-a slab of history

Ben Butcher -a slab of history and ahead of his time

By Rex Matthews

“Living history”, with the accent on “living” is the feeling I came away with after meeting the Rev.

Ben Butcher. Sixty-eight years ago he went to Papua to take the place of the Rev. James Chalmers who had been killed, but not eaten, by canni bals in the wild Delta region just two years before.

Today, Ben Butcher recounts anec dotes and adventures in which he shared in days long before World War I. Like many who live to a ripe old age, his memory for early times is sharp, and better than his recollection of recent things (“Where is that letter, dear, to show the visitors?”).

He will be 95 in July. His eyesight is not so good now—in fact he had to give up driving the car four years ago. With his avid interest in books, this means that the second Mrs.

Butcher has a busv time reading aloud, acting as chauffeur and main taining the fabric of home.

They live at Wentworth Falls in the Blue Mountains of New South Wales, n a house called “Neiri”, the local lame for Aird Hill in western Papua vhich Ben Butcher established as an ..MS mission post long ago.

Against a background of wild nountain scenery which has taken he place of wild Papuan hills but Lot supplanted them in Ben’s affec 10ns, he told me of his early train ee- It included a year’s “medical” ourse at a special college (called, laterally, “Livingstone”) for mis lonary recruits. It was a short time 3 become qualified for setting broken ones and in many more aspects of ledicine and surgery, but numerous eople, both brown and white, were lad to lean on his sketchy knowledge i the days before doctors became scessible at all in remote regions f Papua.

Mr. Butcher wrote a book on his long career which involved the full gamut of frontier experiences and tasks as a missionary, but no writing can convey the sense of joy and sorrow which emerge from his verbal reflections on the progress of Papua New Guinea.

He was ahead of his time in be lieving that primitive life and primitive religion had elements in them that should not be despised. A Christian believer of strong conviction—no one gives a lifetime to a people through incredible hardships without tremen dous resolve—he, nevertheless, had a tender regard for the spiritual values of the people he sought to convert.

His willingness to see the good in all honest search for ultimate reality has landed him in hot water with other missionaries, and even with colleagues. He told me of an occasion when he was asked by some puzzled natives to account for the differences between the message preached by dif ferent missions. He told them they might well be like climbers on a mountain approaching the peak from opposite sides, but all aiming for the one point. It earned him a violent rebuke from the representative of a different church in his area.

But Ben Butcher is earnest about this. A little book he wrote some years ago called Many Faiths, One Essential is held in high esteem at Sydney’s Kings Cross Wayside Chapel, and Ben himself is well known there.

There is realism in Ben’s attitude to primitive beliefs though. He was in native villages when they built some of the great communal houses a thousand feet long.

“It demanded the whole united labour of the village,” he said. “I once watched a great ceremony along with F. E. Williams, the government

anthropologist. He said, ‘This must be preserved’. When I said that it couldn’t, he was shocked.”

Mr. Butcher retains a lively interest in PNG. He finds some solace for the thought that industrial develop ment inevitably destroys native culture m a report from his son Ralph, chief personnel officer with CRA. It is to the point that while homes are built and native men are trained to run the machines on Bougainville’s copper project, their women are also being trained to manage living in Western style homes.

The United Church in PNG will celebrate the centenary of Christianity in the territory in November.

Down in NSW there’s Ben Butcher who might well decorate the proceed ings. After all, he’s a large slab of that 100 years in himself.

Former missionary Ben Butcher ... a tender regard for the spiritual values of the people he sought to convert.