Island Bay Presbyterian Church

Old Time Religion 1940's

Sermon Oct 7^th – IBPC 109^th Anniversary (1940’s)

 

 For us as Island Bay Presbyterian Church, this Sunday marks our anniversary as a community of faith – 109 years of uninterrupted, faithful Christian witness here in this community. This is something to celebrate, and that’s why some of us are dressed up today!
 Because, as we gather today and look at these buildings, as we see the people around us, and as we feel God’s Spirit with us – we are experiencing that legacy of 108 years, we are enjoying the fruit of the stewardship and faith of our Christian ancestors who have gone before us in this place.

 This is something for us to pause and be thankful for.

 

 This Sunday also coincides with the jazz concert Michael organises each year, so last year I asked if he could entice some of his colleagues to come and lead us in worship, and we did a 1920’s celebration. This year they are back again (thankyou very much!) with our theme being the 1940’s.
 If you’re really clever you might’ve figured out that next year we’ll be doing the 1960’s!

  I wrote to the church archives down in Dunedin a few weeks ago asking for information from the PCANZ in the 40’s, and they sent me lots of really interesting stuff – some of it will be out in the lounge afterwards if anyone wants to look at it.
 The 1940’s seem to’ve been a really tumultuous decade, with so many serious and difficult issues for thinking Christians to have to face. Naturally most of these issues stemmed out of WWII.

 War has always been a difficult issue for Christians.
 A) In the earliest times Christianity was basically a pacifist religion, violence and war were seen as evil. The church was persecuted by the Roman Empire, the state in which most Christians lived. So, they had nothing to fight to defend – no land, no buildings. They especially felt no need to fight for their country as it was their enemy.

☺ B) But then, 300yrs later, Emperor Constantine came onto the scene…
 He converted, making Christianity the state religion of Rome and giving the church lots of $. Most people in the empire converted, and church and state became closely linked. Accordingly, centuries later when the barbarian hordes attacked Rome, Christians had a lot to lose. These wars were then seen as a battle between light and dark, pagans attacking a Christian nation.
 So, the church developed the idea of a “Just War” – war & violence were still seen as bad, but there were certain special situations where war could be seen as moral and where Christians could join the army and fight for their homes and country.

 C) That has been the dominant belief of Christians ever since, but for a short period another view prevailed – this was during the Crusades. Rather than being bad, the Crusaders saw war as potentially good and holy. Extending our faith by fighting people of other religions became acceptable to Christians who believed in the idea of ‘holy war.’
 Most Christians see that view as a total betrayal of Christ’s teachings…

  As I said, the idea of the Just War has been the main belief of the church for a long time, and in the 1940’s, the era of WWII, NZ society and the Presbyterian church were mostly in agreement. War was seen as a bad and cruel thing, but sometimes war was necessary. Countering Nazi aggression was seen as a legitimate reason to fight, so the Presbyterian Church declared NZ’s involvement in WWII to be moral, and the church supported the war effort. There were 300 Pres ministers in NZ at the time, 76 signed up as army chaplains.
 But, still they didn’t get carried away by nationalist fervour, Presbyterians were called on to be disciplined and guard their hearts. This message was distributed around the church…

             “In the meantime the Church must continue to spread the Gospel of the Kingdom of God and to emphasise the need of the suppression of hatred and bitterness… Already and in increasing measure the grounds of such indignation against totalitarian ruthlessness are patent to all open-minded lovers of humanity; but we must remember the apostle’s warning against feelings of vengeance and… of permanent estrangement between peoples, which would only lead to fresh wars in the time to come.”[1]

 

 Now, although the PCANZ was in step with NZ society by supporting the war, in two other matters they were quite out of step with popular opinion through this decade.

 1. The first was the issue of enemy aliens – Germans, Italians and Japanese living in NZ. Naturally they became an easy target for people’s anger and fear during war time, and they were treated quite badly – many of the Italian men living here in Island Bay were arrested and sent to Somme’s Island in Wellington Harbour.
 In keeping with not giving in to feelings of hatred and revenge, the church objected to this – they tried to remind government and society that many of these immigrants had fled Hitler or Mussolini in fear for their lives, were not a threat to our country, and should be treated humanely.

 2. The other issue the church had a different voice to the majority of the population about, was pacifists. Although the majority of Christians believe in the Just War doctrine, there have always been and still are Christians who believe that violence is evil, and that regardless the situation, going to war is inconsistent with being a disciple of Christ.
 People who wouldn’t fight because of their Christian convictions were called ‘conscientious objectors’, and although they were a bit of an embarrassment to the church, the church tried to support them and fought for their rights as well.
 In Oct 1940, the Presbyterian Newspaper wrote this…

             “Those, whose convictions lead them to bearing the weight of the responsibility of withstanding by force the attack made upon our country and our ideals by the military power of countries dominated by an anti-Christian greed and hate, ☺ may find difficulty in understanding the reasons which lead some to have conscientious objections to taking any part in the war effort, but they will in Christian charity not judge them harshly… Liberty of conscience is a principle which must be honoured by all true Christians.”[2]

 The hard-core pacifists were imprisoned by the government during the war, but the National Church did ask the govt to set up an alternative non-combat option for service where men could support the war effort without being called on to kill, which apparently did happen(?).

 

 Once the war had been underway for a few years, new issues began to come up which affected the church.

 1. One was to do with all the US soldiers being based here in NZ. This influx in single young men coming to town while most young Kiwi men were overseas led to a boom in prostitution and drinking in the cities, but also lots of romances between Kiwi girls and these foreign men. Many ministers were being visited by anxious parents, saying their daughter had been proposed to by a US soldier.
 This was a big pastoral problem as no-one knew anything about these men, if they were criminals or upstanding citizens; no-one knew what life was like where they came from; and it was a lot easier to get a divorce in America than in NZ in the 40’s, so there was concern for the girl’s long-term security.
 So, links were set up with the US Red Cross where enquiries could be made about the men back in their home towns, but generally the church tried to dissuade these marriages.

 2. Another war-time issue facing local congregations like Island Bay, was the Kiwi soldiers being sent home wounded or traumatised. Rehabilitation services weren’t particularly good, so the church was advocating to improve them – but also people were realising that the traditional, formal style of service that Presbyterians had then didn’t relate to men who had just been through the mud and terror of modern warfare.
 So, there was a move to make evening services shorter and more informal, and to set up Men’s Clubs. There was an effort to change preaching as well for this new situation. Ministers were urged to be less academic or ‘hell-fire-and-damnation’ in their preaching, and to present the healing nature of the Gospel in a more therapeutic way.

3. A third issue first came up in 1926, and arose again with so many men away. This was the place of women in the church. 22 Presbyterian churches around the world had allowed women to be elders by this stage, and that was really pushed here again during the war, but without success. Women weren’t given this right till 1955.

 In 1945 the war ended with NZ and the Allies winning the day. But although the guns fell silent and the nations were able to begin rebuilding, the theological and faith struggle went on.

- There were issues of politics and democracy, and how easily religious freedoms had been lost in countries that had turned to communism or fascism. What did the future of NZ have in store? What was needed to protect religious freedoms here?
- Racism was also a big issue. The German concentration camps where millions of Jews and Gypsies had died highlighted a general attitude of racism held by white people in general. The PCANZ made this statement about that in 1944…

        “The white peoples of the world are a minority in the human race, and persistence in an attitude of racial superiority, coupled with reliance on power politics, may speedily precipitate WWIII”[3]

 - The atomic bomb was another massive moral dilemma, humans now had the power to destroy whole cities at a time. Some prophesied that this meant an end to war because no-one would be stupid enough to use them, but not all were so optimistic. The church put out this statement…

        “That terrible prospect is not an adequate deterrent. The Nazi “Revolution of Destruction” revealed the depth of human wickedness and the malign influence of the lust for power. That lust has not vanished from the world… ☺ Real security can be found only in the redemption of human purposes from evil… For the church the danger is an urgent call to be more determined and unceasing than ever in its task of bringing human thought and purpose to the obedience of Christ”[4]

 - There was also the issue of the future of NZ, and the nature of the society that people had suffered so much to defend. During the war the National Council of Churches set up the “Campaign for Christian Order”, which tried to get NZ back on a godly path. One of the ministers here in the 40’s, Rev Wainwright, was heavily involved in this movement.
 I was sent one of their publications for parents written in 1943 which I’ll put out after the service. It’s really interesting as it laments the decline of NZ society, and lists crisis 6 points which all sound very modern.

1. Up first was the decline in church attendance which they saw as the root for all other moral ills.

2. These other moral ills included the continual increase in youth offending. The welfare state was quite new then and everyone had expected crime rates to go down now children didn’t have to steal to eat, but instead youth offending had gone up.

3. Also, rates of syphilis were rising dramatically during the war.

4. Abortion is listed next. In 1937 there was 1 abortion for every 4 live births. Last year it was 1 for around every 3.5 live births.

5. Next is gambling and alcohol. In 1939 NZ-ers consumed over 40 litres of beer per head of population, this decade we’ve been consuming double that, about 80 litres.

6. And last they lament the rise of the divorce rate – in 1939 it had got up to 7% of all marriages.

 

 So, that’s the history lesson of what effect ww2 had on the church, let’s now reflect on that in the light of God’s word… (2 Tim 1:1-14)

 

 

 As Paul wrote, I hope that today’s service has helped us too to remember the sincere faith of our Christian ancestors. Those who have gone before us in this place, and who shared the same faith that now lives in us. Let us remember their boldness in working out their faith and trying to apply it to the major world issues they lived through, and the contribution to the spiritual health of NZ society that they made.

 For, as v.7 said…

             “7 for God did not give us a spirit of fear, but rather a spirit of power and of love and of self-discipline.”

  Today we face many similar issues to the 1940’s

- War and violence continue, with Christians debating whether our current wars are “just” or not.
- We have a clash of civilizations between the liberal West and conservative Islam, with attitudes to Muslims living in NZ sometimes being a problem.
- International marriages are common, with the loneliness they can bring for elderly people with no family around.
- The moral standards of society are also rapidly changing now as they were then.
- The place of women in church is still unresolved in some denominations.
- And church attendance now is a lot lower than it was in the 40’s.

 But in all this Paul wrote that God has “saved us and called us with a holy calling, not according to our works, but according to his own purpose and grace.”
 We are here for a reason, God has a purpose for us and this church now in 2007, as God had a purpose for this place 109 yrs ago in 1898, and as God had a purpose for this place through the 1940’s.

 We are here to hold the faith, to proclaim the gospel of grace and love to all the many issues our community is facing, and to guard the treasure that has been entrusted to us – a treasure that includes the community we have here, the buildings we meet in, and the tradition of Christian love and concern that has gone before us.