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An Anglican Priest and an Anglican Church in New Zealand: Sources of a New Hope

It was a very different kind of liturgy. The opening hymn was by New Zealand hymn writer Shirley Murray, exhorting the community of Christ to cry out for justice and peace - to disarm the powers of war and to turn bombs into bread and the tears of anguish into joy. Yet, these strong words were being sung by the vested choir led by a processional cross and a thurifer spreading the smoke and smell of incense high and far. Participants in this liturgy reflected the ethnicity of New Zealand and even its openness toward mental retardation. In the call to worship, God was defined as "Transformative Love, the mystery of life, the essence of creation and the music of the atoms within us." Jesus was referred to as "cosmic love in human flesh," who by living in us "reveals that cross and resurrection are one on the road to freedom." The Holy Spirit was called "the needle of the inner compass, guiding us on the sacred dance into the mystery of life." People were invited to the Eucharist with these words: "Come, bringing your various faiths and backgrounds, for all are welcome to share in this act of communion."

What kind of church was this? It was an Anglican Church that calls itself "St. Matthew's in the City," located in the heart of Auckland. That church and its vicar, the Rev. Glynn Cardy were by any measure the most outstanding congregation and priest that I met in the majestic islands known as Aotearoa, New Zealand.

The Anglican Church in New Zealand today appears to me generally to reflect more fear than hope, more death than life. It has not always been so. George Selwyn the missionary bishop, who planted this church in that land, was a man of great vision. A recent Primate, Paul Reeves, who in his own person combined the Maori and European heritages of this nation, called this church to a new engagement with reality. The Anglicans of New Zealand later became the first Anglican Province to choose a woman, Penny Jamieson, to be a diocesan bishop. Still later, they had a dean of their cathedral in Auckland, Richard Randerson, who was in many ways the conscience of both his church and his nation. Those days and those leaders are, however, long passed. Archbishop Reeves left his post to accept appointment as Governor General of his nation and then moved onto the international stage as Anglican Officer at the United Nations. In time both Jamieson and Randerson also retired. Today, evangelical fundamentalism is on the rise and the remaining bishops, with the obvious exceptions of the Bishop of Dunedin and the soon-to-be-retired Bishops in Waiapu and Christchurch seem like gray men who are more eager to preserve yesterday than to engage today or to venture into tomorrow. The Bishop of Waikato seems to lose courage with age, allowing the quest for peace and unity to stifle his once vibrant creativity. I met exciting Protestant clergy in both Masterton and Kapiti, but they were lone rangers surviving against the tide of their different denominations, effective locally, but not likely to move a national church body. No national religious voice is apparent.

With its current leadership the Anglican Church of New Zealand will die of boredom long before it dies of controversy. Gay people scare them, women scare them, and biblical scholarship scares them. Their bishops appear willing to move on nothing until the "mind of the Church" is made clear. That is a favorite institutional ducking position, used many times in the past on issues from slavery and segregation to the equality of women. They do not seem to know the wisdom of Erich Fromm, the German-American psychologist and best selling author of the 20th century, who said, "People do not think their way into new ways of acting, they always act their way into new ways of thinking." While the Anglican Church led by these fearful men retrenches to keep its dwindling numbers happy, New Zealand becomes more and more a secular state in which organized religion is reserved for the security seekers, those who crave the elusive narcotic of certainty and even for the religiously neurotic, who seem to believe that they possess the truth. That is why St. Matthew's and Glynn Cardy stood out in such clear relief.

How did St. Matthew's become this kind of church? A brief look at its history provides clues for that. This church was planned while George Selwyn, still on the boat from England, studied a topographical map of Auckland that revealed three hills and two valleys on which this major port city would be built. St. Matthew's was penciled in for one of those hills. It began as a simple wooden structure, but ultimately, a stone Gothic building rose to replace it. This Gothic St. Matthew's was opened for worship in 1905.

As so often happens with urban churches, however, the fate of the church is determined by the fate of the city. As Auckland grew outward, the center of the city around St. Matthew's became poorer and more depressed. Many churches, unable to adapt to this new reality, either followed their people to the suburbs or they died. St. Matthew's massive stone structure made moving impossible and it did in fact come close to dying. Plans were actually drawn to tear it down. Instead the congregation gambled on the principle of incarnation, deciding that they would share the fate of the city. They embraced that urban setting as their world and began to address its needs. This led them to call the first in a series of five outstanding priests, each of whom built on the work of his predecessor until this church was transformed.

The first of these vicars was named Morris Russell. He served St. Matthew's from 1963-1979. He demanded that St. Matthew's doors be open at all times. That openness included the "derelicts," who slept on the streets at night. Vestrymen objected saying that if the doors were open, the "derelicts would use the church porch as a urinal." Russell replied that even that use would be better than "this church not being used at all." The doors were opened and the porch was used as a urinal, but a new message was heard on the streets of the city of Auckland.

Russell was instrumental in inviting two different groups of people to see this church as belonging to them. First, in what was surely a daring move in the late 1960's, he met with a gay group, who had formed a community church for homosexual people and were looking for a building in which they could gather for weekly worship, and invited them to use St. Matthew's facilities. It was a strong message of welcome that echoed throughout the entire city and resulted in many homosexual people joining St. Matthew's. Next, he founded a singles' club at St. Matthew's. In the church sanctuary itself with the pews rearranged, young adults gathered, danced, drank sherry and smoked in the very space where they worshipped on Sunday. The barrier between the sacred and the secular collapsed. Some people were scandalized by these activities, but the singles' club lasted for eight years, had over 1600 names on its rolls and Russell married more than 80 couples who met there.

John Mullane succeeded Russell in 1979 and thrust St. Matthew's into the heart of a major issue that defined modern New Zealand. In 1981 the New Zealand Rugby Union invited the Apartheid-practicing South African rugby team, the Springboks, to tour New Zealand. Protests grew and an organization called "Mobilization to Stop the Tour" (MOST) was formed within the community of St. Matthew's Church. John Mullane supported the protest, but his assistant, the Rev. Andrew Beyer, was actually its chair and driving force. The people of New Zealand rallied to this cause until they had successfully challenged the sponsors of the proposed tour and stood the South African government on its head. This tour was disrupted and St. Matthew's was hailed for its role in urging New Zealanders to oppose racial prejudice. When apartheid was finally overthrown in South Africa, both Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu made pilgrimages to St. Matthew's to thank them for igniting the conscience of the world.

The next three vicars shared the vision and were as remarkable a threesome as have ever served the Anglican Church in New Zealand. They were Peter Beck who refurbished the buildings, Ian Lawton, who changed the worship patterns and allowed the people of the city, including the young, the artists and the business leaders, to shape the liturgy. Ian, using his technological genius, also developed an ancillary community of over 2000 people who were nurtured by St. Matthew's through the Internet.

He was succeeded by Glynn Cardy who was perhaps a decade older than Ian. He incorporated Ian's vision into a sustainable modus operandi by placing this church's radical vision into the heart of the Christian tradition.

Glynn knows how to take a Gothic building and make it serve a very contemporary world. He has a new assistant, Clay Nelson, who shares his commitment and together they are seeking to draw in a new constituency from that city, namely those who have become church dropouts, who have never been allowed to think in church. Glynn Cardy also works hard on the issues of liturgy, so that those who venture back will not be turned off anew by nonsensical, pre-modern words and phrases. Yet, he wears the traditional vestments of the Church's past; he uses recognized symbols in worship and even chants parts of the liturgy. He greets the congregation in the Maori language. His theology is open. His welcome of gay and lesbian people is genuine. His sermons probe the edges of faith. His pastoral skills are readily observable.

I am thrilled and encouraged that my church has places like St. Matthew's and that we can boast of having clergy of the stature of Glynn Cardy. It does not take a whole battalion of clergy to transform the Christian Church, but it does require a few who can be leaven in the lump, salt in the soup and light in the darkness. Glynn Cardy is one of those for me.