Religion: Church & State

The exiled Royal Government of Norway advanced £50,000 last week to help keep the war-orphaned Norwegian Lutheran missions going in China, the Cameroons, South Africa. Manchuria, Madagascar. Cut off from home support by the Nazi invasion, the Norse missionaries will get their aid through the Rev. Johan Arnd Aasgaard of Minneapolis, president of the Norwegian Lutheran Church of America since 1925. Administrator Aasgaard believes this is the first time in history that a government has financed a church’s foreign missions, considers it a dramatic proof that “the Allied forces are fighting for Christianity and democracy.”

The British Government backed up Dr. Aasgaard’s belief by announcing last week that Britain’s churches, unlike almost everybody else, will not have to pay compulsory insurance premiums on their property (TIME, March 10). His Majesty’s Government, said Chancellor of the Exchequer Sir Kingsley Wood, will pay the premiums instead, thus insuring the rebuilding of bombed-out churches, chapels, parsonages, parish houses. This was good news indeed to British churchmen, who have already seen thousands of churches bombed, including 200 Methodist and 114 Baptist in the London area alone.