New Zealand

Some notes on Henry Reynolds’ Archibald Baxter Memorial Peace Lecture

‘No war can be called just; they all use the same machinery’. So argued Professor Henry Reynolds (University of Tasmania) at tonight’s Inaugural Archibald Baxter Memorial Peace Lecture, sponsored by the National Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies at the University of Otago. Reynolds opened his public lecture by making the case that pacifism need not necessarily be anti-patriotic. On the contrary, the best thing one can do for a nation, he argued – in the spirit of him whose name and witness were being honoured, the great Archibald Baxter – is to keep it from going to war. He also argued that wars beget war, and that a victory to any side only further perpetuates the violence in one form or another.

Unsurprisingly, Reynolds spent most of his time in what for him is familiar territory – Australia. He rehearsed his oft-played themes about Australia’s hidden wars (see his Black Pioneers: How Aboriginal and Islander People Helped Build Australia, Why Weren’t We Told?, The Other Side of the Frontier: Aboriginal Resistance to the European Invasion of Australia, and Forgotten War – all which are well worth reading), noting how between 1788 and 1928 (or, according to some other historians, 1934) Australia was home to large-scale wars between European settlers and indigenous Australians, and that the frontier conflicts (most of the wars took place in isolated regions) in Queensland saw the deaths of tens of thousands (Reynolds argues for a figure of over fifty thousand people – significantly more Australians than were killed in WWII, and on par with those who died in the war to end them all). And yet, as Reynolds and many others have noted, and John Pilger has recently made most public in his film Utopia, these hidden wars remain uncommemorated at the Australian War Memorial in Canberra, that ‘great emporium of white nationalism’ (Pilger) and pantheon of Australia’s most enduring and important cult – war. (On this, see What’s Wrong with ANZAC?: The Militarisation of Australian History edited by Reynolds and Marilyn Lake.) It is difficult to see how Australians will even begin to think honestly about its wars until this scandal is rectified.

Reynolds suggested that the calendar for military commemorations in Australia is fuller than the religious calendars ever were during the Middle Ages. He might be right, although there’s little at stake if he’s not. But drawing attention to the Edwardian conviction (surely it’s much older than that?) that nations are made in war, and that there can be no true nationhood without war, Reynolds is certainly right to call out the propaganda machines which publish ad infinitum the narrative that Australian involvement in overseas conflicts are the nation’s most important defining events, a fact which begs the question about what nationhood might have meant prior to 1914, and which does wonders for tourist operators arranging parties at ANZAC Cove.

Reynolds concluded with some discussion about the Boer War, noting that there were only four members of the Australian Parliament who voted against involvement, and that there was scarcely any discussion at all – either in Parliament or elsewhere – on either the legality or morality of the war. The new egalitarian democracies of Australia and New Zealand were keener to join Britain’s war than were the Brits, and the colonisers were desperate to secure the allegiance of her loyal subjects (including India), frightfully concerned that they might go the way of Canada or, God forbid, of the United States. The second half of the Boer War in particular saw numerous and widespread atrocities and human rights violations, violations which Australia felt no responsibility for – just as contemporary white Australia, ‘Team Australia’, feels no responsibility for its most costly wars, the one’s which took place upon her own soil – because this was, after all, Mother Britain’s war and not ours.

I left feeling grateful for the work of places like the National Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies, emboldened in my own commitment to the ways of non-violence in the ‘broken middle’ (Gillian Rose), and thinking about the ongoing relevance of Desmond Tutu’s words (published in God Is Not a Christian): ‘There can be no future without forgiveness. There will be no future unless there is peace. There can be no peace unless there is reconciliation. But there can be no reconciliation before there is forgiveness. And there can be no forgiveness unless people repent’.

Migration, cultural diversity, and the church in Aotearoa New Zealand

?????My colleague, Kevin Ward, has posted a wee reflection on a recent conference that he co-organised around the themes of migration, cultural diversity, and the church in Aotearoa New Zealand. His observations have implications not only for church life in NZ but also for that in other places in the world, as these words from Phillip Jenkins suggest:

Let me suggest to you that in 30 years, there will be two sorts of church in the world. There’ll be the ones that are multi-ethnic, transnational, and multi-continental. They are constantly battling over issues of culture, lifestyle, worship, and constantly in conflict, debate and controversy. And those are the good ones. The other churches will have decided to let all these trends pass them by. They’ll live just like they’ve always done with an average age in their congregations of 80. Personally, I’d much rather be in one of the ones that is recognizing, taking account of the expansion with all the debates and controversies.

You can read the rest here.

The Marriage Amendment Act One Year On: How are the Churches Responding?

kiwisLast night, the Centre for Theology and Public Issues and the Otago University Students’ Association Queer Support co-hosted a public event on how churches are responding to the Marriage Amendment Act that passed through the New Zealand parliament last year. A wide number of people were invited to speak at the event, five of whom said ‘Yes’. These were Kelvin Wright (Anglican Bishop of Dunedin), Greg Hughson (Methodist Minister and Otago University Chaplain), Mark Chamberlain (Roman Catholic Priest at the Church of the Holy Name and Otago University Chaplain), Bruce Hamill (Minister at Coastal Unity Presbyterian Church and Convenor of the Doctrine Core Group for the Presbyterian Church of Aotearoa New Zealand), and Neill Ballantyne (Queer Support Officer, OUSA).

Each were invited to respond to the following three questions:

Question 1: In general Christian Churches in New Zealand were opposed to the amending of the Marriage Act to include couples of the same gender. This passed on the 17th of April 2013. This amendment allowed for ministers to refuse to marry a couple for matters of conscience. In your experience how are the churches responding to this change and in your opinion how do you think they should respond?

Question 2: It has been said that there is a sense of inevitability that the church will become more inclusive in its attitudes towards LGBT people and sexual morality. How would you respond to this claim?

Question 3: What does the marriage equality process show about the relationship between church and society in New Zealand on issues of morality. Are the churches still able to give moral leadership to wider society or is wider society giving leadership to the church?

Kelvin did well to highlight the nature of Anglicanism as broad and determined to hold together, through its polity and eucharistic centre, irreconcilable positions on all manner of subjects, a characteristic for which it remains deeply indebted to Queen Elizabeth I. Greg documented something of the long and painful journey that New Zealand Methodists have travelled on their road to, in 2003, signing a Memorandum of Understanding  which would allow diversity of opinion on the matter of marriage of LGBT persons and which made it possible for people to stand together with their differences and ‘with integrity’. Mark draw attention to the nature of all human sexuality and relationships as ‘gift’, stressed that the church must walk a difficult path of being deeply immersed in the culture while not being held captive to public opinion and to take its marching orders from the Gospel as interpreted through, and in continuity with, Scripture and the tradition. He could not, therefore, envisage a time when Rome might change its line on marriage. He did not, as far as I can remember, use the language of ‘sacrament’, although such was clearly informing his definition of marriage. Neill’s overall point last night was a good one – that the inclusive nature of the kingdom (or ‘queendom’) of God is radically at odds with the expressions of pharisaism and gate-keeperism that too often characterises those communities called to bear witness to that kingdom – but he might have found a more gracious and considerate way to make it.

The stand out response, in my view, was that by Bruce (who managed to cram a two-hour lecture into about 10 minutes!). Below is a transcript of his response:

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Thanks for the privilege of being part of this forum and also for the commitment of CTPI to let theology out of the closet (so to speak) on this issue.

Let me speak about what I know a little about – the Presbyterian Church of Aotearoa New Zealand – my denomination. Our response as a denomination was to reaffirm a traditional definition of marriage in stark contrast to the Act. This decision came after many years of bitter conflict in our General Assemblies, first over homosexuality and leadership and more recently over same-sex marriage. At this point the conservative view is in the ascendancy and consistently gets over 60% of the vote on these matters. It looks as if this next Assembly will be no exception and I suspect there will be a move to ensure that those minister’s whose conscience calls them to reject the national church position will no longer have the possibility of ‘conscientious objection’ on this matter.

I know that the denominational response is what the ‘public’ sees. However, in my view the denominational response is unlikely to be the best response. Let me explain. In my view, churches need to respond with discernment in community – and denominational bodies are not really communities (certainly not primary communities) let alone communities of discernment. Even the way most local Presbyterian congregations are structures means that thy usually don’t function well in this way.

Before I say something about what I think the Church should have done (and why), a few comments on Question 3.

I think the response of the church to date shows at least two things about the relationship between church and society.

  1. It shows that the wider society has been profoundly influenced by Jesus Christ and his crucifixion, and his decision to live in solidarity, without violence, with those who were the victims of society. We cannot underestimate the influence of this story on our culture in the West.
  2. It also shows a willingness on the part of the church not to take the decisions of the wider society as morally authoritative. Both of these things I take to be good things.

As for moral leadership, I think this is a loaded and not particularly helpful question. You could say that both Church and Society are giving moral leadership but with a different set of morals, or in different directions. The question assumes that there are universal moral principles at stake here that all parties agree on and then someone just needs to act on or make statements on in order to give leadership. If there is no such thing then it’s not a question of who’s leading who but of who’s leading in the right direction. In other words the question of who’s leading who can only be answered in the context of a wider narrative of what the good life is. For Christians this is really about what it means to live in conformity to and communion with Christ and thus ‘with the grain of the universe’.

The irony is that, in my view, the wider society, with its willingness to make space for minority groups, seems to be more closely conformed to Christ on this matter than those who claim to be Christian.

To return to Question 1: In my view what the PCANZ should have done is not simply to reaffirm the traditional definition of marriage but should have been prompted to rethink the limits and nature of our understanding of marriage. Actually in 2012 when the PCANZ did reaffirm a traditional definition there was also a motion put to the Assembly that the Doctrine Core Group (which I convene) produce a discussion paper on the theology of marriage. The motion was rejected. It was only in February of this year that the Council of Assembly did call for a discussion document, which we have since produced.

What I want to do today is offer four reasons, from within the tradition itself, in support of a rethink.

  1. As a protest wing of the catholic church, we of the reformed tradition have a little motto which goes ‘the reformed church is constantly being reformed’ (we like to say it in Latin so no one understands it). I think the point is a simple one. The institutions within which the people of God live their lives are not platonic forms. There is constant pressure from the triune God for their reform. The working out of the gospel means that the church is always learning how to be the church. Reform of institutions is something we are called to do on good authority. Both Jesus and the Apostles were right into it. Think of Israel’s great institutions – the Temple, the Purity Codes and the Sabbath – none of which came of unscathed with their encounter with Jesus of Nazareth. Not to mention the way Jesus profoundly challenged the centrality of ‘Family’. I often wonder whether Jesus’ motto ‘the Sabbath was made for human beings, not human beings for the Sabbath’ might well apply to marriage. Think of Peter’s vision of unclean creatures and the way it paved the way for a rethink of ethnic identity. Look at Paul’s deconstruction of the role of the Torah (Law) in the light of Jesus’ coming. Should we exempt marriage from such reforming processes? It seems to me that the onus is clearly on the traditionalists to come up with a reason for why the incarnation makes no real difference to how we think about marriage.
  1. Secondly, in Christian ethics, nature and the structures of creation play a subordinate role to the ‘new creation’ in Christ (see, e.g. Gal 3.28). This is to say that Christians understand human life and action in the light of its ‘end’ (eschatologically). For us the fulfilment of creation’s purposes, the ‘kingdom of God’, has arrived in the middle of time interrupting all our practices and redirecting them towards a new form of life. The good life is an embodiment of the future made possible now. In Paul we see this as he elaborates on the close connection between the church’s relationship to Christ (which he calls ‘a profound mystery’) and the marriage relationship. A similar analogy is drawn in Hosea. And both, as Rowan Williams observes in his wonderful essay ‘The Body’s Grace’, remind us that ‘there is a good deal [in the Bible] to steer us away from assuming that reproductive sex is a norm, however important and theologically significant it may be.’ When the Bible talks of marriage it has little interest in the pragmatics of human reproduction. And so the case can be made that whatever biological assumptions have been made up until quite recently in discussion of marriage, these things don’t really get to the point of marriage as the church is learning to practice it in the light of the eschaton.
  1. Having said that, the ‘kingdom of God’ arises in the context of an old creation and is not divorced from biology and history. An account of marriage must in turn take into account any new understanding of creation and of human biology and psychology (and so on). Scientific disciplines help us at precisely this point. In the ancient world of the biblical writers there was little understanding that the dynamic processes of human desire might be constrained and structured according a same-sex orientation as well as a heterosexual one. This is a significant mandate for reconsidering the modes of marital expression that the kingdom of God might take among the people of God. So (1) the call to reform (2) the priority of eschatology (3) the biological context, and finally what I want to call …
  1. Marriage as sanctification: The biological context of the Christian life suggests to us that there are some partners, for some of us, who are apposite without being opposite. It may be that this situation ought not to bar same sex couples from marriage precisely because of the significance role that marriage can play in Christian discipleship. If indeed the bodily relatedness, the one-fleshness of marriage is a kind of icon of the trinity (the relatedness of God) and if indeed it reflects something of the mystery of Christ and his body, if indeed it is a discipline of learning to love our nearest neighbour as our self, if in short it is really about sanctification, then the conservative elements in the church may be effectively seeking (in the words of Eugene Rogers) to ‘deprive same-sex couples not so much of satisfaction as of sanctification.’ (A lot more needs to be said here of course). Because bodies matter in salvation. Because we are being saved as embodied creatures in all the particularity of our limitation, then we should seriously consider revising the limits of our doctrine of marriage. To quote Eugene Rogers again ‘no conservative I know has seriously argued that same-sex couples needs sanctification any less than opposite-sex couples’.

For these four reasons I say, it’s time for a rethink.

In conclusion (and in response to Q. 2): Is a more inclusive church inevitable? There is no inevitability this side of the eschaton. However, if we don’t define ‘church’ according to the particular institutions that claim that title, I remain hopeful (confident even) that God will raise up communities who will find ways of including LGBT people in the way of Jesus Christ.

Resuscitating James Begg: a review of Kate Malcolm’s Pastorale

PastoraleKate Malcolm, Pastorale: being part of the life of James Begg as reconstructed by Kate Malcolm: A Novel (Wellington: Kate Malcolm, 2011). 369pp. ISBN: 9780473189969.

A guest review by John Stenhouse

Kate Malcolm has written a superb historical novel about one of her Scottish Presbyterian ancestors, the Revd. James Begg. The author trained in history at the University of Otago; it showed. One of the book’s many strengths is how well the author placed it in the historical contexts necessary to understand the life and times of James Begg and his family, church and nation. Historians are trained to avoid anachronism – language, ideas, objects and practices chronologically out of place in the period about which the author is writing. It is a tribute to Kate Malcolm that she avoided anachronism almost entirely.

Chapter one depicts young James Begg growing up the son of a Church of Scotland minister in New Monkland. The author’s account of a Scottish communion gathering conveyed a sense of the drama and excitement of occasions that caught up entire communities. Here, as elsewhere, Malcolm combined impeccable historical research with a novelist’s eye for her subjects’ inner worlds of thought and feeling.

After making a name for himself as a powerful preacher, James Begg joined the Free Church exodus out of the Church of Scotland during the Disruption. Here the author nicely captured the volatile mix of social, intellectual, political and theological tensions between the Moderate party and the Evangelicals, led by Thomas Chalmers, who reluctantly led the latter out of the established church in 1843. Academic historians who have difficulty understanding how deeply past generations felt about theology, politics and their interconnections have sometimes written accounts of such controversies that are too dry, dispassionate and cerebral. In Malcolm’s telling, by contrast, we can feel the anger of the Begg family when well-heeled Moderates and their supporters imposed a minister on an unwilling congregation. The author brings to life the Disruption – probably the most important event in nineteenth-century Scottish history – by refusing to confine theology to the private sphere of heart, home and house of worship. Weaving together theology with politics, law and social history, Malcolm brings our Presbyterian past to life just a few years before Free Church folk founded the Otago settlement. It is worth remembering that the Evangelical party left the Church of Scotland because they did not believe that the dominant Moderate party was keeping the church in vital contact with the mass of the Scottish people. Free Church visions of society as a godly commonwealth did not suddenly disappear; this tradition significantly shaped Otago, Southland and New Zealand history well into the twentieth century.

While the author writes about her subjects with empathy and understanding, she avoids hagiography. She depicts James Begg as a gifted and passionate preacher and dedicated pastor but not as a plaster saint. I found myself cringing at how harshly this Presbyterian patriarch sometimes treated his eldest son, Jamie. Sensitive and uncertain, Jamie responded to his father’s disapproval by withdrawing. It is a painful story that illuminates a shadow side of Scottish Presbyterian culture.

One of James Begg’s sons, Alexander Campbell, emigrated to Dunedin, where he played a lively and sometimes controversial role in Presbyterian church life as a staunch defender of tradition. Strongly attached to the Westminster Confession, A. C. Begg encouraged southern Presbyterians to try the Revd. Professor William Salmond and the Revd. James Gibb for heresy in 1888 and 1890 respectively. Begg’s support for prohibition, Bible-in-Schools and strict Sabbath observance annoyed working class radicals such as Sam Lister, whose Otago Workman newspaper regularly attacked ‘Ace’ Begg as a domineering old bigot.

Modern New Zealand historians have tended to side with Lister. In a famous article appearing in Landfall in 1953, Auckland poet-historian Robert M. Chapman, who later became professor of political science at the University of Auckland, identified Scottish Presbyterians and English Evangelicals as the main carriers of ‘puritanism’ to New Zealand. And puritanism, claimed Chapman, was the root of almost evil, plaguing society with interpersonal violence, marital discord, family dysfunction, female frigidity, latent homosexuality, patriarchy, self-hatred, and the ‘dominant mother.’ During the 1950s, with his friend and fellow poet-historian Keith Sinclair, Chapman translated into history and the social sciences the anti-puritanism burgeoning in literary circles since the 1930s. During the 1960s and 1970s, as the universities expanded, antipuritanism grew into a powerful new orthodoxy. Many of our writers, artists, historians and social scientists sought to save us from puritanism (or Calvinism, as they sometimes called it) and the churches that brought it here. Just how far this antipuritan crusade transformed attitudes to our Scottish Presbyterian forebears may be illustrated simply. In The Land of the Long White Cloud (1898), William Pember Reeves, our most influential nineteenth-century historian, praised the Revd. Thomas Burns, spiritual leader of Otago’s Free Church pioneers, as ‘a minister of sterling worth.’ In 1959, by contrast, Keith Sinclair’s Pelican History of New Zealand described Burns as a ‘censorious old bigot.’ Had Burns changed so much in sixty years?

‘Amor ipse intellectus est,’ wrote Saint Bernard of Clairvaux, a saying we might translate into English as ‘love itself is the knowing faculty.’ In a labour of love, Kate Malcolm has rescued one of her Scottish Presbyterian forebears – and ours – from the condescension of posterity. This beautifully written book deserves a wide readership.

Christian Perspectives on Marriage

Christian Perspectives on MarriageLast year, the Council of Assembly of the Presbyterian Church of Aotearoa New Zealand asked the church’s Doctrine Core Group to provide the church with a discussion paper on marriage. That group decided to approach the task by inviting a select and representative number to write a brief response to the following question:

‘What do you believe lies at the heart of a Christian doctrine of marriage, and what are the key biblical and theological considerations that inform your position?’

The discussion paper is now available for download here. It is offered in the hope that the statements therein might provoke deeper engagement with the complex issues about marriage in New Zealand church and society.

Kerry Enright: an interview

Kerry Enright and Pastor BerlinLast night’s edition of the ABC program Sunday Nights, hosted by John Cleary, included an interview with the Rev Dr Kerry Enright, the outgoing National Director of UnitingWorld, and a friend of mine. During the interview, Kerry reflects upon two of his favorite topics – the catholic nature of the church as gift from God and as sign to the world, and on the role of the church in civil society (here the discussion is focused particularly on Fiji, Australia and New Zealand). He also talks a bit about his forthcoming appointment as minister of Knox Church (Presbyterian) in Dunedin. I’m looking forward to welcoming Kerry back to Dunedin, and back to the PCANZ, soon. You can listen to the interview here.

And while I’m mentioning Kerry, there’s also an older interview in which he talks about God’s mission and about the significance of partnerships that UnitingWorld enjoys:

Interviewing David Clark MP

Interrogation roomLike many of life’s journeys, it all began with a single question. On this occasion, it was one posed by my daughter Sinead: ‘Why are so many things in Dunedin made in China?’, she asked. Rather than blunder my own way through an answer, I suggested that we write to the Prime Minister, the Rt Hon John Key, and ask him. She thought that that was a good idea: ‘Mr Key always seems to have a lot of time to play golf and to tweet about Lorde, so surely he will have enough time to talk with me!’, she said. And, ‘he’s always rabbiting on about how much he enjoys talking to average New Zealander’s about issues that matter to them’, I added. So, hopeful, we wrote to him. We received no reply. We wrote to him again, and again, and again, and again – inviting an answer to the question – but still no response came. This was disappointing, and birthed some grumpiness.

The invitation to discuss this, and any other question Sinead might have, was taken up by our local MP, David Clark. He should know about this stuff, we thought. After all, he is the Opposition spokesperson for economic development.

So, a few weeks ago, Sinead meandered down to the MP’s office to arrange an interview. That interview took place yesterday. In addition to her initial question, she posed a number of other questions – about Dunedin, about being a parliamentarian, about the personal costs of politics, about the relationship between politics and faith, and about the push for New Zealand to have a new flag. David was gracious, unpatronising, and honest in his replies, Sinead (and her dad) learnt a lot, and new questions were formed. And then she and David went out for ice-cream at Rob Roy Dairy.

I was very proud of her, and grateful to David for taking some time out to discuss matters of importance with one of New Zealand’s newest citizens.

New Zealand and the demise of an egalitarian dream

Changing TimesMy antipodean readers, in particular, may be interested to listen to Phillip Adams’s interview with Jenny Carlyon and Diana Morrow, authors of Changing Times: New Zealand Since 1945, on the subject of changes in New Zealand’s social landscape. The blurb for the show reads:

Before WW2, New Zealand was among the most egalitarian nations on earth, but recent OECD stats suggest that its once narrow gap is widening so fast, it’s now ranked second from the bottom. But in contrast to its early years as a largely white, Anglo-centric culture, today 213 different ethnic groups call New Zealand home. This one hour special is a retrospective look at the vast cultural, political and demographic changes in New Zealand over the past 60 years.

You can listen to the interview here.

Position: Senior Lecturer in Mission Studies

laidlawLaidlaw College in Auckland is seeking a Senior Lecturer in Mission Studies for its School of Theology, Mission & Ministry:

The Lecturer will be responsible for teaching in mission and contextual studies, ensuring that courses are developed and delivered in ways that are faithful to the Gospel of Christ, culturally incisive, and grounded in a biblical understanding of God’s missional purposes for Aotearoa New Zealand, the nations of the Pacific region, Asia and the world. They will also be actively involved in the College’s community and will lead the College’s Centre for Cross Cultural Mission (C3M).

The desired candidate will have the following skills and qualifications:

      • A PhD or equivalent in a relevant area of research
      • Significant missional experience
      • Active involvement in a local Christian community of faith and in Christian initiatives in the wider global community
      • Ability to publish papers and present research at academic conferences
      • Experience in teaching within a tertiary education provider
      • Experience mentoring students and providing pastoral care
      • Understanding of recent developments in the theological and general tertiary education sectors nationally and internationally
      • Experience and/or willingness to utilise e-Learning pedagogies and technologies

This position is a permanent full-time (1.0 FTE) position.

Please email your CV and cover letter to Natalie Tims, Human Resources Manager, at ntims@laidlaw.ac.nz to register your interest and request an application pack. Application packs include an application form related to your previous experience and theological principles, a Statement of Faith and a five-year Professional Development Research plan. Application packs must be submitted by Friday 2 May, 2014.

You can read the Job Description here.

Calvin: The Man and the Legacy

Calvin The Man and the Legacy

After over four years in the wings, it is indeed a delight to see that Calvin: The Man and the Legacy has finally hit the press. (One recalls Walter Benjamin’s words in Aesthetics and Politics―‘I came into the world under the sign of Saturn―the star of the slowest revolution, the planet of detours and delays’).

The book, which is edited by Murray Rae, Peter Matheson and Brett Knowles, consists mostly of papers delivered at a conference held at the Knox Centre for Ministry and Leadership in 2009, one of a plethora of conferences organised to mark the 500th anniversary of Calvin’s birth. It really was a great two days—marked by intelligent papers on a diverse range of themes, good humour, abundant attendance, a generosity of spirit, real coffee, and low testosterone, a combination of features relatively rare at these kinds of gigs.

The book’s description reads:

Alongside essays on aspects of Calvin’s theology, Calvin: The Man and the Legacy includes studies of Calvin as pastor, preacher and liturgist and traces the influence of Calvin as it was conveyed through Scottish migration to Australia and New Zealand. Fascinating stories are told of the ways in which the Calvinist tradition has contributed much to the building of colonial societies, but also of the ways it has attracted ridicule and derision and has been subject to caricature that is sometimes deserved, sometimes humorous, but often grossly misleading.

And the TOC reads:

Part 1: The Man and His Thought

1. Graham Redding—Medicine for Poor Sick Souls?: Calvin’s Communion Service in Profile
2. Jason Goroncy—John Calvin: Servant of the Word
3. Randall Zachman—The Grateful Humility of the Children of God: Knowledge of Ourselves in Calvin’s Theology
4. Elise McKee—A Week in the Life of John Calvin
5. Murray Rae—Calvin on the Authority of Scripture
6. Randall Zachman—Calvin’s Interpretation of Scripture

Part II: The Legacy and the Caricature

7. John Roxborogh—Thomas Chalmers and Scottish Calvinism in the Nineteenth Century
8. John Stenhouse—Calvin’s Own Country? Calvinists, anti-Calvinists and the Making of New Zealand Culture
9. Peter Matheson—The Reception of Calvin and Calvinism in New Zealand: a Preliminary Trawl
10. Alison Clarke—Popular Piety, the Sacraments and Calvinism in Colonial New Zealand
11. Kirstine Moffat—‘Mr Calvin and Mr Knox’: The Calvinist Legacy in the Fiction and Poetry of New Zealand Scots
12. Ian Breward—Calvin in Australia and New Zealand

You can pick up a copy here.

The dirty politics of oil

Oil drilling

News that the Texan oil and gas exploration company Anadarko Petroleum Corporation is to undertake a test drilling program in the Canterbury Basin just off the Otago Peninsula is causing stir here in Dunedin among a good number of residents deeply concerned about the significant environmental and economic risks that such drilling poses to the region. Shell too have plans to explore the Great South Basin for additional oil and gas reserves.

Such highly-charged ventures rarely display politics in its most attractive, reasoned, transparent and democratic guise. One example of this occurred just a few weeks ago (on 10 January) when the intelligent and responsible folk who make up the St Martin Island Community were ordered, by the Otago Regional Council, to take down a ‘No Drill’ sign (erected in late October 2013) because, according to the ORC, the community were in breach of resource consent which states that ‘no advertising signage shall be erected on the jetty’. Now it’s not at all clear to me, or to the SMIC, just how such a sign is an example of ‘advertising’. (It is difficult to imagine such an order being issued for a sign encouraging the All Blacks to thrash their opponents at a game at the ORC’s beloved stadium (once described, in what sounds like a joke, as ‘pivotal to Dunedin and Otago’s future’; similar rhetoric was being used to sell the drilling program: ‘A key to Dunedin’s future prosperity could lie buried beneath the seabed just 60km off the coast’, we are told), or a sign welcoming cash-carrying Chinese tourists to Dunedin, or a sign championing the importance of brushing one’s teeth without the use of rat poisons, for example. And yet a ‘No Drill’ sign appears to me to be of much the same order.)

At the most recent meeting of the SMIC Council, it was decided that an appeal of the ORC’s decision would be made to the Environment Court asking for a stay on the grounds that the ‘No Drill’ sign is not advertising but ‘a prudent safety message’. Such an appeal has since been lodged and we now await the court’s decision, hoping that common sense and the rule of law (these are not always at odds!) will prevail over all other interests. Certainly any democracy that seeks to legislate against legitimate (i.e., non-violent) forms of protest has failed tragically to understand its own virtue.

Saint Martin Island

The Story of Dr Beryl Howie

Beryl HowieIt was 1958 when the London-based Ludhiana Fellowship invited Beryl Howie, a young and newly qualified New Zealand obstetrician/gynaecologist, to join the staff of the Ludhiana Hospital in India. In this invitation, Beryl recognised God’s calling, and went to India.

It was no easy challenge. In addition to undertaking a very busy clinical load, she also had to learn at least one of two local languages. Along the way, she was sustained by her faith in God, faith which motivated not only her medical work, but which also encouraged the study of the Bible among the students and patients that she had come to love. It came as a bit of a shock, therefore, when just before she was due for her first furlough the Ludhiana Fellowship told her that they had decided to move their support to training Indian doctors and asked her to find support elsewhere. Bewildered but not undetermined, and after exploring several options, she soon accepted an invitation from the Presbyterian Church of New Zealand to become one of their missionaries and, in 1963, she set off under new colours but to essentially the same job.

Over the next few years, while Beryl’s own workload stretched, so too did the old buildings in which she worked and which became increasingly inadequate for the burgeoning number of patients and new theatre equipment which arrived. She was soon dreaming about a new hospital for women and, during her next furlough, she challenged the New Zealand churches to raise $500,000 towards this. People all over New Zealand took enthusiastically to the project. When they had reached $100,000, the New Zealand Government offered to contribute $500,000 if the project raised that amount by Christmas. This challenge sparked off further enthusiasm among New Zealand churches. Several other missionaries were ‘at home on leave’ from India and others with a strong interest in Ludhiana helped to enthuse congregations and individuals to great heights. Suffice to say that Beryl returned to India with the plans and funding to begin planning for a new hospital and to start building.

Teaching Hundreds to Heal Millions

At the same time, she continued to work towards raising the standard of care of patients and developing higher educational and treatment standards of doctors, nurses and midwives.

But there was another encouraging development. When Beryl first came to India, all newly-trained doctors with any available funding went to the UK and, if possible, the USA for postgraduate training. Most of them then looked for work there and didn’t return to India but rather supported their families from the high salaries they now earned. Beryl longed to change the natural path of graduates to keep them in India to serve their own compatriots. To that end, quality advanced training would have to be available. By 1980, 84% of all graduates in obstetrics and 29 of her MD graduates remained in practice in India.

In 1981, Beryl finally left India and found work in two other missionary challenges – one was to write a text book on obstetrics and gynaecology specifically for students in India , and the other was to visit missionaries all over South East Asia and further encourage the development of improved healthcare.

After finally retiring to New Zealand, she was honoured with an honorary doctorate in science by the University of Otago.

My friend Bartha Hill has just authored a beautiful little book on Howie – Teaching Hundreds To Heal Millions: The Story of Dr Beryl Howie – and those in Dunedin are warmly welcome to attend its launch on Sunday 17 November, at 2 pm, at Highgate Presbyterian Church, Maori Hill, Dunedin.

‘The Conversion of the Māori’: a review

Timothy Yates, The Conversion of the Māori: Years of Religious and Social Change, 1814–1842 (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 2013). ISBN 978-0-8028-6945-6. 150pp.

A guest post by Graeme Ferguson

When James Hamlin, my great, great grandfather, joined the CMS mission at Paihia in 1826, he came as an artisan lay missionary. His trade was flax dressing. He quickly found that not only was the New Zealand flax a distinctively different species, but also that the Māori knew a great deal more about flax weaving than he did. As a result, his life changed direction. He became a fluent idiomatic Māori linguist able to contribute to the translation of the Scriptures into Māori; he was a trusted mediator and negotiator between warring tribes; he was a faithful catechist and church planter in places where Pākehā rarely penetrated; he was a dogged explorer and a good farmer. In the last years of his long service, Selwyn was finally persuaded against his better judgement to ordain him. (Hamlin, after all, was not a ‘gentleman’.) With his wife, Elizabeth, they had twelve children. Two sons intermarried with local tribes-people so that their descendants reflect the unity in diversity of the meeting of the races in the development of this country. At Captain Symonds request, he called the hui of the Manukau tribes, in the area of Awhitu to witness the Treaty of Waitangi. Te Whero Whero who was present, ensured that few Manukau chiefs signed, since his authority as Māori king and Paramount Chief of Tainui was not to be compromised.

Hamlin’s life of undistinguished, faithful service encapsulates many of the questions that any writer on the formative years of the New Zealand mission needs to confront. It is with these questions that I approached Timothy Yates’ book in Eerdmans’ series Studies in the History of Christian Missions (SHCM).

Yates’ overview of the development of the Christian mission in New Zealand is a competent survey. It recognises the role of Māori in transmitting the Gospel so that missionaries in newly planted stations already found worshipping communities who had been told the Christian story. This could have been further developed. He deals with the relations between Anglican, Methodist and Catholic missions but may not have adequately considered the fraught nature of the different expectations in each group. He deals judiciously with difficulties relating to inappropriate moral lapses by Kendall, Yates and others and alludes to the tensions people coped with in establishing communities in the bush.

The strength of his work lies in his assiduous reading of the correspondence and reports between missionaries and their sending agencies – the CMS, the MMS and the Marist order in Paris. But the writer gives me less confidence that he has an adequate grasp of the socio-cultural context in New Zealand, within which the missions operated. He also shows both linguistic and geographic insecurity that does not enhance his work. (My favourites are the mis-spelling of Te Whero Whero, and various odd adjectival forms of Māori  places.) My evaluation is that the work is ‘worthy’ rather than ‘insightful.’

My first question relates to the way he interprets his primary source documents. The question is: who were these reports written for and what did they expect to hear? How far were they written to accommodate European attitudes and expectations which may or may not reflect the situation on the ground? To what extent could the recipients grasp what was happening in the encounter between the missionaries and the people of the land? I suspect that a healthy suspicion of what was being written is called for.

Secondly, I am interested to know what the effective points of contact were within which the Gospel was able to be shared. What was being offered and what was really being heard? Yates draws attention to the insights into local society and practices that the more insightful missionaries observed which were essential to good understanding and communication. I am interested in the differences the Gospel made in how people lived.

Thirdly, I would like to know the tenets of the Gospel that were in the forefront of missionary proclamation, what was heard and the degree to which it was appropriated and internalised. These people had very limited access to resources. Each mission had its catechism and tradition of teaching in books, like Wesley’s Forty Four Sermons or Pearson on the Creed, but few resources beyond these basic texts. All taught through methods of catechesis but in each case the content would be culturally alien to their hearers. There is the further question of the pedagogical value of catechesis as an educational tool.

Coupled with this is the role of worship in expanding the mission. Large groups are reported as gathering to worship. What were they doing? How far was worship another expression of traditional spirituality and how far an imposed foreign structure? What was going on?

The way in which missionary families lived within the host communities is crucial. The fact that many lived with mutual respect and good will and were trusted is a mark of the practical wisdom many brought to their service. I suspect that their impact was primarily experiential as they lived out the Gospel in community in the tradition of nineteenth century romantic sensibility.

A further question relates to extending the missions. One would like to know where the concentrations of population were that led to establishing stations in what are now oddly inaccessible places. Yates did this in discussing siting the initial station at Rangihoua because of the protection Ruatara was able to offer. I would like it more widely considered.

The overarching question is: what did the local people hear and what did they make their own? To what extent was the Gospel indigenised and internalised? This question is crucial and finds its high point in the reception of the Treaty of Waitangi itself. The dominant narrative on that occasion utilised the thought forms and cultural images of nineteenth-century evangelical Christianity on issues of covenant and promise, rule and governance, responsibility and citizenship, the rule of law and the place of land. The Treaty could be ratified in many places because those interpreting the terms of the Treaty were trusted in their communities. Like the wider transmission of the Gospel, the Treaty was reinterpreted in local cultural terms in order to be received and accepted.

While there is much of interest in Mr Yates’ book, it is written from the perspective of a disengaged observer. Years ago, Archbishop Appleton commented that if he were to have his time as a missionary in Burma over again, he would don a saffron robe and sit and listen for seven years before he began to share the good news of the Gospel. I suspect that more engaged listening would have improved this present study.

Position: Director, Presbyterian Church Schools’ Resource Office

Applications are now invited for the position of Director of the Presbyterian Church Schools’ Resource Office. In 2011, an office was established to strengthen and support the Christian character of the thirteen schools and colleges around the country that are affiliated to, or associated with, the Presbyterian Church of Aotearoa New Zealand. This role consists largely of supporting chaplains and religious education teachers in their work, and the compilation and development of curriculum resources.

The office is run by the Knox Centre for Ministry and Leadership on behalf of the church schools. It is currently located in Auckland, but can be relocated if necessary.

This is a half-to-two-thirds-time position.

The successful candidate will have a theological qualification, a teaching Diploma, and proven experience in chaplaincy and/or teaching. Knowledge of, and/or ministry within, the Presbyterian Church and the Reformed tradition will be an advantage.

Enquiries about the position (including requests for a job description) should be directed to the Principal of the Knox Centre for Ministry and Leadership, the Very Rev Dr Graham Redding (phone: 03 473 0784; email).

Applications should be submitted to the Principal of the Knox Centre for Ministry and Leadership, either in hard copy (address: Knox College, Arden St., Opoho, Dunedin 9010) or electronically (email) by 15 November 2013.

Jonathan Mane-Wheoki on Christianity and Māori Art and Architecture

The Crucified Tekoteko by Darcy NicholasIn July this year, the Department of Theology and Religion at the University of Otago hosted the first of what promises to be a biannual lecture series in honour of Professor Albert Moore. This year’s lectures were delivered by Professor Jonathan Mane-Wheoki, Professor of Fine Arts at Elam School of Fine Arts at the University of Auckland, and addressed the theme ‘Toi Karaitiana: Christianity and Māori Art and Architecture’.

For those who missed these lectures, or would like to experience them post festum, these are now available:

  • Lecture 1: From Samuel Marsden to Frederick Bennett: Te Hahi Mihinare (23 July) [Video; Audio]
  • Lecture 2: From Patoru Tamatea to Ralph Hotere: The impact of Catholic spirituality and iconography (24 July) [Video; Audio]
  • Lecture 3: Regret and resistance – The Crucified Tekoteko (25 July) [Video; Audio]

My friend Andrew has also provided a wee summary of the lectures here.

Ageing and Spirituality conference

Aging-5The Selwyn Centre for Ageing and Spirituality is organising a one-day conference to ‘hear New Zealand researchers and others with an academic interest in the area speak about ageing and spirituality’.

Dates:  6 September 2013, 9.30 am – 4 pm

Place:   Tamaki Campus – University of Auckland, 261 Morrin Rd, St Johns, Auckland

The conference is concerned with the following topics:

• Spirituality and ageing: a discussion from a principle-based, evidence-informed and zeitgeist-based approach
• Spirituality teaching in NZ medical schools
• Spirituality in a Dunedin rest home
• The church and older people after the Christchurch earthquakes
• Older people and euthanasia
• Religious and spiritual data from the LILAC study
• The role of religion/spirituality in mental health and mental health care – general findings and data and literature relevant to the older adult participants
• Caregiving across cultures
• Grief and loss in caregivers of people with dementia
• The role of caregivers and their interaction with rest home residents, particularly noting their preparedness to respond to needs of a spiritual nature
•  Spirituality in residential dementia care

More information here.