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The Sunday School Graduate
 | A Sunday School graduate
Sunday School is a noble institution, a little over 200 years old. In the 1950's the "electric wireless" (what a quaint name) reminded us that "Good citizenship begins at Sunday School." Intended as a good citizen my parents sent me to Sunday School.
My first years were spent at Exeter in the Southern Highlands, South of Sydney, Australia. I gather my parents felt that the Japanese army would have great difficulty getting that far inland, so we were obviously safe there. Dad's perfumery company owned a lavender farm at Exeter, given that the German occupying forces weren't into exporting French lavender oil. Anyway, I was a bit young for Sunday School at Exeter even though the farmhouse backed onto the church.
I had to wait till we moved to Killara before I was introduced to the Sunday School at St.Martin's Anglican church. I arrived on the day of the special missionary film. I was later to appreciate greatly these films of topless native women. National Geographic was also another great source of unbelievably sensuous photos, well sensuous to a Primary School boy that is. I nearly didn't get in to see the film. The Rector, Rev Charlton, was not sure I was old enough to appreciate it. Well I certainly wasn't old enough to appreciate the native women, but in great kindness I was allowed in to watch the film with the big boys and girls.
I'm sorry to say the film was boring, but then maybe next week they would have cartoons, a Laurel and Hardy film, or even Tom Mix. I was to be greatly disappointed, for from that time on all we ever did at Sunday School was start out singing some choruses together and then go and study the Bible in small groups. I soon grew to hate those study groups because we would all have to read aloud from the Bible, one after another. I was petrified when it came my turn because I just couldn't read. A touch of dyslexia saw to that. So Sunday School slowly became one of my many nightmares.
I think I learnt at Sunday School that Jesus loves good little boys and girls. This lesson always concerned me because as I grew up to be anything but good, I came to believe that Jesus obviously didn't love me. Even as an Anglican clergyman the lesson stuck with me. I tried to be good, worked at it, but I knew I was never good enough. How could God ever love a person like me? I know it's crazy, but it was only about fifteen years ago when I came to understand that God is a gracious God, a kind and forgiving God. He actually loves bad little boys and girls, and that's all of us. He loves anyone who asks Jesus for his love. In fact, when we ask Jesus for his love, there is nothing we can ever do to get God to love us more. It's also true, that when we ask Jesus for his love, there is nothing we can ever do to get God to love us less. What an amazing truth. When we reach out to the living God through Jesus, his love for us is 100%, no matter how compromised our life is. Anyway, so much for this early lesson.
The Sunday School picnic was a wonderful event. It didn't quite make up for the horror of trying to read the Bible, but it came close. The Rector, Rev. Charlton, was, according to my mother, a bit past it. She said he would always pray for dead King George instead of Queen Elizabeth. Still, he could certainly get around Killara oval quick smart. He would lift up the front of his cassock, fill it with lollies, and then set off running around the oval with the Sunday School in hot pursuit. Every time someone pulled at the back of his cassock he would throw out a handful of lollies. The trick was to let other people pull his cassock and focus on lolly collection. That was a great year. I won my race and was awarded a water pistol. What greater prize could a bloke receive? I had a pocket full of lollies and a water pistol to boot.
During the year the Rev Charlton retired and a new minister arrived on the scene. He moved from Nowra, Rev Fox was his name, or Foxie as we used to call him. I don't remember him running around the oval at the Sunday School picnic, but I do remember him dishing out Nelson's Blood for the sit-down picnic in the cricket pavilion. All old "picnic suckers" will know that Nelson's Blood is good old raspberry cordial, usually mixed up with some ice in the hot water urn. The tea for months to come always had a distinctive fruity flavour.
There was a lapse in my Sunday School education. I hadn't quite learnt the distinction between "catho's" and "prots". Somehow I ended up in Dixon's gang, and he was a "catho". Knight's crew, who were "prots", didn't appreciate one of the opposition coming to Sunday School, so one Sunday I was given a hiding. Mum tried me at the Congregational Sunday School, but it just didn't feel the same. Anyway, mum kept her distance from the Congregational church after someone cleaned out the urn with sandsoap prior to the visit to the church of the Prime Minister Mr. Menzies. There was great consternation when it came time to serve the tea. Anyway, whoever was responsible, the event gave me the opportunity to graduate from Sunday School in third class.
I sometimes wonder what part those four years at Sunday School played in my life. It didn't turn me into a good citizen and it did screw me up a bit on the crazy idea that good people go to heaven. "No one is good but God alone." Yet it did introduce me to a great bloke. Sure he had long blond hair, but he did seem real. So some kind people introduced this little kid to Jesus. Lucky me!
From The Parsons Nose |
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Secularism
 | Secularism: a rising tide
Is the church under threat from secularism?
After a bushfire in Australia some years back, the Sydney Morning Herald provided a rundown of fundraising events being held to support the victims. High up among the church groups and Rotarians was this little gem: "Pagans and spiritualists will hold a fundraising weekend at Newtown Neighbourhood Centre.... Tarot and palmistry reading, crystals and books for sale"
It sat without excuse or surprise with notices from the Anglican and Uniting Churches. It is now normal procedure for the media to check "religious groups" of all persuasions when covering such events. They no longer go straight to the church with the confidence of a social majority. The values of an earlier nominally Christian society have been relativised. Christian beliefs are now considered marginal, to be believed, adhered to or defended only by the minority of those who hold to them.
Media reports of Christmas messages now not only feature Anglican and Roman Catholic Archbishops, but also leaders from the Jewish, Muslim and Buddhist faiths. What was once perceived as being the dominant faith of our nation - Christianity - has become relativised, reduced to a mere question of personal preference like a choice between political parties.
A golden past?
Dr Garry Bouma, a sociologist and Anglican minister, has said that there was never really any golden past for Christianity, no peak time from which it has slid. The common experience of Christendom today is generally little different from previous generations. This is not to say that there haven't been times of general renewal or revival, as many a church historian will quickly explain. But it does help us to see beyond the confusing labels of recent generations which have confused Christian dominance with periods of conservative morality. Promiscuity, as just one example, was arguably more rife in 1st century Rome - a time of rapid growth for the Christian church - than in 20th century developed countries.
A sociological change
In America, a country with a long Christian tradition, Christians seeking expression in the public sphere, regularly find themselves face-to-face with vocal and passionate opposition.
Some years back in Santa Rosa, California, council member and Presbyterian elder, Dave Berto suggested that, in line with a time-honoured American custom, the city council pray before each meeting. The council agreed to the proposal on a trial basis. After seven weeks of outraged civic fury, the prayer was abandoned. The people of Santa Rosa had responded with horror to this "infringement of the rights" of the city's diverse groups of faith. Dave Berto had been rudely shocked: Santa Rosa was no longer even nominally Christian, and the people were violently opposed to a Christian church assuming it had more social power than others. The incident highlighted Christianity's new marginal status, even in the land of the progressive pilgrims. Nothing could have made it clearer.
It is a function of democracy that the majority gets its way. Even though 70% claim to believe in God, this does not translate to an actual Christian majority. Only around one in five are committed enough to attend church. Christianity is destined to increasingly stand apart from secular its secular environment.
Troubled times ahead?
Ross Warneke, the writer of the Melbourne Age's Green Guide, Australia, wrote of the possible offence given to Christians by SBS TV screening a program discounting the accuracy of the Bible on Jesus' birth. Warneke wrote that the decision to screen the program "in the middle of the Christian churches' most important celebration, shows lamentable insensitivity". He is right; it was insensitive. And it was an insensitivity that would arguably not have been made against Buddhist or Islamic believers.
This reveals that Warneke knows something that many church members haven't caught up with yet: that Christianity is a religious minority in the Western countries. Rev. Robert Forsyth wrote of an interchange he had with a radio interviewer on the Christian attitude to practising lesbians and gays. Accused of being out-of-step with society, Rev. Forsyth responded that Christians expected to be out-of-step with a society which didn't share their fundamental view of reality. The radio listener "assumed" noted Forsyth, "that the church must keep in step with society's increasingly secular values because in some way the society is Christian. A strange logic." Such is the legacy of being a post-Christian society.
There is no doubt that secularism is changing society. The traditional points of contact between the church and the population - weddings, baptisms - are being lost. Today, no less than 42% of couples will be married by a civil servant. Thirty years ago it was 11%. But a self-consciously secular society is at least an honest one. The real Jesus might get to replace the sham.
FRom a church Magazine called The Parsons Nose
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