Book Reviews

Missionary In Advance Of His Time

There’s a story that the vast reaches of Melanesia were originally included in the Anglican diocese of New Zea land through a slip of the pen.

According to this story, New Zealand’s northern ecclesiastical limit was laid down, in error, as 34 degrees north, instead of 34 degrees south.

Well, mistake or not, that definition was also to define the life and death of a 19th century Englishman whose memory is venerated in the Islands— lohn Coleridge Patteson, first Bishop of Melanesia.

This year the centenary of his martyrdom is being commemorated and we now have, topically, a new record of his life and death, Martyr of the Islands, written by a former High Commissioner of the Western Pacific, Sir lohn Gutch.

It’s a straightforward account, workmanlike and readable. It will make the reader want to know more than the book has to offer.

It is based mainly on Patteson’s own letters, many of which appeared in a life of Patteson, written soon after his death. But the author claims that there are also many which throw new light on Patteson himself and on his relations with others.

As the author observes, “It would be difficult to find a greater contrast to the savage and uncertain scene in Melanesia than the comfortable sur roundings of upper class Victorian England into which the young Patte son was born”.

Patteson showed religious leanings early: by the age of five he was read ing the Bible regularly and at about this age he also first conceived the idea of going into the Church. There is something a trifle unnerving about such inclinations at such an age, so it comes as a relief to learn that the child Patteson was rather lazy and given to “displays of will and tem per”.

Still, by the time he had been through Eton and Oxford, we find that he was “an unusually engaging voung man who made friends easily”, tall, well built and a fine cricketer. Attrac

tive, maybe, but hardly very likely material for pioneering mission work on the other side of the world.

However, the seed had in fact been sown some time back. While still a boy, Patteson had been deeply im pressed by a sermon preached by the brand-new Bishop of New Zealand, George Augustus Selwyn.

“In fact, he confided to his mother afterwards that it was his greatest wish to go out with Bishop Selwyn when he grew up”. The dream remained dormant for more than 12 years.

Then in 1854 he had a little talk with Bishop Selwyn, who was on a visit to England, and by next year Patte son was on his way to the antipodes.

Once out there, any remaining trace of laziness seems to have vanished utterly.

During his 16 years in the Pacific Patteson travelled constantly, built up a flourishing training college for Melanesians, did a prodigious amount of translation work, cared passion ately for his people, and generally “set the framework for the extension of the Anglican church in Melanesia”.

Sir lohn Gutch has chosen his quotes well, to point up Patteson’s

wry sense of humour and his ability to turn a vivid phrase. We also get some idea of what the author calls “the fascinating association of these two very different characters—Selwyn domineering, decisive, indefatigable: Patteson gentle, at times diffident, but in his way just as determined”.

Yet the pull of these two characters and the shifting action between New Zealand and Melanesia are somehow rather unsettling influences on the reader. I wasn’t quite sure whose bio graphy I was really reading; and I became as interested in New Zealand as I did in Melanesia. There’s quite a sense of disappointment as Selwyn and New Zealand gradually fade out of the book.

Church workers particularly should find this book worth while, not only because it’s an edifying story about a bishop and martyr, but also because Patteson faced many prob lems and held many views which have a startlingly familiar, modern, ring about them.

And Gutch has some interesting thoughts about what Patteson would make of the Melanesian scene now.

On racism, Patteson was there a hundred years before us —“any form of racial discrimination was anathema to him”. He believed that if was to grow and last, the church in Mela nesia had to be built by Melanesians, using their culture and customs and leaning as little as possible on expatri ate help. This is a “modern” concept among today’s churches.

Patteson also had liberal views on co-operation between the churches that wouldn’t fit in too badly with the ecumenical scene in 1971.

Like many missionaries today, Pat teson was shocked and distressed by the effect of European settlement and influence. He found drink “a great and raging evil”, and there were bitter dis putes over land.

Almost certainly it was one of these culture clashes which resulted in his death.

For years, life in the Islands had been getting more difficult and dan gerous because of “blackbirding”—

virtually a slave trade in Pacific Islanders for the sugar plantations of Queensland and Fiji. The Islanders naturally resented this and began to retaliate.

There are various versions (which Gutch says he hasn’t tried to assess) of what actually happened to Patteson, but it is generally accepted that he was killed in revenge for some out rage committed by white traders.

At any rate, on September 20, 1871, after 10 years as Bishop of Mela nesia, Patteson “went ashore at the little island of Nukapu, well knowing the risk which he ran, and there, in the words inscribed on the iron cross set up near the shore in his memory, his life was taken by men for whom he would gladly have given it”.— Susan Young.

(Martyr Of The Islands: Life And

death of John Coleridge Patteson. Hodder and Stoughton. Price $6.35 approx.).