WORLD-WIDE Church unity could remain a "phantasy" if local co-operation between different Churches did not improve, said the Rt. Rev. Geoffrey Allen, Anglican Bishop of Derby, at the Derby Diocesan Conference on Saturday.
"It could remain an escape into phantasy for the hard world of material fact," he said, "unless we see that it must be worked out in each local situation—in the education of our people, the raising of funds, to implement the vision and co-operation with our fellow-Christians in our own immediate neighbourhood." Calling for urgent union of the Anglican and Methodist Churches,
the Bishop said: "To do so would be the first step towards that further union for which we would pray and work with the Roman Catholic and Orthodox Churches and with other Reformed Churches. "We should delay the forward wards unit
movement toy indefinitely if every time some plan for the healing of division comes up we say that it must be postponed for fear we should endanger our relations with other Communions at some ,other place."