Introduction: Saintly Stirring
Philip Fountain | Wednesday, 28th March, 2018
Geoffrey Troughton’s volume, Saints and Stirrers: Christianity, Conflict and Peacemaking in New Zealand, 1814-1945 (Wellington, Victoria University Press, 2016), contains some wonderful and inspiring stories of Christian peacemaking in New Zealand’s history. Books that focus on peace in this region of the world are rare. Books that deal with Christianity and peace are rarer still. Because of that, and because the book is well worth the read, I thought it would be useful to convene a discussion on the stories in Saints and Stirrers that would engage, mull over and reflect on the arguments presented in this hot-off-the-press publication.
Some theologians seem to think that what matters most is getting one’s theological ideas right. There is, of course, some truth to this. Right thinking about God—‘orthodoxy’—is always vital for the Christian community, and sloppy thinking can land us in hot water. We should vigorously engage with ideas about God, in no small part because both within and beyond the Christian community such ideas are deeply contested. But the centrality of ideas can be overstated. Most of us don’t live our lives according to clearly structured sets of ideas, or what are sometimes called ‘worldviews’. Instead, we tend to be more shaped by our ritual habits, our practices, the relationships that enfold us and, especially, the stories we tell ourselves. As James Smith has argued in his book Desiring the Kingdom (2009), our identities are shaped less by abstract ideas, even theological ideas, and more by those things that grab at our hearts.
The importance of history as stories of the past cannot, therefore, be overstated. I have long been struck by the remarkably vociferous and vibrant historical scholarship among North American Mennonites. It is not that Mennonite historians agree with each other—far from it! The debate within Mennonite historical scholarship about the nature of Mennonite pasts is highly contentious. But even in disagreement the consequence has been to ‘locate’ a distinctive and active faith community as an identity (a ‘peoplehood’) formed through shared experiences and, therefore, moving forward (however precariously) into a common future.
Those of us in New Zealand and Australia with peaceful political and theological inclinations have not always done very well in writing down our stories of faithful peacemaking. This is a pity, and one that needs to be rectified. Troughton’s volume helps us down this path. This is even more so because it is the first of two edited volumes dealing with Christianity and peace in New Zealand. The second volume, Pursuing Peace in Godzone: Christianity and the Peace Tradition in New Zealand, picks up where this first one leaves off, with its chapters beginning with the period of the Second World and continuing through to contemporary times. Geoff and I edited this one together. It is due out in March 2018 and is also published by Victoria University Press. While its tone and ‘vibe’ is quite different from Saints and Stirrers (Pursuing Peace has shorter, punchier chapters and many of the contributions are written in the first person by people involved in the action themselves), taken together the two volumes begin the work of stitching together a ‘tradition’ of peacemaking Christianity in New Zealand, with implications for the Church as well as broader New Zealand society and politics.
For this ‘roundtable’ I invited four contributors – Doug Hynd, Cat Noakes-Duncan, Val Goold and Vern Jantzi – to respond to Saints and Stirrers in any way they saw fit. I was delighted that each respondent was willing to be involved and remain delighted in their contributions collected here. I was also glad that Geoff Troughton, a colleague of mine in Religious Studies at Victoria University of Wellington, was happy to write a response to conclude our ‘roundtable’.
The actual book is composed of an introduction by Geoffrey Troughton and ten chapters dealing with a wide range of topics within the thematic scope and time period (1814-1945). The chapters are ordered in a broadly chronological flow. Chapters include discussion of Māori and Pākehā (New Zealand European), church leaders and lay people and a wide range of denominations. They also address very different contexts, including the period of early colonisation and missionary work, the New Zealand Wars of the mid-nineteenth century and both the First and Second World Wars.
For those interested in reading the book, Saints and Stirrers is available for purchase directly from Victoria University Press (http://vup.victoria.ac.nz/saints-and-stirrers-christianity-conflict-and-peacemaking-in-new-zealand-1814-1945/) and at good bookshops around New Zealand.
Philip Fountain is a Senior Lecturer in Religious Studies at Victoria University of Wellington. An Anthropologist, he has published widely on religion and development, the anthropology of Christianity, and Mennonite service and mission work. Philip is married to Iris and they have two mischievous boys. They live in Kelburn, Wellington and belong to the Community of Transfiguration and St Michael’s Anglican Church.