THE CHURCH IN TOWN PLANS
Sir,-I must reply to your correspondents’ criticisms of my article on Townplanning if only because their comments enable me to squeeze past your closure upon the "Cathedral v. Houses" controversy and get a post-ultimate last word in it. Like "Homo," I am ail agin Community Centres in so far as they are ersatz-or, as I imagine Mr. Francis might put it, attempts of a secularised community to provide a substitute for "the House of God" which it has lost as the centre of its life. If communities want co-operatively-owned halls and gyms and committee-rooms (to be at the disposal of all local clubs), and if they can find a man or woman capable of making the whole show something more alive and more educative than just that, then good luck to their "community centre." If a community wants a central building to express in its architecture and in the activities that go on in it their gratitude to God and their desire to serve Him in his creation, then they, too,-are doing a good thing. But elsewhere than such districts congregations and night classes and clubs will continue to function right in. the residential areas’ where the people live. That is why-our picture-planned city being one for ordinary contemporary people-the churches and halls were small and dispersed among the houses. On the larger issue as to whether there should be any of these "nonessentials" there at all, I agree with your correspondent who, replying to a claim that funds for a certain proposed cathedral should be diverted to war relief, pointed out that it is the people who provide the former who are the main support of the latter; and who added that the community’s fund of goodwill to support any immediate humanly worthwhile enterprise comes almost wholly out of its forebears’ longrun investments in the worship of God. Toynbee’s monumental history of human civilisations attests the obverse of this fact in the quotation he has placed on the title-page of each of the six volumes so far published-"Except the Lord keep the city the watchman waketh but in vain." I hope I have now made clear where I believe the Church fits into the community, whether planned or unplanned.
A.M.
R.
(Wellington).
Permanent link to this item
Hononga pūmau ki tēnei tūemi
https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/periodicals/NZLIST19460802.2.14.2
Bibliographic details
Ngā taipitopito pukapuka
New Zealand Listener, Volume 15, Issue 371, 2 August 1946, Page 5
Word count
Tapeke kupu
378THE CHURCH IN TOWN PLANS New Zealand Listener, Volume 15, Issue 371, 2 August 1946, Page 5
Using this item
Te whakamahi i tēnei tūemi
Material in this publication is protected by copyright.
Are Media Limited has granted permission to the National Library of New Zealand Te Puna Mātauranga o Aotearoa to develop and maintain this content online. You can search, browse, print and download for research and personal study only. Permission must be obtained from Are Media Limited for any other use.
Copyright in the work University Entrance by Janet Frame (credited as J.F., 22 March 1946, page 18), is owned by the Janet Frame Literary Trust. The National Library has been granted permission to digitise this article and make it available online as part of this digitised version of the New Zealand Listener. You can search, browse, and print this article for research and personal study only. Permission must be obtained from the Janet Frame Literary Trust for any other use.
Copyright in the Denis Glover serial Hot Water Sailor published in 1959 is owned by Pia Glover. The National Library has been granted permission to digitise this serial and make it available online as part of this digitised version of the Listener. You can search, browse, and print this serial for research and personal study only. Permission must be obtained from Pia Glover for any other use.
Log in