Category Archives: pacifism

Parihaka Sources and Resources

05 Monday Nov 2018

Posted by in Christian ethics, ethics, forgiveness, Kiwi Culture, pacifism, peace, PTC, teaching, violence

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5 November is the anniversary of the invasion of the Maori settlement of Parihaka, Taranaki in 1881.

I regularly teach a course called “Violence and Nonviolence in the Christian Tradition” at Pacific Theological College. In this course I include a session on “Nonviolent Resistance” looking in detail at what happened at Parihaka and how that can inspire Christian nonviolent resistance against injustice as well as reconciliation. For those interested to learn more here is are some entry-level links followed by lists of videos worth watching and my class reading list:

Watching

Reading

  • Bergin, Helen. 2010. “Edward Schillebeeckx and the Suffering Human Being.” International Journal of Public Theology 4 (4):466–482.
  • Buchanan, Rachel. 2011. “Why Gandhi Doesn’t Belong at Wellington Railway Station.” Journal of Social History 44 (4):1077–1093.
  • Elsmore, Bronwyn. [1985] 2000. Like Them That Dream: The Maori and the Old Testament. Auckland: Reed Books.
  • Elsmore, Bronwyn. 1999. Mana from Heaven: A Century of Maori Prophets in New Zealand. Auckland: Reed Books.
  • Gadd, Bernard. 1966. “The Teachings of Te Whiti O Rongomai, 1831-1907.” The Journal of the Polynesian Society 75 (4):445–457.
  • Guy, Laurie. 2011. Shaping Godzone: Public Issues and Church Voices in New Zealand 1840-2000. Wellington: Victoria University Press.
  • Hohaia, Te Miringa, Gregory O’Brien and Lara Strongman, eds. 2001. Parihaka: The Art of Passive Resistance. Wellington: City Gallery Wellington; Victoria University Press.
  • Keenan, Danny. ‘Te Whiti-o-Rongomai III, Erueti’, first published in the Dictionary of New Zealand Biography, vol. 2, 1993, and updated online in November, 2012. Te Ara – the Encyclopedia of New Zealand, https://teara.govt.nz/en/biographies/2t34/te-whiti-o-rongomai-iii-erueti (accessed 25 August 2017).
  • Keenan, Danny. 2015. Te Whiti O Rongomai and the Resistance of Parihaka. Wellington: Huia.
  • Mamak, Alexander, Ahmed Ali with Richard Bedford. 1979. Race Class and Rebellion in the South Pacific. Sydney: George Allen and Unwin, 1979.
  • Mitcalfe, Barry. 1963. Nine New Zealanders. Christchurch: Whitcombe and Tombs.
  • Parihaka and The Parihaka Pa Pakainga Trust and The Crown. 2017 “Parihaka Te Kawenata o Rongo, Deed of Reconciliation” https://justice.govt.nz/assets/Documents/Publications/2017-06-09-Parihaka-Te-Kawanata-o-Rongo-Deed-of-Reconciliation.pdf
  • Riseborough, Hazel. 2002. Days of Darkness: Taranaki, 1878-1884. Auckland: Penguin.
  • Scott, Dick. 1975. Ask That Mountain: The Story of Parihaka. Auckland: Heinemann/​Southern Cross.
  • Smith, Ailsa. ‘Tohu Kakahi’, first published in the Dictionary of New Zealand Biography, vol. 2, 1993. Te Ara – the Encyclopedia of New Zealand, https://teara.govt.nz/en/biographies/2t44/tohu-kakahi (accessed 25 August 2017)
  • Waitangi Tribunal. 1996. The Taranaki Report: Kaupapa Tuatahi Wellington: Legislation Direct. ONLINE: https://forms.justice.govt.nz/search/Documents/WT/wt_DOC_68453721/Taranaki%201996.compressed.pdf (accessed 25 August 2017)
  • Warne, Kennedy. “Why Wasn’t I Told.” New Zealand Geographic ONLINE: https://www.nzgeo.com/stories/parihaka

Did I miss anything? Let me know in the comments if you’d add anything to this list. Thanks.

The History of NZ Army Chaplains – Some Surprises

15 Friday Mar 2013

Posted by in chaplains, pacifism, peace, war

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Today I picked up a second hand copy of Men of Faith and Courage: The Official History of the Royal New Zealand Chaplains Department by J. Bryant Haigh (1983). As one would expect of an official history it is full of boring lists of names and events. But certain passages are revealing of the assumptions concerning Christianity’s relationship to issues of war and peace.

An early chapter opens with this:

The motto of the Royal New Zealand Chaplains Department (RNZChD) as carried on their badge is In This Sign Conquer, a saying attributed to the Roman emperor, Constantine the Great, who legalised Christianity in the Roman Empire in 313 … He was the first commander to realise that soldiers could be Christians, and his adopting of the cross on his standard in battle was the first formal connection of Christianity with the profession of arms. Since then Christian countries have always expected their soldiers to profess Christianity and pay some attention, outwardly anyway to their faith. (p. 18)

RNZChD badge

The RNZChD badge

Then after some history covering the NZ Land Wars and WWI, we finally get to WWII and a passage reads as follows:

In the years following the First World War, New Zealand, like other countries, suffered a strong wave of pacifism as a backlash to the slaughter of that conflict. Pacifist books and societies appeared, and well known politicians and clergymen were speakers on pacifist platforms. This affected the recruitment of young chaplains as, even before this time, there had always been a strong differences of opinion as to whether Christians should take part in war even as noncombatants. (p. 104)

What I find interesting about these quotes is that we start with the presumption that Christians can be warriors, and only later is there an aberration, indeed the curse of pacifism, which made recruiting chaplains difficult. While obviously this is an official history, it is surprising to see pacifism (often based in Jesus’s Sermon on the Mount) as the later inconvenience, and not Constantianism as the new deviant form of Christianity.