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 21st 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 19th 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 121st 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 121st. 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 21st 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-20th 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.
