Christian Order

New Zealand Listener, Volume 7, Issue 168, 11 September 1942, Page 3

Christian Order

\W TE pointed out, when the Campaign for Christian Order was first announced, that it concerns a secular newspaper only as cleanliness concerns us, and honesty, and decency in general. If it were a matter of faith in the narrower sense it would concern those people only whose minds move within the limits imposed by ecclesiastical dogma; in short, active believers and active unbelievers. But it is emphasised in one of the pamphlets issued by the National Council of Churches conducting the Campaign that "Christian Order" means simply the Christian way of life. The Campaign is not an attempt by the Churches to supply a "blue-print or architect’s design" for making the world what they think it ought to be, but an attempt to persuade men and women that the Christian way of life is the best foundation on which to establish world order. Necessarily therefore it means most, and will make most progress, among people who are already active and not merely formal Christians, and unless it has the united support of that section of the community it will not get very far. But there are tens of thousands of people in New Zealand who, though they would hesitate to call themselves Christians in the personal evangelical way, do yet know, and would still say, that the Christian way of life is the only sure foundation of peace and justice and liberty and kindness. They are in fact a negligible number among us who would question that view, and therefore the Campaign for Christian Order is a Campaign for moral and social and political order, and concerns us all. It concerns us -in our business, in our families, in our schools, in all our relations with one another’ now and in the days that will follow the war; especially in those future days. For there is no one so dull among us as not to know that if we do not make a better world voluntarily, a different world, and a worse one, will made for us by forces that so far only threaten us. They will destroy us-our liberty, our justice, our whole social system-unless we anticipate the crash and disarm violence and chaos by removing their justification, That bluntly is the meaning of this Campaign for those who would not otherwise be able to associate themselves with it.