“Green Pastures” not to be Banned.—This daring travesty of things that, even, nominal Christians held as sacred is, as announced in the press, to be presented in the picture houses throughout the country. It is a film setting forth among other things the negro’s conception of heaven. The leading role is taken by a coloured actor representing the Lord. Lord Tyrrell, president of the British Board of Film Censors in reply to Rev. James Macleod, Moderator of Synod, who wrote remonstrating against the exhibition of the film, says through his secretary, that the authorising of the film had given the Board great anxiety but he did not think it so lacking in reverence as to justify prohibition though he admitted he was prejudiced against the film before he saw it. He also says that some of the clergy of the Church of England are anxious to secure the film for exhibition in churches. Our Church has always set its face sternly against the cinema but this film seems to have gone beyond all bounds and invaded a sphere which is too sacred for film actors to enter.
Hitler.—“It was not so generally known,” says Princess Despina Karadjia, “that Hitler himself was a Roman Catholic, brought up in the Benedictine Monastery at Lambeck an der Traun, and his adoption of the Swastika sign was doubtless from the Bishop’s coat of arms over the High Altar in that monastery. It seemed strange that an emblem of a Roman Catholic altar should be supreme in the land of Luther.”
The Scottish Church and Drama.—Such is the title of an article reprinted in Life and Work: The Record of the Church of Scotland from the Scottish Amateur Theatre. The writer, David Baxter, says that one of the problems of the Church in Scotland is keeping in touch with and retaining the interest of youth. Boys’ Brigades, Boy Scouts, social and athletic clubs have very little contact we are told with the life of the Church itself and the defect is to be remedied by the drama. The suggestion is made that the Church should take up the matter in earnest and organise the church clubs. He tells us that the Church of Scotland has already a Film Guild and in connection with this he makes the suggestion that a Scottish Church Drama Guild be formed which would hold Festivals in various districts. This is flinging the doors of the Church wide for the entrance of the World and it is very significant that such an article should be given space in Life and Work. Yet it is this Church which a number of Free Presbyterians have chosen as their spiritual home who were so faithful that they could not abide the shortcomings of the Church of their first love.
Moody Centenary.—“In his Life of Principal Rainy, Dr. P. Carnegie Simpson thus refers to Moody’s visit to Scotland in 1874: ‘Moody’s preaching of a free gospel to all sinners did more to relieve Scotland . . . of the old hyper-Calvinistic doctrine of election and what theologians call ‘a limited atonement’ . . . than did even the teaching of Rev. J. Macleod Campbell [of Row heresy notoriety]. Moody was in no sense a profound theologian, but he was a great human.’ The attack on the old truths was not allowed to pass unchallenged. In Scotland Dr. Kennedy issued a strong criticism of the movement under the title Hyper-Evangelism: Another Gospel; while our friend Pastor J. K. Popham, then minister of Shaw Street Chapel, Liverpool, published a pamphlet in 1875 entitled Moody’s and Sankey’s Errors versus the Scriptures of Truth, which exposed the essential Arminianism and sensationalism of the so-called revival in that city. The pamphlet passed through thirteen editions and was translated into Dutch. ‘The kind of gospel Mr. Moody preaches,’ is thus summarised by Mr. Popham: ‘He practically tells his hearers that Christ purchased them, if only they will give themselves to Him; that He put away their sins nearly two thousand years ago, but yet they may die in them, through unbelief; that He appeased the wrath of God and that God loves them now, but tomorrow they may die under His hot displeasure; that heavenly mansions are prepared for them, but they may be all untenanted, and will be if they do not believe.’—Peace and Truth (January-March). Dr. Carnegie in his characterisation of the effect of Moody’s preaching errs in saying that it relieved Scotland of “the old hyper-Calvinistic doctrine of election.” Where the doctrine of election and that of a definite atonement were held in Scotland they were of the Westminster Confession type which is decidedly not hyper-Calvinistic. Moody introduced an indefinable mixture of Arminianism and Semi-pelagianism, the fruit of which is being reaped to-day.