, in 1930. In that year he preached his first broadcast sermon and has been on the air fairly frequently ever since. His addresses have punch and intellectual content and he has no objection to making his audience laugh, though he admits that he does not suffer fools gladly. Force and directness are also characteristic of the many articles which he writes for church papers. He enjoys a good argument, a good joke, a good meal, and (so he tells us) pulling other people’s legs--but not having his own pulled.

ROF, F. SINCLAIRE, M.A., was born near Auckland and travelled on scholarships all the way to Oxford. First he went through Auckland Grammar School and Auckland University College, where he was senior scholar in Latin and took his M.A. degree with first-class Honours. Then he went to Manchester College, Oxford, and became Prizeman in Hebrew as well as winning a Williams’ Scholarship in open competition with the graduates of all British Universities. From Oxford he went to Australia as lecturer in English in the Universities of Melbourne and Western Australia, and in 1932 returned to New Zealand as Professor of English at Canterbury College, the position he now holds. That, at any rate, is the academic story, or the skeleton of it. The personal story he has not yet put on record, and therefore, we may not, but if it could be told i would make those who will listen to hir next week marvel that he should be standing where he now is.

HE REV. H. J. RYBURN, M.A,, B.D., is the son of a former Moderator of the Presbyterian Church of New Zealand. He was born in 1897 at Gisborne, was dux at Invercargill Middle School and later dux of Southland Boys’ High School, and was studying at Otago University when the last war intervened. After active service with the N.Z.E.F. he returned to Otago, and in 1921 won a Rhodes Scholarship. While studying theology at Mansfield College, Oxford, he won a resident fellowship, which in 1924 took him to Union Theological Seminary, New York. After’ Home Mission work in Canada he was ordained and inducted to the Bay of Islands (North Auckland) charge, going three years later to St. Andrew’s, Dunedin. In 1941 he took up his present position of Master of Knox College.

[HE REV. DR. J. J. NORTH, D.D., has been before the New Zealand public ever since he became minister of the Central Baptist Church, Wellington, early in the century. He has been well known as a preacher, platform speaker, and publicist, and on social issues (especially drinking and gambling) his influence has been felt, while as editor of The New Zealand Baptist for the past 25 years he has exercised considerable influence in religious circles. His publications in tractate form have been widely circulated in the Dominion, in Australia, and in England. : For the past 16 years Dr. North has been principal of the New Zealand Baptist College at Mount Hobson, Auckland. He is, incidentally, the father of the Rev. Lawrence North, known to listeners both as a preacher and a singer.