Over my first two early jet-lagged mornings in our new home in Bangalore, I devoured (choosing my words carefully) Stuart Lange’s A Rising Tide: Evangelical Christianity in New Zealand (1930-1965). When I told him I was going to miss the book launch by a few days, Stuart popped around to our house with a signed copy. Thank-you!

Here are ten random personal reflections…

1. It is exciting to see Stuart’s PhD lead to this outcome. Over the years our lives have intersected at various times. Stuart led the ISCF/Christian group at Auckland Grammar School in 1977 in my last year of high school. We were pastors in Southland in the late 1980s. Our wives (Christine and Barby) first met in hospital with newborn babies in their arms. We were both appointed to the faculty at BCNZ, now Laidlaw College, in 1989 where we served together for eight years before I went off to Carey Baptist College. We’ve seen very little of each other since those years…

2. The ethos and era which the book covers is the one which shaped my heritage. I remember my parents going on about Christian Endeavour and Crusaders. My father received his missionary call at a Pounawea Convention. And while the story centers around Thomas Miller and his sons (Presbyterians), together with William Orange and his ‘Orange Pips’ (Anglicans), as the tide ‘turns’ (in 1930-1945) and then ‘rises’ (in 1945-1965), one EM Blaiklock does play a supporting role. Blaiklock was like a patron-saint for all four of my grandparents. He was revered, almost canonized. As a member of the same church at the time, Blaiklock actually showed up to my farewell event when I headed off for theological training. My opinion of him had started to shift a little by then, arrested as I was by my simple-faithed grandmother’s gruff surprise that he should find it so difficult to deal with his wife’s death at an elderly age after a long marriage (written up in Kathleen). I had not realised Blaiklock’s vehement opposition to Calvinism (which explains a bit in my upbringing) – and then, later in life, Stuart relates how Blaiklock was ‘moved to paroxysms of rage and despair at the irrationality he perceived in the neo-Pentecostal movement’ (134). A strong-minded chap!

Stuart does hint that Blaiklock’s appointment to a university lectureship at Auckland in 1926 could well be the start of the turning tide (see p210) and that he ‘arguably did more than any other New Zealander to raise the public profile of evangelical Christianity in New Zealand’ (49). Further afield, in global evangelical Christianity, I have often wondered if something similar could be said of JO Sanders. For me and my house? If we could live the recent decades again, I’d kinda like to have had Orange as our patron saint instead :).

3. I do hope that Christian movers-and-shakers in New Zealand read this book closely and recognise afresh the strategic importance of work among tertiary students (generally) and Tertiary Student Christian Fellowship (TSCF) specifically. In the story Stuart tells, ‘the crucial catalyst was the establishment of the university Evangelical Unions (EUs)’ (21). [NB: the EUs are the direct ancestors of TSCF]. These Evangelical Unions ‘effectively relaunched evangelicalism in mid-twentieth century New Zealand’ (42). ‘For at least two decades into the post-war era, EU/IVF was a crucial defining and unifying element in the resurgent New Zealand evangelicalism’ (207). Sure, Stuart chooses to narrow his story (as he must) to ‘the evangelical formation of university-trained leaders, both men and women, and especially future ministers’ (21). This does give the story a certain hue, but its importance cannot be denied.

I loved some of the angles on this IVF/TSCF part of the story. That this was all sparked by the visit to NZ, in 1930, of a twenty-five year old Howard Guinness. That 3% of NZ’s tertiary student population in 1950 were in IVF/TSCF-related groups. That Otago EU was mainly Presbyterian (with Thomas Miller to the fore), Canterbury EU was mainly Anglican (with William Orange to the fore) with some Brethren, and Auckland EU was mainly Baptist and Brethren (with Blaiklock to the fore).

4. On the subject of the need to narrow things for PhD (to Anglicans and Presbyterians) … it was disappointing not to be able to engage more with the Baptist perspective (other than Blaiklock). But I do wonder aloud whether it was an issue of focus alone. Did Baptists, other than Blaiklock and Joseph Kemp, play a major role in the formation of NZ evangelicalism? I’ve always had my doubts. My experience of Baptist life, particularly in the years as principal of their theological college (which quickly became identified with a different ‘tribe’ than Blaiklock or Kemp), is that ‘evangelical’ was more commonly a term of convenience than of conviction. The connections with the wider global evangelical story just aren’t there. In my early years I heard a bit of critique from within and without about me being a ‘fundamentalist’ – merely demonstrating how ignorant people were of the story Stuart tells, with the evangelical:fundamentalist divide occurring some 50+ years ago (see pp130-133). And then there is the little story of having to order John Stott’s magnum opus, The Cross of Christ,  for the Carey library when I started because it simply was not there on the shelves. It was pleasing to read in the Epilogue, referring to the years after 1965 – that ‘the evangelical ethos of the Baptist churches was consolidated’ (213). That is good news – but I wonder what that means?

5. Yet again I am struck by how theological liberalism sows the seeds of its own demise. The Student Christian Movement (SCM) and the Methodist stories in NZ seem to illustrate this. There is life to be found in holding to both a high view of scriptural authority and the substitutionary death of Christ. History has shown that Miller and Orange and IVF/EU were right to make a big deal of these two. I wonder, too, whether today’s interest in contextualisation – or, more specifically, the over-contextualisation that can become syncretism – needs to relearn this lesson. Yesterday’s liberalism has similarities with today’s syncretism. More seeds of demise methinks!

6. The key to the effectiveness of both Miller and Orange was not a focus on the relative largeness of their churches, but on the relative smallness of their ‘work among the next generation’ (40). Orange had his ‘Orange Pips’ – and Miller started with his own offspring. Is this something that gets lost today? The lingering, deeper work in a few and the multiplication that results for those who are patient and far-sighted? Isn’t it the magic of discipleship? Repeatedly, Stuart mentions the number of people called by God into the ministry out of a single ministry. For example, the first Orange Pip to be appointed a vicar in Christchurch was Roger Thompson – and ‘at least thirty persons’ who spent time in his Bible Class later became Anglican ministers. These Pips were into some serious stuff. For example, here is Betteridge at St Matthew’s (Dunedin):

At 5pm every Sunday there was a Bible Class, a solid Bible exposition for one hour. Then there would be tea, followed by a prayer meeting and the evening service. The evening service would be mainly university students, but also often included people invited from off the streets. After church, some sixty or so would go to the vicarage for supper and a ‘sing-song’. All this was a familiar pattern, derived from Orange and implemented by numerous Orange Pips (162-163).

7. With my friend, Geoff New, being a Presbyterian minister in South Auckland I was fascinated by the story of how South Auckland became a Presbyterian ‘stronghold’. Quite remarkably, God called Graham Miller to Papakura, Donald Kirkby to Pukekohe, and Arthur Gunn to Manurewa within ten years of each other. It seems like the center of Presbyterianism shifted from Otago to South Auckland. Reading the story, one wonders if Gunn was a bit like Blaiklock, with personalities and skill-sets that made them influential in their early years, but more inhibiting later on.

8. Stuart’s story is more than mere narrative, more than a collection of faces and facts and figures. I enjoyed the way he drew conclusions from his observations. Sometimes this came through in his paragraph-length pile-up of contrasts and comparisons. For example, on p15 (comparing British and American evangelicalism); on pp46-47 (comparing SCM and EU); on p142 (the tension surrounding Tyndale House); or, on p199 (comparing Reformed and Westminster Fellowship groups). Then there are his comma-laden descriptions of people. Like here, as the critics attack Thomas Miller early in the story:

…they had regarded him as outmoded and obscurantist in theology, suspect in his revivalist sympathies, standoffish in his churchmanship, obdurate in his opposition to church union, and treacherous in his support of the Evangelical Union. (40)

This is typical of the book and where Stuart is at his best. A simpler example is the description of the approach to preaching which Thomas Miller shared with Orange: ‘he spoke quietly, with polished language, rich imagery, and great spiritual intensity’ (69). In all of this, Stuart is alert to the way this history relates to the ‘unique mix of New Zealand’s geography, demographics, regions, denomination and personalities’ (209).

It is the kind of history that is so satisfying to read. There is a hint of George Marsden’s peerless Reforming Fundamentalism (the story of Fuller Seminary) with Stuart’s work. He has lived among the trees (there are no less than 50 oral history interviews and 25% of the book is endnotes and bibliography) – but he also lifts-off and sees the forest too. In order to appreciate this fully, maybe it is best to read the Conclusion (206-211) first.

9. 1965 is a long time ago for the story to stop! As I read, I was thinking about the Geering controversy, about charismatic renewal, about the way the influence of American Christianity began to eclipse that of British Christianity, about the diffusion of tertiary student ministry – and then all of these received coverage in the Epilogue. However, while by that time my appetite was yearning for another smorgasbord, I had to be satisfied with nuts and raisins. I understand. But a question to ask is whether history has been true to itself and whether there has been another ebbing and flowing in the years since 1965… Maybe one of Lange’s Leftovers will have to pick up that story.

10. Ever the sentimentalist, I relished encountering the names of people I have loved and who have influenced me over the years, as a result. Beryl ‘solvitur ambulando cum deo’ Howie (whose funeral I led just last December), John Hewlett, Bob Glen (a ‘later Orange Pip’), Ian Kemp, David Penman (in whose home Barby and I were engaged), Peter Warner, David Stewart, John Roxborogh, Tom Wilson (my uncle),  Derek Eaton (who spoke at my induction as principal), Rob Yule (who drew near to encourage as I led not one, but two, big funerals over the years) … and I was left waiting for John Balchin’s name – but alas, it never came. What a lot they have given me and what a lot Stuart has given all of us who partake.

nice chatting

Paul