NZHistory, New Zealand history online - christianity

Samuel Marsden's first service

Russell Clark's reconstruction of Samuel Marsden's Christmas Day service at Oihi Bay in the Bay of Islands in 1814 is how many New Zealanders have visualised the first Christmas service in this country.

Clark’s work commemorated the 150th anniversary of the event and shows Marsden at a makeshift pulpit preaching to a large group of Maori and Europeans. Ruatara, the Nga Puhi leader Marsden had met in Port Jackson (Sydney), translated the service and can be seen to Marsden’s right. This service marked the beginnings of the Christian mission to New Zealand, but was it the first Christmas service or, indeed, the first preaching of the gospel in New Zealand?

On Christmas Day 1769 the French explorer Jean François Marie de Surville and his crew were in Doubtless Bay in the Far North. On board the Saint Jean Baptiste was a Dominican priest, Paul-Antoine de Villefeix. While no records survive, it seems highly likely that such an important Catholic festival would have been marked with a mass. In the absence of hard evidence, New Zealand’s English colonial traditions have favoured Marsden’s claim to fame.

Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington
Reference: B-077-006
Permission of the Alexander Turnbull Library, National Library of New Zealand, Te Puna Matauranga o Aotearoa must be obtained before any reuse of this image.

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Jesus marchers at Parliament, 1972

Jesus marchers in Parliament Grounds, Wellington, October 1972. Christians marched around New Zealand, partly in protest against perceived sexual permissiveness. Census figures suggested that people were turning away from religion. The proportion who stated that they had no religious belief had increased from 1.2% in 1966 to 3.2% in 1976; those who objected to the question had risen from 7.9% to 14%.

Credit:

Alexander Turnbull Library
Reference: EP/1972/4899/29-F
Permission of the Alexander Turnbull Library, National Library of New Zealand, Te Puna Matauranga o Aotearoa, must be obtained before any re-use of this image.

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Kiwi Christmas

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Pacifist objection - conscientious objection in the First World War

Pacifist and Christian socialists

Some New Zealanders opposed the war on Christian or moral grounds. Others believed in peaceful methods of solving conflict.

Some Christian socialists based their opposition to the war on what they saw as the egalitarian and anti-establishment message of Jesus Christ, who spoke against the religious authorities of his time.

Pacifism – opposition to war or violence as a means of settling disputes – covered a spectrum of views. These ranged from the belief that international disputes should be peacefully resolved, to absolute opposition to the use of violence, or even force, under any circumstances. Many of the pacifists who opposed the Military Service Act did so because they believed that war, and indeed any use of force or coercion, was morally wrong.

We will not cease: Archibald Baxter

Archibald Baxter's 'We will not cease' cover

Archibald Baxter (father of the poet James K. Baxter) is one of New Zealand's better-known pacifists from the First World War. His book We will not cease records his opposition to the war. In his words, the book is 'the record of my fight to the utmost against the military machine during the First World War. At that time to be a pacifist was to be in a distinct minority.'

Baxter considered enlisting for the South African War (1899–1902) before becoming interested in pacifist ideals. He rejected the First World War both as a pacifist and as a Christian socialist. He was balloted for service and arrested soon after conscription was introduced in November 1916. He persuaded his family that the war was wrong, and six of the seven Baxter brothers would eventually go to prison for their beliefs. The seventh was married and therefore had a case for exemption.

Baxter was denied exemption because he was not a member of a church that had, before the outbreak of war, declared military service 'contrary to divine revelation'. By the end of 1917 Baxter was in the prison attached to Trentham Military Camp near Wellington, and he was one of over 100 objectors being held in prison and prison camps throughout the country.

'Making an example'

Minister of Defence James Allen was adamant that men such as Baxter should be sent to war. Many in the community shared his belief. In July 1917 Colonel H.R. Potter, the Trentham camp commander, decided to deal with the overcrowding in the prison by sending 14 of his most recalcitrant objectors to Britain aboard the troopship Waitemata. Among those sent were Archibald Baxter and his brothers Alexander and John. Mark Briggs refused to walk up the gangplank of the Waitemata and had to be dragged.

Aboard the Waitemata the objectors were stripped, placed in uniform and locked in a small cabin with no open portholes. They were regularly abused by officers and volunteer soldiers. Upon arrival at Sling Camp in England, they refused to carry out gardening work and were placed in solitary confinement. Brigadier-General G.S. Richardson, who commanded the New Zealand forces in Britain, wanted them confined, given field punishment and then sent into the trenches – even if they had to be carried on stretchers.

In October 1917, 10 objectors were sent to Etaples in France and warned that they would be shot if they continued to refuse to submit. Several relented and agreed to become stretcher bearers, while three were sentenced to hard labour. Lieutenant-Colonel Mitchell was determined to break the resolve of Archibald Baxter, Lawrence Kirwin, Henry Patton and Mark Briggs. They were subjected to repeated sentences of Field Punishment No. 1, part of which included what was known as 'the crucifixion'. This involved being tied to a post in the open, with their hands bound tightly behind their backs and their knees and feet bound. They were held in this position for up to four hours a day in all weathers.

Baxter, Kirwin and Briggs survived this punishment only to be forced into the trenches. Baxter was sent to a part of the front that was being heavily shelled. He was beaten and denied food. In April 1918 he was taken to hospital in Boulogne, and he was diagnosed as having 'mental weakness and confusional insanity'. Three weeks later a British medical board confirmed the diagnosis of insanity, although it suggested that this may have been exaggerated so that Baxter could not be court martialled by the New Zealand army. He was taken to a British hospital for mentally disturbed soldiers, and he was sent home in August 1918. Along with Briggs, he was one of only two of the original 14 objectors to hold out to the end.

Mark Briggs

Mark Briggs was called up in the third conscription ballot in early 1917. He refused to serve on socialist grounds. His appeal was denied and on 23 March 1917, after he rejected an army medical examination in Palmerston North, he was escorted to Trentham Military Camp. Refusing all military orders to drill, he was court martialled and sentenced to 84 days' hard labour. During the seven weeks he spent in prison, he met future prime minister Peter Fraser.

Upon arrival at Etaples in France in October 1917 he refused to walk, stand, salute or wear uniform. Field Punishment No. 1 failed to break his resolve, and he joined Archibald Baxter and Lawrence Kirwin in the trenches in February 1918.

Every morning they were forced to walk 1000 yards up to the front line. Briggs refused. On the first day he was carried by sympathetic soldiers, but on the second day military policemen tied wire around his chest and dragged him to the front line, tearing his clothing and skin. At the line he was pulled through puddles of freezing water and told to 'Drown yourself, now, you bastard.' Dragged back to camp, he was denied medical treatment.

In mid-April Briggs was returned to Etaples. It was now considered highly unlikely that he would be 'persuaded' to follow orders, and in June he was classified C2 (unfit for active service) due to muscular rheumatism. In early 1919 he was invalided back to New Zealand. He refused the soldier's wage that was offered to him.

Punishing the objectors

Punishment was considered an important part of breaking in objectors. Obviously the military authorities believed that if objection was made too easy then the war effort would suffer. Men like Baxter and Briggs were subjected to the most extreme measures, but all of those imprisoned faced a tough, carefully regulated plan of punishment designed to break their resolve. Those who didn't break after a month's imprisonment were court martialled at Trentham and sentenced to anything between 11 and 24 months' hard labour.

Conditions in prison for objectors were harsh. Conversation was forbidden and so-called difficult prisoners were subject to solitary confinement. Work in the quarries was back-breaking. At the end of their sentence objectors could either be sent to the front or re-imprisoned if they still refused to enlist.

Catholic missionaries arrive at Hokianga

French Bishop Jean Baptiste François Pompallier, a priest and brother of the Society of Mary, arrived at Hokianga. His party celebrated their first mass three days later.

Pompallier left France in 1836 with four priests and three brothers of the Marist Order to lead a pioneering Roman Catholic mission to western Oceania. His arrival in New Zealand alarmed James Busby, the official British Resident, who feared that this was a forerunner to a French attempt to colonise New Zealand.

The English Church Missionary Society had established a mission in New Zealand in 1814. The first Wesleyan (Methodist) mission followed in 1823. Both denominations wanted Māori to become Protestant and were somewhat hostile to the French mission. Māori responded to this rivalry in various ways. If one tribe or hapū adopted Catholicism, a rival often adopted Anglicanism. Māori sometimes hedged their bets: some members of a community became Anglicans, others Wesleyans or Catholics.

Pompallier attended the Treaty negotiations at Waitangi in February 1840. He was sympathetic to Māori concerns and asked Lieutenant-Governor Hobson to promise to protect the Catholic faith. This pledge to protect and recognise not only major Christian denominations but also Māori custom is sometimes referred to as the unwritten ‘fourth article’ of the Treaty.

Pompallier died in France in 1871. In 2002 his remains were returned to New Zealand and interred at Motutī, on the northern shore of the Hokianga Harbour.

A printing factory is the last remaining building of the mission headquarters at Kororāreka. This is both New Zealand’s oldest Catholic building and oldest industrial building.

Image: Bishop Pompallier

The Christian missionaries

Agents of virtue

Map showing missionary influence

Like many things at the time, Christianity – in the form of the Church Missionary Society – came to New Zealand via Australia. Historian James Belich described the Christian missionaries as the 'agents of virtue in a world of vice' – a world the British Resident, Jame Busby, described as 'frontier chaos'.

Although not immune to moral blemish themselves, these men and women went to extraordinary lengths to bring Christianity and 'civilisation' to Maori. The early years were largely unsuccessful for missionaries in terms of saving souls; as points of contact for trade as well as a source of new ideas, missionaries had a profound impact on many Maori communities. Their introduction of the written word and the development of a written Maori language represented a massive change.