WHY ARE CHURCHES EMPTY?

New Zealand Listener, Volume 31, Issue 792, 24 September 1954, Page 16

WHY ARE CHURCHES EMPTY?

Sir,- There is need for a certain kind of "apartness" from our fellow men in following a spiritual life, but it issues again in a more real "nearness" to them. We must put our attention on God, or Christ first, so that all personal and individual attachments rank second to that-which done, we find our love transformed into an unemotional but much deeper and self-sacrificing power than ever before. We need clergy, men whose primary preoccupation is with unseen things, not "practical" ones-all the world is already busy with those-priests who are learning to live spiritually first, getting to know the mind of God, becoming experts in that line in order to minister -as Christ’s hands on earth. Christ Hiinself "went apart" many many times, always before His crises, got into the mind of God, then came and put it into practice. He was with people, but at the same time was not loved with possessiveness by anyone, nor loved anyone possessively. Please let us keep our clergy as our spiritual experts, not wear them out on secular committees; the best of them always manifest a marvellous breadth of interest-but only those who are the best spiritually are able to do the rest wisely. After all, they give out love in a much more trying way than most of us-at every funeral thev mourn with the mourners, at every wedding they rejoice; they give to the sick, to the sad and to the penitent as our Lord gave, so far as they are able; and they minister grace in the Sacraments; that is their life. So with fis all, as Jesus said, "Thou shalt love the Lord Thy God with all thy heart, with all thy mind, with all thy soul and with all thy strentgh-that is the first and greatest commandment -and the second is, namely, this Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself." That is what He did, and because He did the first He could do the second.

HELEN M.

G. SHAW

(Wellington).

( Abridged.-

-Ed.)

Sir -On the subject of why are the churches empty may I offer a few comments? It seems to me a basic reason is that the Church cannot reflect even to a moderate degree the spiritual significance of its founder. Once a form of religion becomes identified as an institution, it inevitably conforms to the cycle of development and decline implicit in all things on this plane of existence. The organisation itself may remain, but without constant spiritual revitalising, its perception of ultimate reality dies. Its voice loses conviction and is ignored. Small wonder, then, if there is some anxious stocktaking among church people. Some comments of the late Dean Inge have a bearing on what I have written: "There is no evidence that the historical Christ ever intended to found an institutional religion. . . He treated the institutional religion of His people with the independence and indifference of the prophet and mystic. . . Institutional Christianity may be a legitimate and necessary development of the original Gospel, but it is something alien to the Gospel itself." It seems questionable how long something which is alien in spirit can perpetuate the original message.

STUDENT

(Petone).