These weekly “People to Commemorate” posts are a kind of calendar for the commemoration of the saints, reproduced here from a Uniting Church Assembly document which can be found in full here. They are intended for copying and pasting into congregational pew sheets on the Sunday closest to the nominated date.

Images (where provided) are of icons by Peter Blackwood; click on the image to download a high resolution copy of the image.

Matthew, witness to Jesus

(the evangelist & martyr)
(Greek: Mattheus = given, a reward)

The calling of the tax (or toll) collector Matthew by Jesus is mentioned explicitly in the Gospel that bears his name (Mt 9:9), although Mark and Luke use the name Levi in their parallel stories (Mk 2:14; Lk 5:27). All three Gospels list the name Matthew among the twelve disciples (Mt 10:3; Mk 3:18; Lk 6:15; see also Acts 1:13), and tradition attributes the first Gospel in our NT canon to him.

The Gospel of Matthew has been associated with Antioch (Syria) by many scholars, coming together in the form we know today during the 80s at a time of great division and tension within the Jewish community there. It is not surprising then that this Gospel is in many respects the most Jewish of all (Mt 5:17–20!), whilst also containing the most severe criticism of the Temple authorities and other Jewish leaders (Mt 23; 27:25). Amongst other themes, Matthew’s Gospel is noted for its profound respect for the ‘Law and the Prophets’, the ‘New and the Old’, for the Sermon on the Mount, and for its 12 fulfilment citations of the OT (“This happened in order to fulfil — or to ‘fill up” — what was said in the Prophet/s . . .”).

Traditions about Matthew’s life after the resurrection are not very clear or convincing. One account has him on mission in Ethiopia, and martyred there (by axe).

Traditionally, St Matthew is Patron Saint of tax collectors and accountants. It would be appropriate also to suggest that he be Patron Saint to Jews who continue to wrestle with the Jesus traditions, to the persecuted, and to preachers and orators. His Feast Day is 21^st September (in the West, and 16^th November in the East).

By Dr Keith Dyer

These weekly “People to Commemorate” posts are a kind of calendar for the commemoration of the saints, reproduced here from a Uniting Church Assembly document which can be found in full here. They are intended for copying and pasting into congregational pew sheets on the Sunday closest to the nominated date.

Images (where provided) are of icons by Peter Blackwood; click on the image to download a high resolution copy of the image.

John Hunt & Pacific Martyrs, martyrs

The invading Fijian warriors stormed the village. They intended to wipe out its residents. But they felt restrained. They planned to kill all the natives and cast them into ovens to cook them for eating. However, they admitted, they couldn’t carry out their grisly plan because the God of the Christian missionaries was stronger than they were.

The lead missionary of the village on the island of Viwa, John Hunt, had recently witnessed God’s power in another way. Prior to the civil war that brought the warriors rushing into the village, God sparked a spiritual revival in Viwa. In the first week alone over 100 natives confessed their sins. They spent time on their knees as warriors of prayer, unaware that a deadly physical war was about to erupt.

John Hunt was born near Lincoln, England. He engaged in farm work throughout his youth. At age fourteen, John became a Christian. He was eventually invited to become an exhorter at the local Methodist Church. Other speaking opportunities came. His messages won decisions for Christ. He decided to enter full-time ministry.

John studied at the Wesleyan Theological Institute in Hoxton. After graduation, the missions board asked him to consider Fiji. John married Hannah Summers and they departed by ship to the South Pacific.

In 1839, John and Hannah disembarked at a missionary station on Rewa. They soon witnessed the uncivilized Fijian’s ways. The punishment for stealing was usually to have the offending fingers chopped off. The natives purged their population of the sick and aged by strangling them to death. One day the natives of the village where John lived avenged the death of one of their own by killing eleven men from the other village, cutting up their bodies, and cooking and eating them.

John and Hannah Hunt’s lives were sometimes threatened, but they always felt that God protected them. John stated in one of his journal entries, “I feel myself saved from almost all fear though surrounded with men who have scarcely any regard for human life.”

The Hunts relocated to the missionary station at Somosomo and later saw their most rewarding ministry at Viwa.

John preached three times every Sunday and lectured three days a week. He opened a small medical clinic. He routinely sailed to nearby islands that had not heard the gospel message. While keeping up his demanding schedule, John became skilled in the Fijian language and spent what time he could translating the New Testament. God rewarded his efforts.

In 1845, John called a prayer meeting for villagers to confess their sins. They came and expressed their sorrow through sobbing and moaning as they pled for forgiveness. That atmosphere of repentance went on for days. Many came to a sincere confession of faith in Jesus Christ. The queen of Viwa became a devoted Christian. After that, the local beaches flowed with less blood.

John joyously wrote in a letter, “Many who, a little while ago, were among the worst cannibals in the world, are now rejoicing in God their Saviour.”

One of John’s greatest successes was the translation of the New Testament, not only into the Fijian language, but with Fijian idioms. He believed anyone could put Fijian words into sentences, but he gave careful attention to “expressing an idea exactly in the way in which a native would express it if he had the idea in his own mind.”

As he translated, John consulted a Greek Testament and a lexicon. Since so much of the New Testament had no literal equivalent in the Fijian culture, John also relied on help from converts. He completed the New Testament, and it was published in 1847.

William E. Richardson

These weekly “People to Commemorate” posts are a kind of calendar for the commemoration of the saints, reproduced here from a Uniting Church Assembly document which can be found in full here. They are intended for copying and pasting into congregational pew sheets on the Sunday closest to the nominated date.

Images (where provided) are of icons by Peter Blackwood; click on the image to download a high resolution copy of the image.

Dag Hammarsjkold, faithful servant

Dag Hjalmar Agne Carl Hammarskjöld, 1905 – 1961, was a Swedish economist and diplomat. He was appointed to the position of Secretary-General of the United Nations replacing the Norwegian Trygve Lie, after his sudden resignation on 10 November 1952. Hammarskjöld was a compromise candidate from unaligned Sweden. He was considered of impeccable diplomatic stock, in fact an aristo-bureaucrat. His father was Hjalmar Hammarskjöld, Prime Minister of Sweden, from 1914 to 1917, and mother Agnes Hammarskjöld (née Almquist). Hjalmar Hammarskjöld was a polyglot intellectual, a full professor at Uppsala University, a scientist and a renowned expert in international law.

The young Dag grew up in the rarefied environs of Uppsala Castle, the residence of the Governor of Uppland, another high position his father held for a while. By 1930, Dag had obtained Licentiate of Philosophy and Master of Laws degrees. Before he finished his law degree he had already been appointed Assistant Secretary of the Swedish Government Unemployment Committee. He wrote his economics thesis, and received a doctorate from Stockholm University.

He developed a successful career, becoming the youngest secretary in the history of the Sveriges Riksbank (the Central Bank of Sweden) in 1936 and was soon promoted to serve as the Chairman of the Central Bank. He was the Governor of the Central Bank 1941–1948. Hammarskjöld appears on the new 1000 Kronor denomination note that the Swedish Central Bank recently printed and released.

Although Hammarskjöld served in a Government Cabinet dominated by the Social Democrats from 1949 to 1953, he never officially joined any political party remaining politically unaligned.

He became the Chairman of the Swedish delegation to the UN General Assembly in New York in 1952. The negotiations between the Western powers and the Soviet Union for a replacement as Secretary-General that ensued after Trygve Lies abrupt resignation in late 1952 were unfruitful at first. It was not until March 1953 after further deliberations the French Government put forward four candidates, including Hammarskjöld.

Then the Soviet Union, United Kingdom, and the United States all declared for Hammarskjöld. The U.S. State Department authorized the vote for Hammarskjöld after assurances that he ‘may be as good as we can get’. First the Security Council, followed suit by the UN General Assembly, voted to appoint Hammarskjöld as Secretary-General in April 1953. Dag Hammarskjöld was sworn in as Secretary-General on 10 April 1953 and voted in for a second period unanimously in 1957.

Under Hammarskjöld the UN became more actively involved in maintaining World Peace even if that meant sending out UN troops to areas of civil unrest. Hammarskjöld’s second term was cut short when he was killed in an airplane crash while en route to cease-fire negotiations during the Congo crisis in 1961. He is one of only four people to be awarded a posthumous Nobel Prize. President John F Kennedy named him one of the finest of statesmen that dedicated his life to serve the peace and the people around the globe. President Kennedy also proclaimed that in Honour and Tribute of Hammarskjöld after his death the National flag should be flown at half-staff on all Government buildings of the United States.

After his passing among his personal effects poems and Haikus were found. They showed another side of the aristocratic diplomat, namely of a deeply spiritual soul on a constant quest for personal enlightenment. The poems were later translated to English by W.H. Auden and appears as Markings by Dag Hammarskjöld in the Vintage Spiritual Classics series.

Like many Swedes today Dag charged his batteries, and took solace from his demanding position, in the natural landscapes of arctic northern Sweden also known as Lappland. This landscape also captured the imagination of Hammarskjöld. Many of his short poems in Japanese Haiku format are based on his brush strokes of poetic language that derive from the innermost depths of his soul and in equal part from observations of the surrounding landscape. Another space where his spirituality took concrete form is in the creation of ‘A Room of Quiet’ at the UN Headquarters. It was personally planned and supervised in every detail by Hammarskjöld and opened in 1957.

The Dag Hammarskjöld pilgrim trail meanders its way from the start at Abisko National Park 100 kilometers west of Kiruna to the Sami village of Nikkaluokta some 105 kilometers to the south. The trail runs through miles upon miles of sweeping high alpine terrain and wideopen spaces under a towering sky. The creation of the pilgrim trail in 2004, complete with seven meditation places inspired by ‘A Room of Quiet’, was a joint project between the northernmost Swedish Lutheran Diocese of Luleå, the Regional Government of North Bothnia and the Swedish Alpine Association. The indigenous Sami people and their organisations were consulted during all phases of the construction of this trail that goes through the heartland of their country.

‘A landscape can sing about God, a body about Spirit’, Markings. D Hammarskjöld translated by W.H. Auden

It is both a treat for the weary and retreat for the mind and soul to do your personal pilgrimage along the Dag Hammarskjöld trail in winter and spring on skis, and in summer and autumn by foot. I believe Dag thought so and this author concurs.

‘A sky as blue
As that above the snow-crest
Before the last ski-run’  

Poem by Dag Hammarskjöld
Translated into English by W.H. Auden

Dr Roger Kalla, Chair of the Swedish Church

These weekly “People to Commemorate” posts are a kind of calendar for the commemoration of the saints, reproduced here from a Uniting Church Assembly document which can be found in full here. They are intended for copying and pasting into congregational pew sheets on the Sunday closest to the nominated date.

Images (where provided) are of icons by Peter Blackwood; click on the image to download a high resolution copy of the image.

George Brown & John Thomas, Christian pioneers

George Brown

The Rev Cecil Gribble, a former General Secretary of Methodist Overseas Missions wrote this about George Brown:

In the long history of Methodist Missions in the Pacific there is no figure more striking nor personality more colourful than that of the pioneer missionary and administrator, Dr George Brown.

 George Brown (1835-1917) was born in Barnard Castle in County Durham in north east England. His mother died when he was only five. When his father remarried young George did not get on well with his stepmother so as a teenager he left home and his father arranged an apprenticeship for him at the seaport of Sunderland. George left this work without his father or employer’s permission and ran away to sea travelling in the Mediterranean to Canada and then on to New Zealand. There he went to the home of his aunt and uncle, Rev. Thomas and Mrs Sarah Buddle. They were Methodist missionaries working amongst the Maori people. As George Brown shared in the life of the Buddle family (with their nine children) and attended Church he experienced the grace of God and became a follower of Jesus Christ. He applied to the Auckland gathering of Methodist ministers to become a minister and to serve as a missionary. Brown was accepted though not unanimously. It was necessary then for him to find a wife. He had met Sarah Lydia Wallis whose parents were also Methodist missionaries in New Zealand. George asked Lydia to marry him and enter a life of missionary service with him. She agreed.

George and Lydia went to serve in Samoa at a time of tribal fighting and much lawlessness. There was also tension between the two churches – the Congregational Church established by the London Missionary Society and the Methodist Church established by the Wesleyan Methodist Church. Both organisations had been active in Tonga and Samoa. A decision was taken in the Mission Headquarters in London that the Wesleyans would work in Tonga and the LMS in Samoa. The only problem was the Samoan Methodists refused to be directed by London. So the Wesleyans felt that they had no option but to go and nurture those who refused to forsake Methodism. Whilst George Brown had good personal relationships with the LMS missionaries in the field, the Congregationalists made complaints about him and his work to the Methodist Mission Board in Australia. So Brown not only had to deal with the violence and heathen practices he was encountering amongst the Samoan people, he had to write lengthy reports defending himself and his work to the home Board.

The Browns left Samoa after fifteen years of faithful work. That pioneering ministry which developed leaders and was involved in peacemaking is still recognised in Samoa today with one of the Church Schools being named the George Brown Junior High School. Well before he left Samoa George Brown had a dream of what he called the ‘new mission’. The islands of New Britain and New Ireland in New Guinea had received no missionary. George Brown pleaded with the Mission Board to let him lead a party to take the Good News to these dangerous cannibalistic people. The Board agreed and George Brown set about raising money for the venture. He had been impressed by the way the LMS had used converts from established areas to take the Good News to new fields. Tahitians went to the Cook Islands, Cook Islanders went to Samoa and so on. So George Brown recruited some Samoans. He decided to recruit also from Fiji to complete his team. The story of Brown’s visit to Fiji has often been told but it should be repeated for each new generation.

George Brown went to Fiji to recruit workers for the ‘New Mission’ when a quarter of the population had been decimated in a measles epidemic. He went to the Training Institution and spoke to the assembled students about the dangers, the illness and the possibility of dying away from home. Brown was about to call for volunteers when the Principal, the Rev. Joseph Waterhouse, suggested that they go to their homes, talk with loved ones and pray about the possibility of a call from God. ‘Then’, he said, ‘we can meet again in the morning to take your answer then’. When the students met again in the morning the whole 83 expressed their willingness to go. It was an amazing sight and a testimony to the power of the Gospel in Fiji. Six of the married students and three single men were selected to go. That, however, was not the end of the matter! George Brown and the volunteers were summoned to Government House where the Administrator reminded the group that they were now British subjects and no missionary had any right to compel them to go to any place where they did not wish to go. He also outlined the dangerous nature of the task that was being undertaken. Then one of the Fijians, Aminio Baledrokadroka, spoke up for the group. He thanked His Honour for his advice but assured him that Mr Brown had told them of all the dangers and the Rev. Waterhouse had told them clearly that they were free to go or free to remain. Aminio then concluded with these stirring words:

But sir, we have fully considered this matter in our hearts; no one has pressed us in any way; we have given ourselves up to do God’s work, and our mind today, sir, is to go with Mr Brown  If we die, we die; if we live we live.

Many of them died!

George Brown and his party established their base in the Duke of York Islands off the coast of New Britain. When the mission ship returned to Australia George Brown knew that he had to stay with his Pacific island friends who had come with him on this New Mission. They had arrived on 15 August 1875and gradually built the trust of the people. Some of the chiefs agreed to have teachers. Little by little the people came to learn of the God of love who wanted them to live at peace with their neighbours. In 1878 on New Ireland some of the people said that before the lotu (the Gospel) came to them they were always at war but now they were almost forgetting how to fight. Any sense of satisfaction in the progress of the mission was shattered when on 6 April 1878 four of the Fijian workers – a minister, a young man helping him and two teachers were murdered, then the bodies dismembered, distributed and eaten. Their widows and children were terrified. The Chief involved sent the word that others in the party, traders in the area and George Brown himself would be next.

George Brown had to face the most difficult decision in his life. The traders were determined to mount a punitive expedition. The Fijian and Samoan teachers were determined to avenge the murder of their colleagues. George Brown was uncertain if his participation would put the new mission at risk or if non-participation would put the lives of the staff and his own family at risk. In the end he decided to join the punitive expedition when people were shot, houses were burned, coconut trees were cut down and gardens were destroyed. Of course there was no police force, no army. New Britain was a frontier community without the rule of law. The decision to participate would haunt Brown for years. He sent a full report to the Mission Board where his actions were hotly debated. In subsequent years he would have to face the Board in an attempt to explain his course of action.

The Blanche Bay Affair as it was known, was reported and discussed in the press in Sydney and well beyond. George Brown’s actions would also be debated in the New South Wales Conference and later in the General Conference of the Wesleyan Methodist Church of Australasia. What concerned Brown so much was that people spoke out of the comfort of their situation without comprehending the dangers that Brown and others had faced. Brown also went to Fiji to the colonial headquarters of the High Commissioner of the Western Pacific. Even though the Chief Justice was keen to try Brown and even gaol him, the High Commission indicated that ‘yours is not such a case as ought to be prosecuted’. So Brown was free to go.

Despite all the heated debates and arguments it was clear that George Brown still had the confidence of the Church. Some years after he and Lydia had returned to Australia he was elected General Secretary for Missions in 1887. In 1891 he was elected President of the Wesleyan Methodist Conference in New South Wales and Queensland. In 1913 he was elected President General of the Methodist Church in Australasia.

During his years as General Secretary for Missions he was deeply involved in the preparation for, and then went with the original party to establish a mission in the islands at the eastern end of Papua New Guinea. That group led by Dr W. Bromilow and those who succeeded them, established a Church which today is known as the Papuan Islands Region of the United Church in Papua New Guinea. George Brown was similarly involved in 1902 in commencing the work in the Western Solomon Islands led by the Rev. John Goldie and which today forms the Bougainville Region of the UCPNG and the United Church in the Solomon Islands. Under his leadership, Miss Hannah Dudley went to Fiji to commence work among the families of the Indian labourers who had come to work in the cane fields of Fiji. Today it is the Indian Division of the Methodist Church of Fiji and Rotuma. George Brown not only kept pushing the boundaries of mission work geographically. He attempted, over several years to reconcile the divided Church in Tonga but was unsuccessful. He was a strong advocate for single women to serve as missionaries and to give leadership in the Church. He also promoted the establishment of a trained indigenous ministry and the involvement of indigenous lay people in the meetings and running of the Church. In Australia he advocated for the Union of the three branches of Methodism and for the wider Union of Methodist, Presbyterian and Congregational Churches.

Even with all he did within the life of the Church it would be a mistake to think that his interests were confined to that. He was a linguist, speaking several Pacific Island languages. He was an amateur anthropologist collecting a vast number of artefacts. His wish was that his collection should remain intact. After several locations in England it is today in the National Museum of Ethnology in Osaka in Japan. George Brown recognised the value of photography and a collection of his photos is in the Australian Museum. He was made a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society and awarded an Honorary Doctorate in Divinity by McGill University in Canada.

A wonderful book, Pacific Missionary George Brown 1835-1917 Wesleyan Methodist Church by Margaret Reeson tells much more about this remarkable man and his wife. As it says on the cover of that book, after listing Brown’s many accomplishments, ‘He saw himself, at heart, a missionary’.

 Margaret Reeson

John Thomas

 The Rev. John Thomas (1797 – 1881) and his wife Sarah were sent by the Methodist Missionary Society in Great Britain to serve in Tonga. They were there from 1826 until 1850 and from 1856 until 1859. Even though John Thomas was not the first missionary to arrive in Tonga he is regarded by the Free Wesleyan Church of Tonga as the Father of the Church.

John Thomas, the son of a blacksmith and a blacksmith himself, was very aware of his academic limitations. He wrote of himself in his personal journal,

my own rough and knotty mind . . . what a raw, weak and uncultivated wretch was I when I left our England.

 This self-deprecation appears quite frequently in his personal writing. Limited education he may have had, but he was an outstanding observer of life. He may not have had a sparkling personality, but he had great plodding persistence. Those qualities enabled him to write an amazing chronicle of the history of Tonga which covers a period prior to the arrival of European influences. He also records the establishment and growth of the Church.

He provides the genealogies of significant people, records the arrivals and departures of ships and geographical information about the Island group. It is evident that John Thomas had the confidence of the people for they shared their stories and beliefs with him.

While John and Sarah Thomas were in Sydney preparing to go to Tonga there was a lot of pressure put on him to remain in Sydney, to serve in one of the circuits there. He was, however, very clear in his own mind that the Mission Committee had appointed him to Tonga and to Tonga he would go. John and Sarah Thomas had tragedy in their lives when Mrs Thomas had a number of miscarriages. At last a son was born and named John. Nine years later tragedy struck again when the child died. Later when they returned to England, Mrs Thomas also died. When John remarried his new wife had a son but sadly that child too died when he was nine years of age. John Thomas lamented there was no one to pass his written material to. He thought he might destroy it. Fortunately, he did not and his History of Tonga is a goldmine of information for Tongan people and for students of Tongan history.

John Thomas was a very spiritual man and a number of stories have grown up around his life.  A Tongan preacher told the story of John Thomas landing on an island to share the gospel of Jesus. He knelt on the beach to pray. Even though the water lapped around him his trousers were not wet.

Some people would be critical of John Thomas because he was pivotal in many people forsaking their traditional gods and becoming followers of Jesus Christ. The value of that was indicated by a story written by John Thomas. A King was gravely ill and one of his sons was strangled to appease the gods and to facilitate his father’s recovery. Even though John Thomas worked relentlessly to bring change in Tonga and to have the people follow a new way, the way of Jesus, no one did more to record the beliefs and history and genealogy of the Tongan people. He believed that there would come a time when people would want to know their history and about their culture. When they did, John Thomas has recorded it for them.

He was truly the Father of the Free Wesleyan Church of Tonga.

by Rev John Mavor

These weekly “People to Commemorate” posts are a kind of calendar for the commemoration of the saints, reproduced here from a Uniting Church Assembly document which can be found in full here. They are intended for copying and pasting into congregational pew sheets on the Sunday closest to the nominated date.

Images (where provided) are of icons by Peter Blackwood; click on the image to download a high resolution copy of the image.

20 – Liyapidiny Marika O.A.M., Christian pioneer

The Rev. Liyapidiny Marika was the first Yolngu woman (Aboriginal woman from the North East Arnhem region of Northern Territory) to be ordained as a Minister of the Word in the Uniting Church in Australia.

She was born in 1945 at Yirrkala, then a Methodist Mission, into the Gumana family. There she grew up, married into the Marika family and raised three children. In 1970, she became a full time Health Worker among her own people. She devoted herself to this work and was awarded an O.A.M. in 1981 in recognition of her service. During these years, she was daily involved in the physical, mental and spiritual suffering of her people and her concern for their future welfare deepened.

At the same time, she was an Elder of the Yirrkala congregation and experienced God moving by the Holy Spirit in the lives of her people. This led her to resign her position as Health Worker in 1986 and begin training for the ordained ministry at Nungalinya College in Darwin. In September 1991 she was ordained as a Minister of the Word and took up placement in the Yirrkala Parish. As the first ordained Aboriginal woman, her ministry was not always accepted but she would say, “God called me, even though I am a woman, to do His Ministry.”

In her placement at Yirrkala, she worked hard, faithfully serving the people and reaching out with the message of God’s love to the whole community, even though at times she found the work difficult. Her gifts were recognised by the wider church and she provided leadership in Bible Studies, seminars and as a lecturer at Nungalinya College. Her insights through her teaching and preaching were well received and she was an inspiration to many people beyond her homeland.

She travelled widely and enjoyed fellowship with women of other cultures, sharing their joys and sorrows. In 1990 in Malaysia, she walked arm in arm with her Asian sisters teaching them her theme song “Bind us together, Lord”. Even though her Asian sisters knew no English, they learnt the song and its meaning as an expression of solidarity with their Yolngu sister. One of her greatest thrills was to travel to the Holy Land and retrace the steps of Jesus.

Throughout her ministry, she never ceased to give leadership and share love. She was a strong supporter of the role of women in leadership and in the ministry of the church, pioneering ordination for women among her own people. She died on 31^st August 1998 having given herself unsparingly in service to her Lord and to her people.

Adapted from Northern Synod Memorial Minute October 1998.

These weekly “People to Commemorate” posts are a kind of calendar for the commemoration of the saints, reproduced here from a Uniting Church Assembly document which can be found in full here. They are intended for copying and pasting into congregational pew sheets on the Sunday closest to the nominated date.

Images (where provided) are of icons by Peter Blackwood; click on the image to download a high resolution copy of the image.

31 – John Bunyan, faithful servant

John Bunyan is best remembered for his allegorical novel, The Pilgrim’s Progress, but perhaps he should best be remembered as a fearless preacher.

Bunyan was born in November 1628 in Bedfordshire, England, at a time of religious unrest. Growing up, he had a reputation for enjoying life to the full, but he married a woman with a strong faith, and through her influence joined a local non-conformist church. The change from blasphemer to preacher intrigued the population of Bedford, and his preaching increased in popularity and power.

After the Restoration of the Monarchy in 1660, the meeting-houses of the non-conformists were closed by Act of Parliament, and preaching other than in authorized parish churches was forbidden. Bunyan, however, continued to preach throughout the countryside, and was arrested and gaoled for twelve years. It was while in prison that most of his books and articles were written.

Religious intolerance had meanwhile decreased, and after he was freed, he became a pastor, again spending much time preaching throughout the countryside. His boldness led him to be imprisoned for six months in 1675, and it was during this time that he wrote The Pilgrim’s Progress. 

The spirit of God was so strong in Bunyan that he could not stop sharing the gospel no matter what the consequences. His boldness and confidence in God in all situations is reflected in his hymn “Who would true valour see” (TiS 561; AHB 467). John Bunyan’s life and works are remembered on 31^st August.

Contributed by Ruth Slater

These weekly “People to Commemorate” posts are a kind of calendar for the commemoration of the saints, reproduced here from a Uniting Church Assembly document which can be found in full here. They are intended for copying and pasting into congregational pew sheets on the Sunday closest to the nominated date.

Images (where provided) are of icons by Peter Blackwood; click on the image to download a high resolution copy of the image.

20 – Augustine of Hippo, Christian thinker

Aurelius Augustinus, arguably perhaps the greatest figure in the Western church, was born at Thagaste in North Africa in 354CE, the son of a devout Christian mother, Monica and a pagan father, Patricius. He lived only five of his 76 years outside of North Africa. Schooled at Madaura and Carthage, his reading of Cicero’s protreptic work Hortensius inspired him at the age of eighteen – the same year when his father died and his own son Adeodatus was born – to pursue Truth. He taught briefly at Thagaste and then at Carthage and then in 383, perhaps to escape the suffocating presence of his mother, he took ship for Rome itself where he accepted an imperial post teaching rhetoric.

In the intervening years, in his quest for truth, he had read the Bible but without real interest and engaged as a hearer with the Manichaean sect. While in the end he ended his association with this group, their influence, positively or negatively, continued to inform his theological development for the rest of his life. After a short stay in Rome he accepted the imperial post of Professor of Rhetoric at Milan and his move there in 384 began for him a journey from Platonism to Christianity, from Milan to Cassiciacum to Ostia to Thagaste and thence to Hippo in North Africa.

In Milan he met the formidable bishop Ambrose who introduced him to (Neo) platonism and to Greek Fathers like Basil. In the garden of his residence at Milan he experienced his famous conversion, went on retreat to Cassiciacum where he wrote his Soliloquies, and thence to Ostia where he experienced his famous vision.

Following Monica’s death, he returned to North Africa and Thagaste via Rome and there determined to set up a retreat of sorts for like-minded men. A side-trip to Hippo – and the untimely death of his son – saw a life-changing experience where he was ordained, effectively by force, by the church there, made co-bishop and then, on the death of the bishop in 395, elected in his place.

As bishop he wrote much. Between 397 and 401 he wrote his magisterial Confessions in which he explored the personal life in the context of his own journey to faith. This work is widely regarded as not only a major text in the Christian canon but also in the Western literary canon itself. Over a twenty-year period – from 399 to 419 – he wrote the De Trinitate which has so influenced the development of this central doctrine in the Western church. From 411 onwards he began a series of anti-Donatist writings in which he developed his ecclesiological thought. Between 413 and 425 he authored the De Civitate Dei – perhaps it should have been titled A Tale of Two Cities! – in which he presented a way in which human history might be understood as a process in which people either turn towards God or away from God and into themselves. The content is somewhat drawn-out perhaps but the idea is magnificent. From 413 he began his writing against the teaching of the British Pelagius – whom he never actually met in person – and the so-called Pelagians, including the extremist Julian, bishop of Eclanum. His authoritative De natura et gratia in which he outlined his concerns with Pelagius’ own writings – though Augustine managed here to play the ball and not the man, for he clearly regarded him with great respect – and with presenting his notion of original sin [or guilt], that idea with which Augustine is clearly, rightly or not, so identified. The next few years saw other like writings, including the contra Julianum (in six books) and On Grace and Freewill. In his later years he developed and published his Retractationes in which he amended, modified and even dismissed some of his earlier views on a wide range of matters.

In 430, as the Arian Vandals besieged the city of Hippo the great bishop and Doctor of the Church died. When the Vandals finally entered and burned the city all that they left untouched were Augustine’s cathedral and his library.

 by Rev Dr David Mackay-Rankin

These weekly “People to Commemorate” posts are a kind of calendar for the commemoration of the saints, reproduced here from a Uniting Church Assembly document which can be found in full here. They are intended for copying and pasting into congregational pew sheets on the Sunday closest to the nominated date.

Images (where provided) are of icons by Peter Blackwood; click on the image to download a high resolution copy of the image.

20 – William & Catherine Booth, reformers of the Church

William Booth, founder and first general of The Salvation Army, was born in relative poverty in Nottingham, England in 1829. By the age of 14 he was supporting his family by working as a pawnbroker’s apprentice which exposed him further to the reality of the lives of the poor.

Early spiritual influences came from the Broad Street Wesleyan Chapel and from contact with the preaching and methodology of American revivalist James Caughey. As an adolescent he led lay evangelistic efforts to Nottingham’s poor before moving to London in 1849 where he was involved in various groups within the Methodist Church. In 1861, aged 32, he left the Methodist New Connection to become an itinerant evangelist, commencing The Christian Mission in 1865, later re-named The Salvation Army.

Booth had an intense love for God. As a man, he was a risk taker with a strong commitment to continuous improvement. He was a person of ceaseless industry and innovation, with a passion to make the gospel accessible to the poor. This synthesised with a radical social conscience. He didn’t want to just bring the poor to faith in God (to get them ready for heaven) but he wanted them to experience redemption in the broader social and political environment. Furthermore, this vision of salvation was for the whole world, not just the slums of East London.

Booth’s commitment to social campaigns, such as the Purity Crusade of 1885 (a far-reaching campaign against teenage prostitution) was indicative of a growing activism around social issues. This was progressed further by the publication of In Darkest England and the Way Out, an ambitious plan to rescue 19th century England from her most pressing social woes.

In all this William was influenced and shaped by his relationship to Catherine Mumford, who he met in his early twenties. Catherine had grown up in a very protective Christian home where she had some long bouts of confinement due to ill health. In this environment she proved to be an assiduous reader and self- directed student, not only of the Bible (which she studied extensively) but also of a broader sweep of literature, including general and church history, spirituality and theology.

This immersion in text prepared her well for a future in which she took the step of preaching and speaking publicly based on her own conviction that this was something God required of her and being convinced herself that women had an equal right to speak. In this respect, Catherine made an important contribution to the ongoing expansion of the boundaries of women’s ministries in the broader church.

Like William, her gifts and capacities were recognised outside of The Salvation Army as well as inside it. A pre-eminent evangelist of the Victorian era, she was widely regarded as a deeply spiritual woman whose teaching was sound, convincing and enlightening.

There is no doubt that she exerted a huge influence in the shaping of the theology and practice of The Salvation Army, even though her death in 1890 came very early in the history of this fledgling movement. Writing fifty years after Catherine’s death, one Salvationist leader noted, “So much of the foundations of our Movement were built upon the character of this great woman, and so much of her beliefs, methods and teaching was woven into its early super-structure…”

William’s death in 1912, some 22 years after Catherine’s, was marked by a remarkable outpouring of public support and honour for the man who had risen from a life of poverty to create a worldwide movement that concerned itself with the salvation of the poor.

Written by by Major Christine Faragher