The War and Unity: Being Lectures Delivered At The Local Lectures Summer Meeting Of The University Of Cambridge, 1918
Religion
The War and Unity: Being Lectures Delivered At The Local Lectures Summer Meeting Of The University Of Cambridge, 1918
Christian sociology; Christian union; Social change; World War, 1914-1918 -- Religious aspects
This leads up to another consideration which our ecclesiastical
authorities would do well to bear in mind. For a long time past younger
men and women in all the churches have been accustomed to meet together
in the various Fellowships and the Student movement. They have learnt to
work and pray together, to know one another's mind and to realise their
fundamental oneness of spirit and aim. It must be remembered that these
are the men and women in whose hands the future of the churches, humanly
speaking, lies, and they will not tolerate an indefinite prospect of
sectarian division and strife. While loyal to their own denominations
they have seen a wider and more glorious vision, and they are already
prepared for very definite steps in the direction of closer relations.
The new and better spirit which they represent is spreading rapidly
among the rank and file in the churches, and has been strongly
reinforced by experiences at the front. There, under the rude stress of
war, denominational exclusiveness has frankly broken down and attempts
to maintain it have excited universal resentment and disgust. There is
no doubt that after the war there will be a strong public opinion in
favour of better relations among the churches, and no church or section
of a church that clings to the old exclusiveness will be able to retain
any hold upon the people. In this case at least it may be assumed that
for once _vox populi_ is _vox dei_.
There is indeed every reason to believe that opinion outside the
churches is more ripe for action than within them. On both sides there
is need for something like an educational campaign on the subject of
reunion and of the duty of Christians in regard to it. Difficulties have
to be faced of a very serious kind. On the Nonconformist side there are
still many who feel very keenly the burden of the disabilities from
which they have suffered, and to some extent still suffer. They know
that in some country districts Nonconformists are subjected to petty
social persecutions, and that their boys or girls who wish to become
elementary school teachers are handicapped from the outset. Many of them
have been brought up on bitter memories, and their inherited hostility
to the State establishment of religion does not incline them to any
_rapprochement_ with its representatives. It is well that these facts
should be faced, for they shew the need there is for the Free Churches
to educate their own people.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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