Fundamentalism and the New Zealand Experience

Bryan Gilling, ed., "Be Ye Separate": Fundamentalism and the New Zealand Experience, Waikato Studies in Religion, volume 3, University of Waikato and Colcom Press, Hamilton, 1992. Reviewed by John Roxborogh, Stimulus

This is a useful contribution to understanding conservative protestant Christianity in New Zealand. The authors are a strong group of Australasian historians who have both positive and negative experience of the tradition of which they write. They are able to do so with some sympathy, even affection, as well as objectivity and distance. It is about far more than Fundamentalists of the "Be ye separate" variety and the result is a significant but unfortunately named step in the process of developing a critical framework for understanding New Zealand Evangelicalism. 

Readers of Stimulus may often share the ancestry if not always the convictions or temper of the movement as described. Nevertheless one wonders whether those who most need to read it will do so. There is a sense in which if you understand and accept the analysis you have already moved away from the sort of Christianity suggested by the title.  

Bryan Gilling's introduction draws on George Marsden whose classic works on American Fundamentalism and Evangelicalism deserve to be widely read.^[1] One might well ask whether we are dealing with a theological phenomenon, a sociological one, or a psychological one. Some are now saying that in Christian terms "A Fundamentalist is an Evangelical who is angry about something."^[2] - but if we are to look at style, not just a particular theology, it is hardly just of Evangelical origin.  

Gilling argues that Fundamentalism is a religious term, and sees the distinguishing characteristic not only the being "angry about something" but willingness to separate from Christians of different persuasions or none in particular. This may be debatable. He notes that the controversies with which Christian Fundamentalism have been most associated have been American based. However the very existence of this book and its willingness to interact with the self-critical side of American Evangelical scholarship indicates there is now a greater awareness that this one tradition of Evangelicalism, American, British  or New Zealand is neither representative nor normative.  

Most debates which characterise Fundamentalism in America reach New Zealand, though in recent decades more have recognised that the issues are not necessarily of universal significance nor the solutions of general validity. John Stenhouse has a particular interest in the way in which New Zealand echoed British and American debates over Darwin and notes the dangers inherent in academic hostility towards phenomena which seem to embody the antithesis of academic values. He maintains that whatever its problems the movement has served a positive role. Stenhouse is careful to define his terms - Fundamentalists are Bible-believing Christians opposed to modern intellectual currents. His analysis of the moral and intellectual battles of real people gives flesh and blood and sympathy to the issues of the day - beginning with Victorian New Zealand, its interest in evolution and the self-serving concern of a male parliament for legalising prostitution and dealing with contagious diseases. He also gives an example of Roman Catholic "fundamentalism" in the person of William Maskell a Catholic convert, Canterbury farmer, and well-published amateur entomologist who became first full-time registrar of the University of New Zealand. Another example was the CMS missionary Robert Maunsell, who opposed the Maori wars and land confiscation. Many conscientious objectors in World War One were Fundamentalist in their theology, condemned and sometimes tortured for taking literally words of Jesus now more frequently championed by other theological traditions, and now owned more for their pacifism than their faith.  

James Veitch explores the question in its New Zealand Presbyterian setting and makes a further contribution to the discussion of definition by describing the origins of the terminology if not the mentality in the period before and after World War One. He briefly traces the movement through the break with Billy Graham and other Evangelicals who although they shared many of the formal beliefs of fundamentalism, did not share its separatism and were willing to work with those who would work with them. He gives a balanced account of debates in New Zealand Presbyterianism taking the story up to the present.  

Gilling's own article traces the life and death, if not exactly the influence in New Zealand, of Carl McIntire's bellicose International Council of Christian Churches. The ICCC was extreme and discredited and appear to be the only group in the volume to whom the title "Be ye separate" really applies. Gilling manages to be calm about people whose pettiness in great causes defies sympathy. Among those who did not support the ICCC was the New Zealand Bible Training Institute. By the 1960s, forty years of interdenominational evangelical training meant there was a considerable body of people who knew that whatever they thought of some leaders, the churches of New Zealand were simply not what the ICCC said they were. The unceasing negativism of the ICCC and its New Zealand magazine The Contender was self-defeating. 

John Evans traces the New Zealand equivalent of America's Moral Majority, through groups such as SPUC, SPCS, Jesus Marches, debate over the assumption that New Zealand was or ever had been a Christian nation, and the 1985 petitions against the decriminalisation of homosexuality, to the Coalition of Concerned Citizens and the formation of the Christian Heritage Party. There is analysis of differences from North America in respect of factors of nationalism, religious commitment, and ability if not economic clout when it comes to communications.  

Brett Knowles uses R M Anderson's Vision of the Disinherited: the making of American Pentecostalism,^[3] as a critical framework for trying to assess the growth of New Life Pentecostal churches at a time when other churches were declining. Anderson himself had found it hard to sustain his title in its most reductionist implications, and it was not difficult for Knowles to show that classic American Pentecostalism as an early twentieth century off-shoot of the Holiness Movement did not explain much in the rather different social situation of 1960s and 70s New Zealand. Knowles provides a useful account of the church and its period and invites further study of what is an ongoing and still changing feature of New Zealand Christianity. Finally Colin Brown returns to analysis of contemporary American Fundamentalism and its historic roots. It is of interest in his attempts to chart the direction of the movement, though it would have fitted better with the scope of the book if its analysis related back to New Zealand.

"Be ye separate" is evidence of a growing New Zealand contribution to scholarship on aspects of conservative Christianity. At the same time this is only a step on the way to the sort of synthesis that Marsden has achieved for the American scene as the authors and editor would be the first to acknowledge. One would like to commend the book to those who more than they know owe a great deal to the faith, foresight, conviction and stewardship of so many in this movement, qualities not always prominent in discussion of aspects of Fundamentalism another age finds both fascinating and unattractive.

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