Volume 6, Issue 10, page 6

REFORMED DEFENDER ASSERTS:
Church There for
Ready for
By MARGERY MANSFIELD
N ALMOST every issue of The ABERREE,
someone takes a crack at the Christian churches. Perhaps it strikes home
to me because it is precisely the
sort of thing I might have written,
jand perhaps did write, in my earlier
years. For I have been a church member only during the last decade or
so.

I take it that there must be some
churches who are scaring their readers
with hell-fire, keeping them in ignorance,
etc., as your writers allege, but they
are certainly not any of the half-dozen
congregations with which I am familiar.

Of course, when one examines oneself
or one's fellow churchmen, it is obvious
that there are imperfections, both in
connection with omissions and commissions.
Here I think we can say that Christianity
is a dreadfully difficult religion, having its ideal no less than a selfless
perfection. One sometimes wishes it were
less ambitious spiritually and did a
better job within more mediocre limits.
And then on second thought, one takes it
back. For if it aimed at anything except
the highest -- love of God, love of neighbor -- then another religion would crowd
above it, drawing away from it its best
adherents. One might say that its glory
and its weakness are, alike, that it
offers to all a spiritual adventure which
many other groups try to make a secret
cult, limited only to those who are supposed to be very rare and advanced spiritually, to whom may be told "secrets"
and "occult" teachings they could hear
any Sunday from a Christian pulpit.

In this the Christian church can be
likened to the public schools. The
school's job is to educate. Yet how many
does it succeed with? Certainly, its task
would be easier if it limited itself to
the brilliant and the aspiring, excluding
all who mainly want conformity, respectability. But in spite of its handicaps, it
does set a few real scholars on the road
to knowledge. And the church also produces a few saints and many plain citizens who are a little more decent than
average.

We can blame all our troubles and
problems on the schools, arguing that if
the schools had done a better job we
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