Appeal to Electors
HE aim of the Campaign for | Christian Order is better men and women in_ the State. The purpose of its Election Message — sent last week to 200,000 homes — is better men and women in the State legislature. In other words it is an attempt to achieve government by the goodthe noblest of all political plans and the least possible of full achievement, Unless the good are wise as well es good it is not wholly desirable that they should rule, for if it is impossible for a wise man to be a rogue it is not impossible for a good man to be a simpleton. All this the churches know better than we do, and this campaign has not been launched in the hope that it will fill Parliament with saints. Its aim is more modest and more practical, and our
justification for discussing it in a secular journal is the fact that it is addressed to us as well as to nearly all our readers. Even then we are concerned only with its broad aims and not at all with its methods -- whether for example guidance comes by prayer, by searching the Scriptures, or by some other method. Those are theological questions primarily, and the Manifesto is not primarily a theological document. It is a human document — an appeal to ordinary men and women to think before they vote, and ‘to think especially of the problems to which it specifically draws their attention: the home; the family; the factory; the farm; the world after the war. These problems, it says, only good and wise men can attack with a reasonable hope of success, and it asks us all to do what we can to recognise such men and vote for them. And that is just another way of asking us to ask ourselves whether the blind can lead the blind — whether we can remain a healthy nation if we are ruled by men without standards, whether we can live safely without 4 faith to unite us and an ideal of righteousness to strive after, and whether we should not resolve in advance to reject adventurers and opportunists.
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New Zealand Listener, Volume 9, Issue 219, 3 September 1943, Page 3
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361Appeal to Electors New Zealand Listener, Volume 9, Issue 219, 3 September 1943, Page 3
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