Category: Slipping the Moorings: Bishop Richard Reflects (page 2 of 2)

Criticisms of the Church’s call for justice from the neoliberal establishment

Back in 1985 when some politicians embarked upon a love affair with market ideology, I remember wondering how it would all turn out. Here was something new, something different from the community approach that had characterised New Zealand politics all my life. Could a new approach increase our national wealth and lead to greater well-being for all? Could this be the ‘rising tide which lifts all boats’, as the policy architects of the day proclaimed?

It soon became clear that the rising tide was lifting the most luxurious boats, but many of the poorer craft seemed anchored to the bottom and were clearly foundering. What also became clear was that market economics were based on ideological foundations quite different from the values the nation had lived by for a long time. The new values were trumpeted by Ruth Richardson, Minister of Finance, when she introduced the 1991 Budget. ‘This Budget,’ she proclaimed, ‘is a battle for the hearts and minds of New Zealanders.’

It was an unfortunate choice of phrase. American President Lyndon Johnson once used it to describe the US pacification programme in Vietnam. When US forces bombed villages, he said, they were engaged in a struggle for the hearts and minds of the Vietnamese. Perhaps the Minister saw the warfare here as being socio-economic rather than military, but the destruction of lives and communities was a common feature. I selected the phrase for the title of my book[1] in response to the social devastation.

I also read some of the philosophy of Ayn Rand, and in particular her book The Virtue of Selfishness (1962). Russian born, Rand migrated to the USA and wrote several books based on the philosophy of objectivism. Her morality is centred on the ethics of rational self-interest:

The basic social principle of the Objectivist ethics is that just as life is an end in itself, so every living human being is an end in himself (sic), not the means to the ends or the welfare of others – and, therefore, that man must live for his own sake, neither sacrificing himself to others nor sacrificing others to himself. To live for his own sake means that the achievement of his own happiness is man’s highest moral purpose (her italics).

The principle of trade is the only rational ethical principle for all human relationships, personal and social, private and public, spiritual and material. It is the principle of justice.

I have not met members of any Randist sect in this country, but the radical libertarian philosophy of deregulated markets, minimalist government and maximum individual freedoms has many staunch adherents. I always enjoyed talking with Lindsay Perigo, editor of a 1990s publication The Free Radical. After a TV interview one night we had a stimulating conversation ranging from Adam and Eve to free market philosophies. For Lindsay, private health and education systems were just for starters as he went on to canvass privately purchased security officers in lieu of a police force. Quite how privately purchased fire protection would operate was never explained.

About this time Auckland businessman Alan Gibbs arranged for the live feed of BBC Radio into New Zealand. On weekdays Lindsay compered a breakfast business and politics programme insert which included a short, sharp Soapbox component with a roster of speakers. I was clearly the token liberal speaker set up as cannon fodder for the other contributors.

Many would be horrified with Ayn Rand’s view that the achievement of individual happiness is the highest moral purpose in life. And yet it seems to me that was the underlying ideology we were led into during those years of radical socio-economic change. The ideological divide had never been so clear, with the churches and others having a radically different view. In a fine turn of phrase, the Business Roundtable’s Roger Kerr described the churches as being ‘perpetrators of corrosive myths’. Such ‘myths’ were a belief in the common good, and an ethos of mutuality whereby the wellbeing of all was a collective social responsibility.

Rand would doubtless have endorsed the views of Adam Smith, the 18^th century Scottish moral philosopher, with his views on ‘the invisible hand’[2]:

It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their regard for their own self-interest. We address ourselves not to their humanity but to their own self-love.

(The individual is) led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention…..I have never known much good done by those who affected to trade for the common good. It is indeed an affectation, not very common among merchants, and very few words need be employed in persuading them from it.

The US economist JK Galbraith comments[3]:

The reference to the invisible hand has for many a mystical overtone: here is a spiritual force that supports the pursuit of self-interest and guides men (sic) in the market to the most benign of ends…A man of the Enlightenment, Smith did not resort to supernatural support for his argument…(but) in our own time the market has, indeed, acquired a theological beneficence; Smith would not have approved.

Galbraith’s reference to a mystical overtone is well captured by my all-time favourite cartoon of the 1990s by Dana Fradon in The New Yorker. The economy was engaged in the idolatrous worship of market mechanisms, mindless of the human consequences.

New Zealanders are not ungenerous. It is always moving to see people respond to cases of human concern. We learn of a child who needs money to go abroad for life-saving surgery. We hear of a tourist couple assaulted and robbed of everything they have. An old lady is attacked in her own home by an intruder. A young family finds their home totally wrecked by storm or fire. Israel engages in yet another modern day slaughter of the innocents in Gaza. The appeal goes out to the nation and people give generously with moving messages of support.

But when it comes to the nation’s attitudes and policies about those in need, a very different mindset takes over. In a TV3 programme The Vote in June 2013, Duncan Garner and Guyon Espiner led two teams in a debate on the causes of child poverty: was it the result of poor parenting and budgeting, or was it a lack of income? One team was from the well-heeled commentariat of the ‘pull yourself up by your own bootstraps’ brigade, while the other included social justice advocate Celia Lashlie and Children’s Commissioner Dr Russell Wills,  along with graphic accounts from budget advisers and foodbank operators working at the grassroots, those who knew the reality of poverty on a day-to-day basis.

The theories of the commentariat did not match the facts of the grassroots operators. At the end the studio audience was asked to give its vote, while the TV audience recorded their votes via email, text or Twitter. The graphic accounts of those at the coal-face notwithstanding, 63 per cent believed poverty to be the result of poor parenting and budgeting skills. In an almost throw-away line, Duncan Garner summarised: ‘so there you are, folks – that is the view of middle New Zealand.’

His use of the word ‘middle’ was significant. If almost two thirds of middle New Zealand believe the poor have enough money, there is no political incentive to change anything. It is not just the Government that is responsible for policy: every voting Kiwi affects the wellbeing of those at the margins of society.

In similar vein Rewi Alley, a Kiwi who spent 60 years of his life in China as an educator, writer and workers’ advocate, revisited his homeland in 1971 and wrote this poem, Auckland:

Weekend, and comes the sound of motor-mowers clipping neat lawns street after street. And in gardens fig trees, lemons and grapefruit bear richly, a myriad flowers throw out their fragrance…

And people speak of world problems as though such were no pressing concern of theirs; go on thinking that more and more prosperity is just around the corner and that the end of life is just to be comfortable and happy, protecting their children from hardship…

No sea so blue as that of Auckland, no gulls whiter, no youth more straight-limbed and eager, and truly no place where challenge is greater for the new Oceania to be.

Taxation is an ongoing political debate, and in 1988 I critiqued Roger Douglas’ proposal for a flat tax. A flat tax was mooted as a simpler way of doing things, a solution to tax evasion and an incentive to entrepreneurs who would work harder if they were able to keep more of their earnings. In a media release I pointed out that a flat tax was good news for those on high incomes but no benefit at all to lower income earners. Nor did I think entrepreneurs were working at half speed because of high tax levels. I suggested the solution to tax evasion was to plug loopholes, a challenge many governments have addressed with only modest success.

Dr Lisa Marriott[4] said that $23 million of welfare fraud was detected in 2012, compared with $1 billion of tax evasion, the latter amount being potentially as high as $5 billion annually. In spite of the vast differential in amounts, 800 people were prosecuted for welfare fraud but only 50 for tax evasion. The average amount of welfare fraud was $70,000, with 60 per cent of those convicted being given jail sentences. By contrast the average amount of tax evasion was $270,000 but only 20 per cent of those convicted were imprisoned. Clearly institutional morality has a significant inbuilt bias against the crimes of the poor as compared with the crimes of the rich.

Tax rates can be too high, but there are those who attempt to portray tax as one of society’s great evils, following Ayn Rand’s philosophy that taxation is theft. Often in May each year a business organisation proclaims Tax Freedom Day, the day when all one’s tax liabilities have been paid for the year and one can now get on to working entirely for oneself. One year chartered accountants Staples Rodway ran a newspaper advertisement:

CONGRATULATIONS NEW ZEALAND, TOMORROW YOU CAN HAVE A DAY OFF. IT’S TAX FREEDOM DAY.

The average New Zealander will spend 141 days working to pay government and local taxes. But look on the bright side… you have 224 days to find an astute accountant.

There is little doubt as to what end astute accounting would be applied.

A total contrast is found in the famous words of Oliver Wendell Holmes, inscribed on the Inland Revenue building in Washington DC: ‘taxes are what we pay for a civilized society.’ Taxes pay for all the essentials in a decent society – health, education, public housing, police, fire services, roads and infrastructure, welfare support, the justice system. Careful stewardship of public monies is always essential but a fixation on cost-cutting inflicts flesh and blood wounds on those least able to manage.

Dom Helder Camara (1909-99) was a Catholic bishop in Brazil, and an apostle of non-violence. Politically conservative as a young priest, he experienced a conversion while ministering among the poor in the favelas of Rio de Janeiro. ‘When I fed the poor, they called me a saint,’ Camara said, ‘but when I asked why they were poor they called me a communist.’ Labelled ‘the red bishop’, he  worked tirelessly for democracy and human rights in Brazil. During a time of persecution a hired assassin knocked on the elderly Camara’s door. He was so moved by the sight of the bishop that he blurted out: ‘I cannot kill you. You are one of the Lord’s.’(From Common Prayer: a Liturgy for Ordinary Radicals).

While some may believe taxation is theft, my sense is that a far larger number would agree with Sister Marie Augusta Neal that withholding basic necessities from the needy is a greater theft:

The Gospel mandates that no right of ownership supersedes human need….No matter who possesses food, it belongs to hungry people.[5]

The gap between rich and poor has been a growing debate in New Zealand in recent years. As the gap widens the more affluent push for private education and healthcare with a lessening commitment to adequate public provision. Elizabeth Anderson[6] has written:

As economic inequality increases, the better off perceive fewer and fewer shared interests with the less well-off. Because they buy many critical goods – health insurance, education, security services, transportation, recreation facilities – individually from the private sector….they tend to oppose public provision of these services to the wider population.[7]

A recent New Zealand study[8] has shown:

• From 1982 to 2012 the ratio between the top 20% of incomes and the bottom 20% has increased from 2.4 to 2.8
• The Gini coefficient[9] in the same period has risen from 0.26 to 0.33 which ranks New Zealand 22^nd out of 34 OECD countries (where 34^th is the most unequal)
• From c1985 – c2005 the increase in the NZ Gini score was the highest out of 24 OECD countries.

Research by two British academics, Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett[10], correlates income inequality with a composite set of social factors such as social trust, mental illness, life expectancy, infant mortality, violence, drug and alcohol use, obesity, education, teenage births, homicides, imprisonment and social mobility. The authors found that in virtually every society, the larger the rich/poor gap, the worse that country performs in terms of social well-being, not just for the poor but across the board.

Their analysis is that countries with high levels of inequality are driven by individualistic and competitive attitudes, and by a consumerist[11] and materialistic ethos. ‘Keeping up with the Jones’, or better still ‘keeping ahead of the Jones’, has a divisive and stress-producing quality that affects rich and poor alike. A survey showed[12] that once people were earning enough to live comfortably, they were content with that income as long as their peers were not getting more. Social status was more important than purchasing power, with half saying they could live with a reduced income provided they knew they were ahead of others. This could well be the driving dynamic for the seven figure salaries paid to senior executives.

In unequal societies the affluent and successful strive to keep ahead and protect their margin. For those who lag behind there is a sense of failure that can lead to depression, anger and compensating behaviours such as drug and alcohol abuse, violence, crime and imprisonment.

It is popular to describe the behaviour of the latter group as anti-social, but in truth anti-social behaviour starts with the affluent who minimise their tax payments and thus avoid contributing to the social fabric. It is to be found in politicians who know votes can be won by appealing to people’s financial self-interest, and suggesting the poor have only themselves to blame. The behaviour of voters who support such policies rather than opting for the common good is also anti-social.

The consequences of inequality are seen in human lives. OECD and UNICEF (2009) statistics show that New Zealand performs poorly compared with other wealthy nations. We are:

• 2^nd worst in terms of child well-being
• 4^th worst in mental illness with 20% of the population affected
• 2^nd worst in drug use, equal to UK and USA
• 2^nd worst in infant mortality with a rate of six deaths per 1000
• in the bottom five nations in terms of overseas aid.

Of crucial significance is the issue of penal policy. Driven by punitive policies such as ‘three strikes and you’re out’, New Zealand has the second highest rate of incarceration with 195 per 100,000 of the population locked away. Only the USA has a higher rate with 576 per 100,000. By contrast the Scandinavian countries have a rate of only 60. There is a worrying racial dimension to imprisonment: 50 per cent of the nation’s inmates are Maori, their rate of imprisonment being 5.7 times that of non-Maori.  With the closure of mental hospitals, many mentally ill people often end up in prison after committing some form of offence.

The situation is deteriorating. Even though some crime rates are falling, and we know that longer prison sentences usually make inmates less fit to lead constructive lives, the prison population is not shrinking. Pressure for tougher sentences is a reflection of inequality, say Wilkinson and Pickett, which is driven by a competitive win-lose mentality: others need to be put down so that I can stand higher. Inequality does not permit ‘soft’ policies such as restorative justice, or spending money on education to equip those ‘inside’ with the skills and confidence to reshape their lives.

The bullying and cyber-bullying of fellow students in schools and employees in workplaces, leading to high rates of youth suicide, is another likely indicator of how inequality destroys social cohesion. Not just the poor are affected.

Victoria University criminologist John Pratt studied prisons in Scandinavia in 2008/09 and found many benefits arising from policies aimed at re-establishing people in normal social life.  Scandinavian countries have a greater sense of collective wellbeing which makes such policies possible. But he questions whether there is a sufficient level of trust and egalitarianism in New Zealand society, and hence the political will, to make changes in our own penal system, despite its manifest failings. 

On the positive side, New Zealand does well with a high degree of social trust, good educational outcomes, and a comparatively low rate of homicides. But it is the more equal countries such as Japan, Denmark, Norway and Finland that score consistently well on all the indicators of social well-being. Characterised by social cohesion and a sense of family, these nations aim to see all provided for well. The common good is worth far more than tax cuts.

How can we reverse the prevailing Kiwi mindset so that we focus on the things that give life to all rather than on our own self-enhancement at the expense of others? As a nation we have a tremendous opportunity, and a tremendous responsibility. The Spirit Level documents that nations committed to the common good actually achieve that goal.

In December 1999 Jackie and I came home after our five years in Australia interested in what had changed during our absence. A year earlier the Anglican Church had initiated a Hikoi of Hope. People from all over the country marched to Wellington to show their concern about the entrenched poverty nationwide. Graphic pictures and stories emerged from the multiple journeys to the nation’s capital. Despair was mingled with bonds of affection among the marchers, and a renewed sense of hope and determination for change.

The hikoi converged on Wellington on 1 October 1998 with thousands of citizens gathered in front of the steps of Parliament. Church and community leaders presented to the Government a shared statement of concern with jobs, income, housing, education and health as prime objectives for action.

The 1999 general election saw a change back to a Labour Government. I was warmly surprised to find in the Treasury’s briefing to the incoming government[13] a section entitled Social Cohesion and Inclusion. The report noted that social cohesion was enhanced when people felt institutional frameworks were working well and treating people fairly, but weakened when people felt marginalised or institutions failed to deliver fair outcomes. ‘Protecting the living standards of those families who are most disadvantaged is a pre-requisite to achieving social cohesion’, said the briefing paper[14]. The report also noted growing inequality within New Zealand.

Messages about social cohesion and protecting the living standards of disadvantaged families had not been heard in policy-making circles for a long time. The advice had been freely on offer from the churches throughout that period, but now Treasury was coming to the party as well.  Why had it taken highly-paid government researchers so long to reach such an obvious conclusion, I wondered? Or do public servants offer the kind of advice they think will be acceptable to the government of the day, so that independent thinking in the public service no longer exists?

The church leaders’ 1993 statement referred to earlier[15] suggested five principles of social justice:

• To respect human dignity with its rights and responsibilities
• To live in solidarity with others, aware of our interdependence
• To seek the wellbeing of all
• To value work and creativity
• To give priority to the needs of the poor.

They also emphasised that ‘a primary focus for our social justice concerns must be the special relationship which exists between Maori and all other New Zealanders, as expressed in our founding document, the Treaty of Waitangi’.

The church leaders showed how these principles are ‘firmly rooted in the teaching of Jesus Christ and the Hebrew scriptures’. But, of course, the principles are shared widely by many in society. One of the heartening experiences of the 1990s was the building of partnerships not only across church boundaries but with many different groups and individuals, such as in the hikoi, who shared a deep concern for those on the margins. Few would not endorse the principles, but with such a wide disjunction between principles and outcomes such endorsement can be vacuous.

And what of today? Each year the Salvation Army produces a succinct and focused analysis of the socio-economic state of the nation.[16] The 2014 report shows some marginal improvements but nonetheless:

• 19 per cent of children live in welfare benefit-dependent households
• from 2008-2013 recorded offences of violence, sexual assault and child neglect rose by 68 per cent
• in education there has been an improvement in NCEA Level 2 achievement, but a wide gap remains between low and high decile schools (26 per cent), and Maori and non-Maori (24.9 per cent)
• the prison population is unchanged at 195 per 100,000 population, one of the highest in the western world. The Maori imprisonment rate is 5.7 times that of other New Zealanders
• unemployment has fallen to 6 per cent, but for 15-19 year olds the rate is 24 per cent. For Pacific Islanders the rate is 13.9 per cent, and for Maori 12.8 per cent. All rates are lower than in 2012 but higher than in 2008.
• the Salvation Army distributed a record 55,718 food parcels in 2013, a 67 per cent increase over 2008.

A separate report on child poverty[17] published by the Children’s Commissioner, Russell Wills, shows:

• 285,000 children live in poverty defined by income, this number including 1 in 3 Maori and Pacific island children, and 1 in 7 European children
• 1 in 6 children are in families which struggle to afford basics such as healthcare and clothing
• 3 out of 5 will experience poverty throughout their childhood.

Reflecting on these sombre statistics, Major Campbell Roberts[18], writes:

The neo-liberal paradigm that has been so dominant in New Zealand politics is convincing us that a society is little more than a collection of markets, that citizens are only consumers, and that governments have only a residual role to play in mediating all of this. The Salvation Army does not accept this view of humanity or of community life. We believe that there is a spiritual and moral aspect to life that demands we individually have a clear spiritual and moral framework to our lives – not just a framework that sees achievement in personal economic benefit. Similarly, New Zealand’s strength and achievement as a nation is not found in economic indicators alone but in indicators that show the strength of our concern to deliver care, compassion and social justice to everyone…our ambition has been underwhelming and our imagination stunted.

Campbell Roberts names child poverty and affordable housing as core concerns and suggests the lack of voter pressure for change shows the public is unaware or unconcerned. He is clear that only a change in attitude by New Zealanders at large will create the political will for governments to respond to poverty.

At times I recall social situations deemed quite acceptable in the past which we now regard as scandalous. In the 19^th century Maori were forbidden to speak their own language at school. In Australia I think of the stolen children generations – aboriginal children forcibly removed from their homes and families supposedly to give them a better life. There was the era when young teenage women who became pregnant were packed off to an institution where they gave birth only to see their child forcibly sent out for adoption. Churches and other institutions were willing players in all these arrangements, believing it was for the best. In hindsight we can see just how cruelly wrong we were.

And I ask: ‘how on earth could they have allowed such things to happen?’ And then I ask: ‘what are we doing today that later generations will look back on and ask how could we have allowed such things to happen?’

One such question is how any society can regard itself as moral when it allows a quarter or more of its children, with their families, to live in poverty, in cold, damp and overcrowded houses, doubling or tripling up with other families, with inadequate food, incurring illnesses such as asthma, pneumonia, rheumatic fever or TB, unable to afford proper medical care or medication, ashamed to send their kids to school in worn-out clothing, without jerseys, shoes, lunch or money for a class trip, sending mothers out to clean buildings in the middle of the night, packing pre-schoolers off to a day care at 6am so parents can work, earning a minimum wage of $14.25 an hour, or being unemployed, children having the best years of their lives ruined by the stain of poverty and the shame of social exclusion, parents denied the natural joy and pride of being able to provide for their children adequately with the basics and some of the simple pleasures such as a day at the beach.

How many of us who have been able to provide all these things would regard any of the above circumstances as socially acceptable? And yet the majority of us do, as that TV3 Vote programme indicated: 63 per cent of middle New Zealand believe the problem lies with the parents, not with economic deprivation. It is another example of the inequality that destroys social cohesion, mutuality and a commitment to the common good.

The other issue we may look back on in shame is unemployment. With 6 per cent of the workforce unemployed, New Zealand is better off than some countries, yet there are large numbers of job-seekers, and many who feel under-employed. Youth unemployment is at 24 per cent. In some European countries that rate is 50 per cent. How can we regard ourselves as a moral nation when we allow young people at the height of their hopes for a fulfilling life to be abandoned to idleness, despair and suicide? How much does this feed an anger leading to drugs and crime?

And why does it happen? It is because we are locked into a mentality that the only acceptable form of income is a wage gained from a paid job: welfare recipients are looked down on. Modern technology means fewer workers are required to deliver the basics. Yet the drive to produce more is a path to unnecessary consumption, the exploitation of scarce resources, growing problems with waste and pollution, and pressing issues of climate change from over-consumption.

Suppose as a society we broke out of the narrow job/wage straitjacket to develop a whole new paradigm of work and income. There is no shortage of work in the community. Proper care for the environment beckons on every side. An army of younger and older people could be deployed in caring for those in need in the community. Job-share situations could be further promoted. Good work is anything that contributes to community wellbeing and produces satisfaction, meaning and purpose for the worker. We should be exploring new approaches to ensure no person leaves school without some opportunity to grow through creative endeavour.

One barrier to any such move is the bunker mentality that is relentlessly preoccupied with driving down costs, causing many of the social problems through under-funded public services and leaving people sitting idle each day. The bunker mentality also prohibits any holistic examination of policies which cut costs in one area, only to see them blow out in another. Inadequate household income, for example, drives up the costs of illness caused by poor nutrition or overcrowded houses. Unemployment leads to increased welfare payments, drug and alcohol addiction, violence, crime, vandalism, mental illness and a whole range of other symptoms, all with heavy costs.

It costs the nation almost $1 billion annually to keep 8700 prisoners locked up in jail. Suppose that money were spent on our children and young people long before they became disillusioned and anti-social. Money spent on prevention is much less than the cost of repairing damaged lives. The advocates of cost-cutting squander vast amounts of public money remedying the personal and social consequences of human lives wasted by a failure to spend up front what it takes to give every child a confident start in life. It is not just a financial issue. Money spent to bring life and hope to the next generation is morally preferable to spending money to sustain lives blighted by public neglect.

A cabinet minister once asked me if I agreed that voluntary giving to the poor was more moral than the tax and welfare approach. His reasoning was that money given out of compassion for someone in need had a superior moral motivation than money involuntarily taxed and distributed, generating resentment rather than compassion among taxpayers.

Compassion and generosity are the finest of virtues and our society would be the poorer without them. But I said in reply that providing for all was an essential moral dimension of a decent society, and no amount of personal philanthropy could ensure the basics for an entire population.

Philanthropy often depends on knowing at first hand the needs of another. The story is told of an Afro-American Pullman car attendant who cared meticulously for a wealthy passenger who was so impressed he agreed to fund the man through a college education and get him a better job. Perhaps if every citizen personally sponsored someone in need a system based on philanthropy might work.

But, of course, it could never happen. We know already that two thirds of middle New Zealand believe the poor have only themselves to blame. And how many of us know people living outside our own work and leisure networks? We have no idea what life is like for families in poor neighbourhoods. We speed past on motorways taking us from comfortable suburban homes to the equally comfortable offices where policy is formulated on the basis of statistics laced with the ideology of inequality.

Here is our dilemma as a nation. As individuals we can be caring and generous and go out of our way to help someone in need. But when it comes to policy-making the minds of most are closed to any action that would make a difference.

Thirty years ago New Zealand was a much more equal society. It could be so again. But it will take a huge shift in the mindset of the majority to undo the impact of the forces of individualism and privatisation which have eroded our sense of mutuality and the common good and turned us into one of the most unequal societies in the western world. Can we make the change?

Robert Reich, an American political economist and Secretary of Labor in the Clinton Administration from 1993-97, offers this challenge[19]:

There is thus an opportunity for us, as for every society, to redefine who we are, why we have joined together, and what we owe each other and the other inhabitants of this world. The choice is ours to make. We are no more slaves to present trends than we are to vestiges of the past. We can, if we choose, assert that our mutual obligations as citizens extend beyond our economic usefulness to one another, and act accordingly.

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[1] Hearts and Minds: a Place for People in a Market Economy, Social Responsibility Commission, 1993.

[2] An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, 1776.

[3]  A History of Economics, 1998.

[4] Victoria University of Wellington, quoted in TV3’s programme Mind the Gap, 31 August 2013.

[5] A Socio-Theology of Letting Go, 1976.

[6] Philosopher, University of Michigan.

[7] Quoted in The Economist, 27 January 2014.

[8] Bryan Perry, Ministry for Social Development, 2013.

[9] The Gini coefficient measures income differentials in a society. It ranges from 0 (perfect equality) to 1 complete inequality.

[10] The Spirit Level: Why More Equal Societies Almost Always Do Better, 2009.

[11] An indicator of consumerist tendencies in the more unequal countries is that USA and New Zealand spend twice as much on advertising as Norway and Denmark. In A New Earth, Eckhart Tolle writes that in making a purchase we are often not buying a product but an ‘identity enhancer’.

[12]  The Spirit Level, p 225.

[13] Towards Higher Living Standards for New Zealanders, 1999.

[14] ibid, p. 42.

[15] In Chapter 5.

[16] Striking a Better Balance, Alan Johnson, the Salvation Army Policy and Parliamentary Unit, February 2014.

[17] The Child Poverty Monitor, 2013 figures, updated 27 February 2014.

[18] The highly respected director of the Salvation Army’s SPPU, in Striking a Better Balance, pp 7-9.

[19] The Work of Nations, 1991.

Bishop Richard’s early days, calling and shaping of ministry

St Bartholomew’s Day, 24 August 1968: P & O’s Arcadia stood high on a morning tide at Prince’s Wharf in Auckland. I felt my stomach churn as I contemplated, at the age of 28, my first trip out of New Zealand on a voyage that would start a life-changing journey. Jackie and I had married eight months earlier at Papakura. She was a high-school teacher at Manurewa and together we ran the parish youth group – a classic ground of romance for single curates in their first parish. Now we were headed for New York and England for three years of study and work.

Arcadia took us on an idyllic two-week voyage across the Pacific to Vancouver, with stops in Fiji and Honolulu. From Vancouver we travelled by Canadian Pacific through the Rockies to Lake Louise, across Canada’s great rolling prairies and past lakes, farms and woodlands to Toronto, and finally by overnight train via Buffalo to New York City.

Our home for the next eight months was Union Theological Seminary in uptown Manhattan, just north of Columbia University on Broadway. Originally a Presbyterian seminary dating from 1836, Union was now ecumenical in character and a place where robust theology engaged with the strong societal currents of America in the late 1960s: Martin Luther King, Jr and Robert Kennedy both assassinated, the Black Power movement gathering momentum, students demonstrating against the Vietnam war, and California’s revolution of the flower children liberalising western societies around the world.

We were catapulted into a world far removed from the quiet 1950s suburban environment in which I had grown up. Takapuna, where I was born, was a quiet town on Auckland’s North Shore in the days before the harbour bridge. Our family of five lived in a state house with neither car nor phone until I was 14. I was often sent off with a penny to make a call from the public telephone box down the road.

Takapuna’s iconic white sand beach was a regular summer gathering place, and my school years were taken up with swimming, tennis, rugby, boy scouts and schoolwork. Childhood memories are redolent with images of the ‘golden weather’ Bruce Mason writes about in his play.[1] As a 12-year old I had a job after school at Bill Rees-George’s pharmacy delivering prescriptions by bike to customers. No crash-helmets in the 1950s, and riding roads on which cyclists today would take their life in their hands.

Without a car we got around on foot or bike, or via a bus ride to catch one of the old double-decker steam ferries to Auckland. Across our back fence lived Captain Fitzgerald, a ferry skipper on the Devonport run. From time to time I took a ride with ‘Fitz’ in the wheelhouse, delighting as a schoolboy in ringing up ‘Full Ahead’ on the engine-room telegraph, steering Toroa  or Makora across the Waitemata Harbour, and sounding the whistle (two blasts for port) as we rounded the corner into the Auckland ferry basin. On the deck below passengers could stand on an iron catwalk in the engine-room, watching the huge pistons pounding while the fireman shoveled yet more coal into the rapacious maws of the firebox. Berthing those cumbersome behemoths in Auckland was no mean feat and could cause a skipper difficult moments when fighting a strong wind or flooding tide.

My father, Brian, worked for the Bank of New Zealand and was much involved in community activities. He chaired the local Boy Scouts and Primary School committees and was vicar’s warden at St Peter’s church, supporting his three sons in their school, scouts and church life. He was a great gardener, and spent hours digging and planting and producing great crops of fruit and vegetables. He loved swimming and regularly took us on bikes to Takapuna beach until we were old enough to go ourselves.

My mother, Ngaio Penrose, was the youngest of four daughters, growing up in Devonport and a foundation pupil at Takapuna Grammar School from 1927. Brian was a pupil at Rotorua High School and met Ngaio at an annual Queen’s Birthday sports exchange between the two schools. They obviously continued a friendship, with Dad arriving from Rotorua and daringly showing up uninvited at Mum’s 21^st birthday party in 1932. They were married on New Year’s Day 1936, four years ahead of my birth.

Ngaio was academically bright and could easily have managed a university career. But, like many women of her generation, she looked after her boys full-time, only taking on part-time paid employment once we were all settled in school. Alongside Dad, she played a major role at St Peter’s, leading the Young Wives group and later the Mothers Union. As with many families post-war, there was little money to come and go on. I remember my parents sitting down each Sunday evening at the family table working out to the penny each item of expenditure for the coming week. No credit cards in those days.

My two younger brothers were Michael and Tony. Tragically Michael died of an illness in his early 30s, leaving Marie, small daughter Michelle, and a son, Matthew, born after Michael died. I am immensely proud of my brother Tony who, for almost 20 years, has been a judge first of the High Court of New Zealand and now of the Court of Appeal. With his wife, Glenda, well-known for her artwork, they play leading roles in their church and community.

School days at Takapuna Primary and Takapuna Grammar were pleasant even if somewhat uneventful.  I worked hard and did well academically, being dux of school at both primary and secondary levels. I played school rugby, although not brilliantly, and was a prefect in my final year at high school. Good friendships have endured even though I left Takapuna for university in Dunedin in 1958. Dad died in 1987, and Mum not till 2000 at age 89. At her funeral in the new (1962) St Peter’s church I looked around the congregation, recognising many schooldays friends I hadn’t seen for 50 years. I felt the tears come as I reflected just how special had been those days of the golden weather in Takapuna.

I first felt a call to the priesthood in 1955, my fifth form year (today Year 11) at school. In an essay about future careers I recall writing the word ‘minister’ in my very best hand-writing. How did the call come about? My personality type is not given to Damascus Road experiences: for me things tend to build slowly. No doubt my parents’ committed church involvement was a major factor which drew me into a regular pattern of Sunday school, youth group, choir-singing and being an altar server.

At my confirmation in 1953 Bishop Simkin[2] asked all the boys to stay behind after the service and spoke to us earnestly about the need for young men for the ministry – no thought of women priests then. I don’t recall feeling any positive response that night, but maybe a seed was sown.

The Church was a great place to belong to. I loved the worship, the singing, youth group programmes and the many good friends. The monthly dance in the parish hall was a social highlight, as were summer weekends with a large group on Takapuna beach. It seemed everyone in town belonged to a church. Looking around my school class I knew which church most were connected to. What we couldn’t foresee was that this was the last decade of the Christendom era, a reality that just a few years later precipitated a crisis for me.

My grandfather, Cyril Randerson, was a Presbyterian minister who retired from ill health in Rotorua at age 55. A large oil painting of his grandfather, John, a Wesleyan minister in 19^th century England, hangs on our living room wall. So perhaps there was something in the genes that sent me off in my final year at school to apply to Bishop Simkin to train for the priesthood. There was none of today’s rigmarole of examining chaplains and discernment weekends. My vicar, Geoff Maffey, had doubtless written to the bishop saying here was a likely lad, and after a ten-minute interview I was accepted.  I enrolled for a four-year Arts degree at the University of Otago in Dunedin where Selwyn College was seen as a good Anglican-based residential environment for potential ordinands. Dunedin was followed by three years of theology at St John’s College in Auckland, with a generous church scholarship covering all my tuition, board and travel for those seven years.

During my Dunedin years I began to explore New Zealand by train, developing a lifelong enjoyment of rail travel. Second class on the Limited Express from Auckland to Wellington was an arduous 14-hour journey, but it felt almost mystical to travel by night through the North Island hinterland, feel the wilderness, climb the Raurimu Spiral, skirt the mountains of the central plateau and cross lofty viaducts.

Confessing my love for trains has always seemed a bit infra dig but I was reassured by reading F.A. Iremonger’s classic biography[3] of former Archbishop of Canterbury (1942-44), William Temple:

(Bradshaw’s Railway Guide) was one of his favourite books: ever since the Oxford days, when he took a peculiar interest in working out complicated cross-country journeys…he always found pleasure in hunting up trains and discovering unusual changes and connections.

I understand the archbishop well. Armed with a systems timetable listing the extensive services to towns which haven’t seen a passenger train for years, I travelled to places like Opua, Okaihau, Dargaville, Te Puke, Gisborne, Hokitika, Westport and Cromwell. Some of the best rides were on the mixed ‘goods with car’ trains that serviced little-used lines like Stratford-Okahukura[4], following the route now known as ‘the forgotten highway’ through Whangamomona and Ohura. On Train 555 one day I stood on the open platform of the passenger car as we trundled gently through this magnificent and remote part of New Zealand.

Bob, a fellow ministry student in Dunedin, also loved trains and took a year out from his studies to train as an engine-driver. On one occasion he joined the crew on the northbound Limited from Dunedin. The challenge on this journey was to make a successful transit through the long and winding Mihiwaka tunnel with its steep uphill gradient, just beyond Point Chalmers. Heading a heavy 12-car express, the Ja steam loco plunged into the tunnel at full throttle. As smoke and fumes filled the cab, the driver and fireman threw themselves to the floor, lifting the footplate to gulp in fresh air from under the engine. Totally perplexed, Bob called for an explanation. Knowing Bob’s future vocation, the driver shouted: ‘Don’t ask questions, sonny; just get down on your knees and pray to God we get up this hill’.

In July 1966 I was on a bachelor’s holiday in Northland and planned a journey that began with a short run on the railcar from Okaihau[5] to Kaikohe. From there I intended to hitch-hike via the Hokianga Harbour and Waipoua Kauri Forest to Dargaville where the vicar, Arthur Burton, had kindly agreed to have me stay overnight. Next morning I planned to catch the 10.15am ‘goods with car’ that worked the Dargaville branch to Waiotira Junction, connecting there with the railcar to Auckland.

But the highway west of Kaikohe was totally devoid of traffic. As I trudged along I was becoming anxious about being stranded. At length a car came and stopped to pick me up. The driver was William Naera, father of the late Bill Naera, a priest who had trained with me only three years earlier. The Naeras lived 90 kilometres further on at Waimamaku and invited me to stay the night. Mr Naera asked if I would lead them in evening prayer, which I was glad to do.  I was very grateful when he offered me a lift to Dargaville next morning in time for the 10.15am ‘mixed’.

On ‘mixed trains’ timetable constraints were not pressing and on one occasion after our marriage Jackie and I were the only passengers on an Opua-Whangarei ‘goods with car’. The driver invited us to ride with him in the engine and, somewhere south of Otiria junction, eased his train to a halt alongside a spreading plum tree laden with ripe fruit. ‘My wife’s making jam’, he said, and grabbing cartons from the back of the cab the three of us scrambled over a fence, plucking plums while the big diesel loco rumbled idly on the track beside us.

In Dunedin from 1958-1961 I completed an MA, majoring in Greek but also including Latin, French and Philosophy. At Selwyn College there were a dozen ‘theologs’ – candidates for ordination doing undergraduate work as a basis. Mixing in with students studying medicine and dentistry, law, commerce, science and engineering was a good exposure to other disciplines and lifestyles. There were some wild parties which posed an intense moral question for us ‘theologs’: was it right to sing the bawdy songs, or even attend at all? I always went along and sang the less bawdy lyrics.

At St John’s College in Auckland from 1962-64 I studied for a Bachelor of Divinity degree extramurally from Otago. Life at St John’s had a semi-monastic flavour. Most of us were young and single, but a few older married students were also required to ‘live in’. We were only allowed out for a few hours three days a week.  Daily worship in the chapel was scheduled at 7am, 12.15pm, 5.15pm and 9pm. Attendance was compulsory and silence observed overnight.

Pastoral training was part of the curriculum, but it was not extensive.  We were taught how to baptise babies and practised with a plastic doll in the chapel. There were classes in conducting marriages and preparing couples for marriage, which included exploring with a couple such issues as communication, finances and sexual relationships. As a 25-year old bachelor two years later I found the latter acutely difficult but the bride-to-be on one occasion assured me there was no need to worry as she was already pregnant.

The marriage classes sparked an interesting conversation at breakfast one morning when one of the students asked the sub-warden if it was possible to consummate one’s marriage in a registry office. The sub-warden, Dr Catley, an Australian bachelor with a very dry sense of humour, replied: ‘Possible I would think, but not very usual.’

I was ordained deacon on St Andrew’s Day, 30 November 1964 in St Mary’s Cathedral in Parnell, and a year later as priest. About a dozen of us were ordained on each occasion, most young, single men embarking on 40 years of parish ministry. I had been appointed curate in Papakura in South Auckland and as a newly-minted deacon rode out there that night on my motor scooter.

I arrived in time for the final meeting of the Church of England Men’s Society, an end of the era for one of the Church’s traditional institutions. Church-based social meeting points were being replaced by community groups such as Lions or Rotary. Nevertheless, a monthly church dance held in the church hall still attracted up to 400 young people from all over South Auckland. Today, I imagine, they would be at night clubs or the pub.

In December 1965, having just been ordained priest, I went out to celebrate Holy Communion for the first time at St Margaret’s, the small red brick country church on the Karaka. Waiting for me was the churchwarden, Gordon Laing, who welcomed me warmly on behalf of the local parishioners. He went on to reflect: ‘You know, Richard, we have a lot of young men from the city coming out here with new ideas about changing this and changing that, but we’re 25 years behind the times, and quite frankly we like it that way’. Gordon need not have worried: in those early years I had little idea about changing anything.

I got myself into trouble at the annual diocesan synod in 1968. Each year a motion was required to adjust clergy stipends in the light of inflation. In the debate I suggested we should live sacrificially by not taking an increase, saying that Jackie and I were able to live comfortably on the existing stipend. The Herald leaped on to this as a big story: turning down a wage increase was big news. A reporter was sent to interview Jackie on our food menu and budget, with details published in an article next day.

But this first foray into synod debate, unsurprisingly, was not well received. We were Dinkies (double income, no kids), and I was speaking to family men supporting a family on a single income. A trade unionist sent a copy of my photo from the Herald with a bullet-hole marked in my forehead. My statement was naïve and foolish, and I remember driving home to Papakura wishing the earth would open and swallow me up.

A dramatic shift in the nature of Church and society had taken place during the seven years of my training, and this made my early years as a priest the most difficult of my whole life. It had nothing to do with Papakura, the people, or my vicar, Herb Simmonds, a good priest and very supportive.

When I signed on for ordination in the 1950s, society was largely homogeneous with limited lifestyle options. On Sundays church was almost the only show in town, and church-going a regular part of the lives of many. I looked out from the choir-stalls at Evensong at Takapuna and saw a packed church with many community leaders present. By the mid-1960s the tide was going the other way. Church was not the only place to be on Sundays as sport, cinemas and shopping became options.

Reduced numbers have been noticeable for over 50 years now. While around 52 per cent of the population still registers as having a religion, the proportion of those ticking the ‘no religion’ box has risen to 42 per cent. Church participation has moved from a habitual routine for many to a chosen activity for the committed. The change had taken place while I had been studying and was a key part of a crisis I faced at Papakura. The Church I signed up for was very different from the one I was now in. Many who started with me on the road to ordination diverted into other careers.

There were other elements in the crisis. My years of study had seen my personal transition from teenager to adult. Prior to ordination, life had a comfortable annual cycle of study, examinations, summer holiday and work. With those regular and familiar markers gone, I now faced a lifetime with no predictable signposts, and was confronted for the first time with searching questions about life, its purpose and meaning. I wrestled with deep theological questions posed by Bishop John Robinson[6] in Honest to God, and in New Zealand by Professor Lloyd Geering. Geering was tried for heresy by the Presbyterian Church in 1967 for an article he wrote entitled What does the Resurrection Mean?, but was acquitted of the charges.

All these factors were part of an inner turmoil I was experiencing: there were many dark days when I felt very depressed. I consulted a priest/counsellor who diagnosed that I was experiencing the ‘dark night of the soul’, a classical feature of the spiritual journey, and prescribed some of the spiritual exercises followed by the saints. But his diagnosis was inaccurate and my own ‘dark night’ persisted.

Another remedy I explored was to seek a direct experience of the Holy Spirit. Charismatic experiences, accompanied by speaking in tongues, were very much in vogue. People experiencing such a phenomenon reported a heightened sense of God’s presence accompanied by great joy. One afternoon I prayed earnestly for such an experience in a small country church, but to no avail. In retrospect I am grateful my prayer went unanswered for it might have cut off the much deeper exploration I needed to do.

That exploration was to do with the changes in church, society and myself which had taken place during my seven years of tertiary studies. Questions about the mission of the Church, faith and vocation were the unidentified causes of my dilemma. At St John’s College the warden, Raymond Foster, had suggested I undertake post-graduate study – perhaps a PhD in Patristics (the early church Fathers). With my honours degree in Greek this was a logical suggestion, perhaps leading to a career in theological teaching. But I have never felt a call to academic life, and a PhD did not attract me.

Alternative advice was offered by Bishop Simkin who recommended I make no decision until I had a few years of ministry experience. This was especially sound advice given the major issues that arose for me at Papakura. Two clergy I knew who had studied at Union Theological Seminary in New York told me of the seminary’s commitment to studying theology in the context of contemporary life. This seemed an option far more suited to the new questions of theology, church and society with which I was wrestling. The major bright spot for me in Papakura was meeting and marrying Jackie and now, in August 1968, we found ourselves sailing in Arcadia en route to New York.  My crisis was resolving as I set off to grapple with the theological and vocational issues that had precipitated it.

Three weeks later our train from Toronto rolled down beside the Hudson River before entering the subterranean darkness of New York’s Grand Central station. A very conscientious customs officer wanted to examine minutely the huge amount of luggage we had with us. Eventually escaping into the broad daylight of mid-town Manhattan, we needed two taxis to take us to Broadway at West 121^st Street where we were glad to move into a seminary apartment. It had no natural daylight, but by opening a window one could look out and up a narrow gap between buildings to see the sky above.

New York City and Union Seminary quickly proved the right places to be. Jackie found stimulating work as a personal assistant in the World Council of Churches offices in the adjacent Riverside Centre, popularly known as the God-Box. The faculty at Union included several first-rate theologians who, along with students from many different countries, created a stimulating and challenging environment.

I enrolled in a Masters programme which allowed multi-choice options to match the questions I was asking. A course on the doctrine of God with Daniel Day Williams addressed issues being raised by Robinson and Geering. I did biblical courses on the book of Lamentations and the Gospel of John. Another explored biblical teaching on poverty, wealth and justice.

For one semester we made weekly visits to store-front churches and social agencies in Harlem and the Bronx. Emerging from the subway we found ourselves in parts of the city which provided a very down-at-heel contrast to Broadway at 121^st. Rubbish and rocks created an obstacle path for pedestrians. Boarded-up apartment blocks spoke of abandonment by both the city and former residents.

Those we met were largely black or Spanish-speaking. The social agencies conveyed a distressing picture of life for the homeless and dispossessed, but the various non-denominational store-front churches demonstrated a dramatically new way of being church. The pastors were locally born and raised. The congregations lacked the resources to build attractive churches with all the usual facilities. Instead a cheaply rented, abandoned shop provided a weekly meeting point.

Many of the church programmes were shaped by the imperative to respond to members of poor but colourful neighbourhoods who, amazingly, maintained a sense of vibrancy and hope. Gradually I realised that my life was being re-shaped by people living on the margins. I was learning that if a congregation’s agenda is built around the needs of its members, then it is hard for a middle-class church to respond to the needs of the poor and marginalised.

In the evenings a steady stream of visitors came to the seminary. Many were clergy or other activists who had been working in Central or South America. They had seen the oppression of peasants and factory workers by large global companies, many of them American, who exploited the land and labour of the poor, often hand-in-glove with local governments and big land-owners.

Most striking among the visitors were Daniel and Philip Berrigan, both Roman Catholic priests, although Philip later withdrew from the priesthood. Involved in actions against poverty and racial segregation, they later became widely known for their protests against the Vietnam War. In the 1960s, Philip was one of the ‘Baltimore Four’ who entered the Baltimore Customs House and poured a mixture of their own and animal blood on military selective service files which drafted young men for Vietnam.  In 1980, they invaded a Pennsylvania missile facility, damaging nuclear warhead nose-cones and pouring blood on military documents. Both served terms in prison as a result.

The Vietnam War was a source of deep-felt social division in both New Zealand and America. Soon after my ordination the New Zealand Herald carried a full-page advertisement, signed by a large number of clergy of all denominations, opposing New Zealand’s involvement in the war. At first I was a little chagrined that I hadn’t been asked to add my name, but then reflected that had I been asked I might have declined. I had thought very little on the topic, being swayed largely by one-sided media opinion.

All that changed in New York where we mixed daily with American students who had broken the law by burning their draft (military call-up) cards. I have strong memories of a journey to Washington to take part in the March Against Death in November 1969. Jackie and I travelled by train from New York, sitting by chance next to the anthropologist, Margaret Mead. Thousands had travelled from all over the USA and we were marshalled upon arrival at one of many staging posts around Washington.

Our own meeting-point was a church where all the pews had been removed and we were served hot soup and bread while awaiting instructions. ‘How nice for the church that this should happen to it,’ said a young woman standing nearby. The plan was that each marcher would write on a large card the name of one of those killed in Vietnam. We wrote ‘all NZ troops’ on our card. In the darkness a long march began around the White House. As we passed the front gates (heavily defended lest peace marchers got violent), Jackie and I shouted out the names on our card and placed it in one of several coffins.

It was a very cold November night but we had some moving conversations along the way. Next to us was a young white American who was weeping as we walked. I asked him who the person was whose name he carried. It turned out to be a former black schoolmate who had died in Vietnam. ‘This friend of mine has given his life for a country that gave him no more than peanuts,’ he replied. ‘His mother gave me permission to carry his name.’

Dawn broke on a bitterly cold but brilliantly sunny day. Frozen after the night’s march, many sought refuge in one of the nearby Smithsonian Institute buildings. The one we found was delightfully warm and already filled with marchers sitting on steps, sprawled out on seats, or sleeping in alcoves and lobbies. The staff made no effort to move anybody on. I was greatly impressed by such warm hospitality and, on our return to New York, wrote a letter of appreciation to the director of the Smithsonian.

Waxing somewhat lyrical, I said how good it was to see state institutions being able to see beyond their specific mandate to a higher national purpose, thus being part of the momentum for peace. Some time later I received a formal reply:   ‘Dear Sir, thank you for visiting the Smithsonian. I am glad you enjoyed your visit and hope you will come again next time you are in Washington.’

Following the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr in April 1968, the Black Power movement gathered momentum. At Union Seminary the reality of racism was spelled out by various staff and black leaders. The seminary was ‘occupied’ by Black Power members and closed for two days while Union considered its own policies on race. The concept of institutional racism was new to us. In New Zealand discrimination was still being seen in personal terms such as the notorious incident when a Maori was denied entry to a Pukekohe pub during my school years.

I went to New York extolling the excellent race relations in New Zealand, but in point of fact I knew little about issues of race. There was one Maori boy in my class at primary school, and only about three, as I recall, among the 1200 students at Takapuna Grammar. A defensive cliché at the time, and still heard today, was: ‘One of my best friends is Maori’. There may well have been no personal animosity, but neither was there any awareness of the reality of racism. Racism was evident in another cliché: ‘they make great truck-drivers’, reflecting an assumption that Maori were better suited for blue collar than white collar work, an assumption clearly disproved some 50 years later.

At Union we learnt about the nature of institutional racism, that even in the absence of inter-racial hostility the socio-economic statistics for black, Maori or Pacific Islanders in terms of health, housing, income, jobs, longevity and imprisonment lag far behind the white majority. Without any personal intention to discriminate, a nation’s core institutions often fail indigenous or minority groups through ignorance or neglect. Thinking this would be a new take-home message for New Zealand, we returned in 1971 to find such awareness was already growing with strategies for institutional change being promoted.

In the summer of 1969, with our year at Union completed, Jackie and I bought an old VW Beetle and drove to Tuscaloosa for a ten-week pastoral counselling course at Bryce, the Alabama State Mental Hospital. There were 5000 patients at Bryce, many of them locked up for a lifetime and slowly vegetating. Jackie and I were part of the hospital chaplaincy team and spent the time visiting patients under supervision and with reflections from the chaplains.

In Alabama signs of racial discrimination were evident. All the patients at Bryce were white, black patients being housed at another mental hospital at Mt Vernon. Washington had pledged to cut off all federal mental health funding to Alabama if the hospitals were not integrated. Faced with this ultimatum, Governor George Wallace reluctantly succumbed and the first busloads of black patients arrived at Bryce while we were there, in the summer of 1969. The patients appeared to cope with the change much better than some of the staff.

One evening I attended a sitting of the local Tuscaloosa court where most of the defendants were black and charged with misdemeanours. One case involved a young black truck-driver who was repairing his truck by the side of the road when a young white woman walked by. She alleged that the truck-driver had propositioned her. His story was precisely the opposite: he had been fixing his truck when she stopped and chatted him up. Listening to their stories, I felt his was somewhat more credible than hers. The judge listened to it all and then went into a lengthy reflection, saying he didn’t know whom to believe. However, what he did know was that ‘nowhere south of the Mason-Dixon line had a white girl ever propositioned a black boy’. But since he couldn’t tell for sure he was bound to let the truck-driver off with a warning.

A happier experience was the wedding of two New York City retail buyers, both white, in a small black settlement. We drove out through cotton-fields to the venue, a small concrete-block factory named the Freedom Quilting Bee. The two buyers had discovered a market in New York at top-end retail stores for the high quality patchwork quilts made by black women from the South. They had discovered this black Alabama community and opened an outlet for their quilts in New York. The factory had been constructed from the proceeds, production had increased and earnings were flowing into the local area.

The two buyers, shunning a high society New York wedding, had chosen to marry in the FQB factory. So there, surrounded by sewing machines and a sea of black faces, we observed the nuptials. Afterwards we gathered under a large spreading tree in the summer heat and, standing in the dust, enjoyed a meal of fried chicken, corn and grits.

Back in New York for a second year, Jackie worked as personal assistant to George (Bill) Webber. Bill, a staff member at Union, lived in Harlem in a high-rise apartment block and was a prophetic leader in outreach to the poor. I had taken a course with Bill during my studies, and he was keen to enlist Jackie as a colleague in his new role as President of New York Theological Seminary. I spent the year gaining urban ministry experience in two parishes – Grace Church, Brooklyn Heights, and St Paul’s Chapel near Wall Street where the twin towers of the World Trade Centre were just beginning to rise out of the ground. Thirty years later St Paul’s Chapel played a central support role for victims and relatives following the 9/11 tragedy.

Our time at Union, in New York and the USA were foundational in our understanding of church and society. The stimulus of living in an international community in the ferment of the Black Power and anti-Vietnam War movements, the exposure to urban poverty, and the anger at the impact of corporate business on the poor and vulnerable in third world countries, expanded and challenged our awareness of the world.

I loved the in-depth study in theology, Bible and the Church’s mission. I realised that my basic training at St John’s College in Auckland, while sound enough in traditional terms, made no connections at all with contemporary life and issues. It did not link theology with justice, ethics, economics, peace or race relations. It was theology in a vacuum.

Union made all these connections, revolutionising my understanding of the Church’s mission, a topic also missing at St John’s. Mission was about attracting people to church, not too difficult a task in the 1950s when people came in large numbers. Clergy were busy running Sunday services, baptising, marrying and burying parishioners, organising Sunday schools, youth groups, or men’s and women’s groups, and making pastoral visits to the congregation.

There were some chaplains in prisons and hospitals, and an outreach to those in need by city missions and social service agencies, but the parish church was the central focus.  This was not taught in so many words, but we all knew what it was about. At college we role-played making home visits to parishioners (with some side-splitting conversations), and visited parish churches on Sundays. We took services in old people’s homes, or at a local prison, but the parish was the predominant focus.

Theology at Union was very different. God was seen as active throughout the world, the spirit of love and reconciliation, suffering with the poor, the spur to right conduct in individuals, institutions and nations. Arising out of worship and teaching, the Church’s task is to be active in the workplace, society and politics, to work for universal justice and wellbeing. The primary direction is church-to-world, not world-to-church.

Most churches still operate predominantly in attractional mode, although there are stunning examples of clergy and parishes reaching out to their local communities.  But although society has changed massively over 50 years, and church attendances have fallen, the Church still operates a strategy better suited to the 1950s than to the 21^st century. 

Our experiences and insights in America turned our world upside down, illuminating the many questions I wrestled with as a curate and underpinning everything I have done since.  My sense of vocation was deepened and widened, showing me a world beyond church boundaries. The time had been rich beyond our expectations.  So it was with gratitude but also some sadness that Jackie and I left New York, flying out to the United Kingdom in August 1970, keen to explore further ministry experiences and looking forward to the birth of our first child.

---

[1] The End of the Golden Weather.

[2] Bishop of Auckland, 1940-1960.

[3] William Temple, his Life and Letters, 1948.

[4] This line is mothballed at present but self-drive golf carts along it make a delightful excursion.

[5] Okaihau, the northern passenger railhead, was distinguished by a platform sign ‘Pubic Taxis for Hire’ (sic).

[6] Bishop Robinson was Bishop of Woolwich and, during a spell of illness in 1963, wrote an international best-seller entitled Honest to God. A major question explored in the book was whether it was necessary to think of God as a supernatural being, or whether there were other images that might be more appropriate in the mid-20^th century. Robinson’s book sparked a major theological storm with many finding his thinking refreshing and constructive, while others prayed fervently he never suffered a period of prolonged illness again.

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Slipping the Moorings

A memoir weaving faith with justice, ethics and community

An overview of changes and issues in Church and Society over 50 years as seen by Richard Randerson as an Anglican priest, bishop and social justice advocate

CHAPTER HEADINGS & SYNOPSIS       (244pp, incl. 16 photos, cartoons). Foreword: Rod Oram

1. A life-changing journey: growing up in Takapuna, Otago University, St John’s Theological College, curacy at Papakura , marriage to Jackie (1967). Two years post-graduate study and work in New York leading to total redirection of ministry from church-facing to world-facing.
2. Through the factory door: a year with the Teesside Industrial Mission, UK and then establishing industrial mission in Auckland (1971-78)
3. A church in the city: vicar at St Peter’s, Wellington (1978-90), inner city issues, and several of issues in next chapter also
4. The times they are a-changing: key change issues 1970-90 eg  anti-apartheid, nuclear-free NZ, ordination of women, remarriage of divorcees, a bicultural church
5. Working at the Margins: my time as Anglican social justice officer (1990-94) in Jenny Shipley/ Ruth Richardson era; responding to issues of poverty within NZ
6. Purveyors of Corrosive Myths: the ideological underpinnings of libertarian policies in NZ from 1985; global finance collapse
7. Crossing the ditch: assistant bishop of Canberra (1994-99), justice issues in Australia, stolen children, life in a semi-rural diocese
8. Ethics in the public square: royal commission on genetic modification, health ethics committee, business ethics, how we “do” ethics (but often don’t)
9. Same-sex blessings: the same-sex debate in church and society from 1970-2014
10. Full circle:  dean of Holy Trinity Cathedral, Auckland (2000-07); engagement with city issues; role of cathedral; inter-faith dialogue; Asian tsunami service.
11. Is the bishop an agnostic? public debate between Richard Dawkins, Lloyd Geering, CK Stead and myself as a (so-called) ‘agnostic ‘bishop
12. Would I do it again? Reflections on the pros and cons of priesthood; reflections on nature of today’s church and its leadership (should we expect more leadership from bishops on public issues?)