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Sermon 111th Anniversary Oct 11 2009 – 1960's Church
When the 1960’s dawned the Church in the West was in good heart – churches were full and Sunday Schools were over-flowing. Regular church attendance in NZ has never been much greater than 30% of the population. But, the end of the 50’s and the beginning of the 60’s was when church membership was at its peak. Almost a third of the population came regularly, while most of the rest belonged to a church, came sometimes, or at least sent their kids to Sunday School.
As an example, when Billy Graham came to NZ in 1959 ¼ of the population of this country went to hear him over 12 days of meetings. That’s why a lot of churches like this one were built in the 60’s, because with converts coming through from the Billy Graham Crusade, the old church out the back had just got too small.
However, suddenly and unexpectedly, the 1960’s was the decade when Christian observance dropped dramatically – especially among the young. All over the western world Sunday Schools went into decline and youth groups were gutted. No-one saw it coming and it took the Church until the 1980’s to adjust.
In preparation for this service I’ve been looking through the minutes of General Assemblies and church publications from the 1960’s, and for someone who wasn’t alive then, it’s been like entering into another world. The Presbyterian Church was the second largest denomination in NZ at that time, and the confidence with which they discussed issues of politics and national policy is amazing. It seemed like the church was forever writing letters to the Prime Minister, and people listened to them! The decisions made at General Assemblies were reported on in the newspapers.
As I was reading I noticed that race relations and immigration were the 2 biggest issues that seemed to come up time and again in Church discussions over the 60’s.
- Across the Tasman they were pursuing their “White Australia” policy in regards to immigrants, and Rev. Martin Luther King was doing his thing for equal rights in the US (being murdered for it in 1968). In the midst of that NZ was also trying to sort out our own attitudes to immigration and to Maori. I never discovered if they came to a conclusion or not, but Presbyterians did some very profound thinking into the Christian response to immigration, refugees, population growth and race-based policies.
- Significantly, 1960 was the year when the Rugby Union ruled out selecting Maori players to go on tour to South Africa, provoking a lot of protest and Sir Howard Morrison’s song “My Old Man’s an All Black.” The Church decided this policy of racial selection was immoral and sent indignant letters all over the place, and when it was overturned a few years later, by the tone of the rhetoric, it seemed like Presbyterians thought they should take full credit for that decision!
This controversy really got the church thinking seriously about race relations between Pakeha and Maori, and it became something they worked on throughout that decade.
- Gambling was another big deal as Wilma alluded to earlier. No raffles were used to fund-raise for the building of this church! Does anyone remember the Golden Kiwi lottery? It was replaced recently by the Instant Kiwi scratch cards. It was started in 1961 as a government response to Kiwis buying Australian lottery tickets and sending money across the Tasman. The government of the time thought it would keep $ in NZ and be a good charity fundraiser.
The Church however was not amused! The human tendency to enjoy gambling was seen as a disease to be cured not a potential money maker to be exploited. In 1962 they wrote this…
“…we feel it would be highly undesirable that Church organisations should apply for grants from (the Lotteries commission). We believe in Christian Stewardship, i.e., the sacrificial giving of time and labour and money as the Christian way of life. In general Church projects should be financed by the direct giving of members and from the products of their labours.”
And that indeed is how this church was built…
As I read though, I got the impression that there was a bit of denial going on. They debated and lobbied about politics – e.g. about the death penalty, about divorce, about the beginnings of urban sprawl, and even about seatbelts in cars. They also debated about theology with the momentous heresy trial of Lloyd Geering that decade… but there seemed to be less mention about the factors contributing to the rapid drop in church attendance that had begun, and I didn’t find a single direct discussion about the fact that people were leaving church and why they were doing so.
Though it happened faster in some churches and slower in others, over a period of 20 years, until things stabilised in the 1980’s, regular church attenders dropped from 30% of the population to 10% - churches lost 2 in every 3 people, even with all the very devout Pacific Islanders moving to NZ.
IBPC was never a big church and the drop in numbers here was slower and not as great as in other churches, but it still happened. Why was this???
The 60’s really was a remarkable new era.
- The Beatles marked the birth of a new style of music and a new youth culture which the Church usually disapproved of, thereby alienating young people and driving them away (though Wilma told me of a church concert once where Rev. Gosling’s sons performed a Beatles song – so this church must have been more tolerant than others).
- But also Sunday sport began, giving people other options than going to church on a Sunday morning. Church leaders wrote lots of letters trying to fight this. It 1960 they issued this statement…
“The Church believes that Sunday is a very precious gift for the refreshment of man’s nature and the opportunity of cultivating his relationship to God… while it believes individuals may use their time on Sunday in healthy indoor and outdoor recreation as their consciences permit, it has consistently opposed organised business or sport as detracting from the primary object of the day….
“The Church says simply ‘Man needs God. Be careful that you do not make it harder for him to get to know Him.’”
- However, a bigger deal than Sunday sport was TV! I still remember getting our first colour TV and channel 2 coming on, but does anyone remember when TV first came in?
TV first came online in NZ on June 1 1960, and slowly spread around the country. Up until then Bible classes, camps, church dances and evening services were packed – for many people that was possibly because there was nothing else to do! I’m sure most churches tried and many succeeded, but they didn’t have to worry about making things too entertaining for young people because there wasn’t much competition. When TV arrived though, it was new and cool, it offered alternative entertainment, and young people stopped coming to church activities in large numbers – choosing to stay home and watch TV instead.
Presbyterians have always believed that deep down people are really a bit silly, so the Church’s biggest concern here was that TV was to be funded by advertising. Attracting advertising revenue required high ratings, which meant the station was more likely to show popular programmes that people wanted to watch.
But, if you think people are silly, you then assume that they will want to watch silly things. So Church leaders wrote lots of letters to parliament insisting that people be forced to watch quality programmes they didn’t want to see rather than the silly things they’d prefer watching… (I wonder what they’d think of TV now…?)
- One last big change of this decade was the new morality of the 60’s youth culture which was helped along by the contraceptive pill - which first went on sale in the US in 1960, and soon got to NZ. Previously, traditional Christian morality was the accepted standard for society. If young people wanted to live more of a “party lifestyle,” they pretty much had to leave church, and in a year or two the girl would get pregnant and the guy would then be forced to marry her at the point of a shotgun. They would then just naturally gravitate back to church after only a few years break as respectably married 20 year olds with their kids going to Sunday School.
The Church was aware of this, and of the 19,000 marriages in NZ in 1960, they estimated at least 3,000 happened because the bride was pregnant. Surprisingly, I thought, they were actually encouraging ministers to try to dissuade couples form marrying for that reason. They saw giving the child up for adoption, or the girl choosing the path of a single mother as being better options than an unhappy marriage that increasingly might end in divorce.
With the arrival of pill though, it meant that young people who were so inclined could engage in this lifestyle without the consequences… meaning they were away from church longer, which meant they were less likely to return when they settled down, and meaning that traditional Christian morality was now losing its hold on the national psyche.
So, there were many storms for the Church in the 1960’s, it was a decade that transformed NZ society and as a result of which generations of Kiwis have had no meaningful contact with the Christian message. But, IBPC survived those storms and has continued to thrive over the years since – though the glory days of having 500 kids in Sunday School have probably gone for good.
Despite that, a strength I noticed when I came here was that this seems to have always been a church where young people felt like they had a place, where they were welcomed, and where many of them wanted to be. Jim, Michael, David or Brenda could fill you in, but IBPC didn’t seem to suffer the loss of youth that other churches did in the 60’s, and you have maintained a healthy diversity of ages over the years.
But, reflecting personally on the changes that the 60’s brought, I have to say that I would rather be a minister now than back then.
- Firstly, because you don’t have to come to church now! There are other things for you to do on a Sunday morning. You could be out shopping, playing sport, drinking coffee or staying in bed and watching TV – so I assume if you’re here it’s because you want to be, not because you’re bored or because it’s the socially acceptable thing to do and you want to keep up appearances.
I became a minister so naturally I believe that going to church is a good thing, but I don’t think it should be an obligation or a religious duty. My hope is that our gathering to worship would be because we want to - stemming out of a love for God, a desire to be connected to and transformed by God’s Spirit, and a yearning for the company of fellow believers. Pressure is on Churches today to be relevant and provide a space where people can worship and experience God, or why bother? And I think that’s good pressure.
- But the other reason why I feel I’d rather be a minister now than in the 60’s is because of today’s reading. Remember the words of Christ – the first shall be last and the last shall be first.
… “How hard it will be for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God!” … 2 “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.”
The Christian vision is one of living simply, of treading lightly on this earth, and of being willing to help ‘the least of these’ – those around us who are broken and in need. It’s about letting things go, not about amassing power and influence. At the beginning of the 60’s the Church in NZ had a lot of power and influence in society, and though often they used it for good such as advocating for the rights of Maori, power always corrupts.
The Church in that decade could be seen at times as being legalistic and aloof – more concerned about what people wore and how they behaved than the core of our faith which is knowing God and being in a relationship with our Creator – though it's easy to criticise from a distance, maybe that’s why so many left so easily? Maybe they had never encountered God in their worship?
Lastly, following on from our reading, I personally believe that God’s vision is more for the Church to stand at the margins of society with those in need, speaking prophetically to those in power, but not seeking power for themselves.
So, I do pray that more people in NZ would see Christianity as a source of genuine spirituality, and see the cross as the path of forgiveness and reconciliation with God; but, as a result of the 60’s the Church has had to learn a bit of humility, to become more creative, to reassess what the core of our faith is, and to be more relevant to people’s lives. And surely that has been a good thing?