MACLEOD OF IONA

New Zealand Listener, Volume 19, Issue 492, 26 November 1948, Page 14

MACLEOD OF IONA

THE Rev. Dr.

George

MacLeod

founder of the now famous Iona

" Community of the Church of Scotland, is at present visiting New Zealand and has already broadcast over the main National and Com‘mercial stations. While he was in Wellington, Dr. MacLeod was interviewed for "The Listener.’ Here is what he had to say.

ee HY did you come to New Zealand, Dr. MacLeod?" "To talk. It’s my seaitien: During my youth my father was once asked, ‘has the mantle of his famous grandfather, Norman MacLeod, fallen on young George?’ He replied, ‘So far only the gas mantle.’" "And what are you going to tell us?" "That you should no longer be-if indeed you any longer are-the unconscious imitators of Western institutions. For you ate the preservers and pioneers of the new expression of Western institutions that the world must have-and have pretty quickly-if these institutions are to revive and to continue. Leadership is no longer in Britain’s hands. We are too held in the vortex of European problems and of the capitalist economy. It depends on you ‘down under’ more than anywhere."

"Aren’t you just buttering us up before asking for some money, Dr. MacLeod?" "Not money, timber-when the time comes that you can spare 30 or 40 tons -though money for timber will be gratefully received. Iona Abbey, the third greatest shrine in Christendom, is still only partly roofed. In 1941 when wood could not be bought we were daily expecting a gable would fall unless we could get some immediately.~ Then a Canadian ship obligingly jettisoned its deck cargo in a storm 200 miles out and the Receiver of Wrecks who meets me every time I land on the island told me it had come to our shore-al] cut to just the lengths we wanted! "But that’s off the point. I meant every word I said about new leadership being needed. We all know it. It’s everybody’s cliché that unless the spiritual forces can take charge of the material forces, our civilisation is finished." =

"Nothing could be more obvious." "But it’s not obvious to many. They are like the old lady in London whose room, itself unharmed, was completely buried during a blitz. When the rescue squad dug through to her she wouldn’t let them open the brandy bottle.. ‘I only

take that in an emergency,’ she said. Starvation from Calais to Hong Kong and a grim determination among’ the dispossessed from Calais to Hong Kong that they will end it-that’s our situation to-day. Coming here our plane landed first in France, where the alternatives of Communism or De Gaulle become more inescapable every day; then Italy where the same struggle is only a little delayed; then in Cairo, Basra and Karachi. where things were too bad for us to be allowed off the airport; then in Burma where the second largest city was in Communist hands; then in Singapore where Communist guerrillas were only seven miles inland. A mere strike at Darwin was Paradise regained. "Look deeper. In London, the citadel of Western democracy not more than 10 per cent. of the population are church folk; in England 17 per cent.; in Scotland 19 per cent. I remember an Indian at.a meeting where he had been ‘welcomed as ‘our coloured brother’ in reply beginning, ‘My dear colourless brethren.’ That’s what most Westerners are — so inoculated with Christianity that they are immune to it." No Lack of Organisation "Why isn’t the Church making more impact?" 4 "It’s not for lack of organisation. Two doors opened before a man as he walked

into an Exhibition, one marked ‘officers,’ the other marked ‘men.’ Being an excorporal he took the latter. At the end of the passage was one marked ‘sergeants’ and one marked. ‘corporals.’ He took the latter. Then came two doors marked ‘overseas’ and ‘home defence.’ He took the former. Then two doors marked ‘discharged’ and ‘serving’ and he found himself out on the street again. ‘I don’t know what the show was about,’ he said afterwards, ‘but you must admit it was a great piece of organisation.’ The Church, like the community, is all organised up-but for what? Believe me, never has the Church been more painstaking and never with less result. "More people recently crammed into the Sydney boxing stadium for a religious meeting than had ever turned out for any sporting event there. But the tragedy is that just when we could on a single microphone address the whole world we find ourselves with nothing to say that sounds intelligible to the world. Churchmen are more and more confused. That is why the community at home is scared to death of the one quarter of one per cent. Communists and not a bit scared of the 10 per cent. Christians. Every now and then a:group of young Christians meets with some Communist group-the two parties that are each convinced they have salvation to offer the world. But before the third argument the Christians are always all dithered up. It is like the man who was stopped from jumping off Sydney bridge. ‘Before you take such a grave step,’ said his rescuer, ‘let’s talk it over.’ They did, and then both jumped over. Besides, innumerable men who are intellectuallw convinced of Christianity are bored stiff by our dead-and-alive and apparently pointless worship, although worship is the centre and dynamo of Christian living."

"How is making a museum piece of an ancient building on an island by a kind of Presbyterian monastic order going to help?" Z "Well, I’ve been called a ‘trapeze monk’ before now, and islands are of course a symbol of escapism, But our ‘community’ consists of married ministers and married tradésmen and _ for every three months we spend on Iona we spend 21 in industry and in new. housing areas. | "When the Iona Community was started, Iona Abbey was already roofed. | But the cloisters, the places where the old monks lived and from which they went out as missionaries to Britain and Europe, were uninhabitable. We thought | this a symbol of what had happened to the world: the week-day, in which folk really live, is in ruins; while the Church is roofed, efficient-and dissociated. "In one sense this is nobody’s fault. When Christendom existed (that is, when both Church and society responded to the Gospel), the Church was right to confine itself to the spiritualities. But now on the one hand our Western society no longer responds to Christian principles, and on the other hand Communism invades the religious sphere by claiming the soul of a man. So the Church has to turn and invade all the areas where the lives of men are shaped. If we fail to do that, our civilisation will die. So Christians, if they are really to be in the world but not of it, have to find and cultivate new techniques both of prayer and of practice. Of every 12 missionaries who went out from old Iona only two were ministers; the other 10 were agriculturists and craftsmenmuch as a mission station works in Africa or China to-day. Only by similar balance can the new Christendom arise-roofed in part, I hope, by New

Zealand’s contribution."

A.M.

R.