Learning from History
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Last week
over 800,000 people in Australia identify as Indigenous which is a 25% increase from 5 years earlier.
Hopeful that our future holds unity and integration of faith and culture. Our true Australian culture.
I have been reading a lot this week about our Australian History and our struggle with identity because of such a rough start.
Especially our Christian story here in Tasmania. Today I want to tell some Australian stories of the conditions and Christian efforts in the significant early days of the birth of our nation. Then we will see if we are repeating history or if we have learnt our lesson.
Prayer.
So we begin our Tasmanian story with the name Robert Knopwood. He was the sole chaplain with the settlers, a Cambridge graduate who had squandered an inherited fortune by gambling. Patronage rather than suitability for the work seems to explain Knopwood’s appointment, (Who you know not what you know). In the opinion of John West, the first historian of Tasmania: “He had not much time to care for the spiritual interests of his flock, and of his success in their reformation nothing is recorded.”
It was instead a methodist minister, Benjamin Carvosso who landed in April 1820 (almost 10 years after first arrival to Tas) that had the first significant missional work. Greatly moved by the spiritual ignorance of those ‘whose ears had for a long period been unaccustomed to listen to the name of Jesus as the Saviour of sinful men’, Carvosso turned the steps of the building used as a Court-house in Hobart into a pulpit and preached a gathering on the street, the sermon ‘Awake thou that sleepest.
Also at the time, the bible society was establishing itself. When Governor Macquarie was advised of the steps taken to form the Tasmanian Auxiliary Bible Society, Lt. Governor Sorell seemed almost apologetic that it had taken so long and attributed the delay to the pressing problem of bushrangers.
The meeting that established Bible Society Tasmania was unique in several ways. It was only the second public meeting of its nature held in the colony, the other being a meeting two years earlier to address the bushranger problem. The new Bible venture was the first religious society to be formed in Tasmania, and it was also the first time that “Inhabitants and Settlers” were invited to join with “Magistrates and Officers” in forming a Society for the common good.
Being a penal colony, providing Scriptures for convicts was a significant part of the Bible Society’s ministry in Tasmania in the early years, beginning with the first grant of Bibles to Tasmania in 1807.
Besides making regular grants to the prisoner population in jail, those on farms and in camps were not neglected. From the town of Longford, it was reported in 1840 that, “on many farms where the prisoner population were wont to spend their evenings in the vice of idleness or in active crime … they now meet after the duties of the day to hear the Word of God read to them by one of their own number – perhaps the only one among them who is able to do so.”
Chaplains on board the ships taking convicts to Tasmania were supplied with Bibles.
By the time the convict ship Theresa berthed in Hobart in 1847, every illiterate prisoner had learned to read during the voyage and many of them were reading the Bible for themselves. Leg irons had not once been needed. Each prisoner arrived with a copy of the Scriptures.
However, it was a hard journey to that level of acceptance by the convicts, especially in the first 2 decades.
The historian Cannon Observes: ‘Once they were freed from servitude, very few emancipists (those that had done their time or pardoned) ever bothered with churches again, either for marriages or baptism services or for any sort of moral guidance. They had seen too many clergymen officiating at too many hangings and turning a blind eye towards too many unjustified floggings.’
The vast majority of convicts were uneducated, poverty-based petty thieves. Their crimes were primarily against property, not a person. Their average age was 26 and, as someone has expressed it, they were probably sinned against more than sinning as a result of the social upheaval and dislocations of the Industrial Revolution. Economic despair and poverty had driven most of them to inevitable crimes for sheer survival. Furthermore, punishments were greatly out of proportion to the crimes. The offended high class, distant from the poverty to which their elite lifestyles often contributed, were able to inflict through the courts years of brutal dehumanisation for the theft of their fine silk scarves and handkerchiefs. And then, of course, there were always those who were the social and political dissidents.
Discipline in the new colony was quite harsh. Usually, between 25-50 lashes were inflicted, but legally the number could be increased to 200, with records of 300 lashes being inflicted at a time.
John Ritchie in Australia as Once We Were notes an account- Although the whip brought blood by the fourth stroke, medical officers seldom bothered to attend unless the punishment exceeded 100 lashes, by which stage the victim's shoulder blades lay white and bare.
one assigned convict who got drunk instead of filling his master’s water cart spent three hours in the stocks for drunkenness. But for neglecting his work at the same time, he was sentenced to three months on the treadmill; and for ill-treating this master’s horse by leaving it in the sun, to one month’s gaol - all for one offence. A few weeks later, a free settler who appeared before the court for drunkness was let off with a warning to go forth and sin no more.
Officials and the legal system were immoral and sort the prosperity of this new land for themselves than the men they were watching over, and for the convicts, the state church was seen as the punisher of sins, not the redeemer.
I think we still fill that guilt today, that our Christian faith can do more harm and move someone further away from God than closer. Seen as Judging or embarrassing ourselves instead of freeing others from the chains and pain.
John Smith in Advance Australia where - I, too, am convinced that the reactionary unbelief of many Australians holds neither hope nor reason. Having such a national childhood of pain and loneliness is no reason to spend our lives fighting the religion of the past. It was humankind, not God who created the destitution and inhumanity of Australia's infancy. The biblical Jesus is a far cry from the whipping clergymen of convict days. Unfortunately, our history may have produced prejudice at the same time as it gave us a ruggedness and survivalist heart.
Learn from History
Learn from History
So we can not change the past so what do we do with this; we make sure we do not repeat it.
It is fair to say that the early days of European settlement it was ungodly times. Drunkness, prostitution, greed, dehumanisation, no limits - what did the state church do? stood by and enforced punishment. Judged the community as sinners.
We look back now and say there were complex issues going on that resulted in men and women making immoral decisions, yet they felt there was no one with the moral compass to turn to.
Where were Grace and Mercy? We follow God who is love, grace and mercy, how was that missed.
We look with compassion on those days, but what about today? would we also say these are ungodly times? Drunkness, prostitution, greed, dehumanisation, no limits. (have things really changed or are the issues hidden).
Today - Media watch - falsely accused - lives can be destroyed. Cancel culture in which people want to yell at each other (criticising how people should live) rather than listen to God and listen to each other.
Can people turn to the church for moral guidance or will they be judged before they walk through the door? (this is what you must be before you come through this door). Stories I have heard suggest they already do that themselves, that if they stepped foot in a church it would burn down. They are not good enough, there is no answer here for the emptiness in my life.
Yet, we are all sinners,
Let us look at the book of Romans
Paul was the author and he was a man persecuting the church, throwing Christians in Goal and happy for them to be punished for their faith.
He converts when he has an encounter with Jesus. He realises he is a sinful man who has followed his own agender and not God’s.
Similarly in Romans chpt 1:18-3:8, Paul outlines to the church in Rome, made up of Gentiles and Jews who are judging each other, that all nations are trapped, guilty of sin and idolatry and Israel had been just as guilty, because they had the law and they still sinned and followed idols.
Paul concludes that all humanity is hopelessly trapped and guilty before God, but that is not the final word:
But now apart from the law the righteousness of God has been made known, to which the Law and the Prophets testify.
This righteousness is given through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe. There is no difference between Jew and Gentile,
for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,
and all are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus.
God presented Christ as a sacrifice of atonement, through the shedding of his blood—to be received by faith. He did this to demonstrate his righteousness, because in his forbearance he had left the sins committed beforehand unpunished—
he did it to demonstrate his righteousness at the present time, so as to be just and the one who justifies those who have faith in Jesus.
Reflection - Jesus took all the pain, suffering and death we have caused in the world and He overcame it all by His resurrection from the dead. It is His new resurrected life that He makes available to others.
Jesus Became what we are ...
… So we could become what He is.
We are Justified by faith - Declared righteous. - even tho we have done the crime we are shown grace
This means
New Status: Right with God and Forgiven
New Family: included in God’s People
New Future: Transformed life.
We are all sinners and we can all be justified “In Christ”
That is how we are to see people today, not people's selfish desires but people with potential for a new status, new family and new Future in Jesus.
Going back to the tassie stories
As more people immigrated to Tassie in 1800 there are men and women that see their fellow country people with this potential in their hearts.
Since the 1870s Christian movement has been relatively strong in the northwest, reflecting church plantings of the 1870s. Baptist strength is in Launceston, the northern midlands, and the central north-west thanks to a farmer David Gibson.
Other Great Christian leaders like William Gellibrand who worked towards redeeming the lives of the convicts working on his property in the south and Henry Reed (Businessman) here in Launceston did much in evangelism and enabling the Christian mission.
Jane Ried (Williams) - emigrated from Scotland, Purchased land called Ratho in Hamilton, 14 bush rangers took their stuff, (Mother opened the draws instead of them taking to it with an axe, toddler - mark), never hurt the woman. caught with her father's name on the shirt. Jane married William Williams in the 57th Regiment - police magistrate - then went to India.
Jane suffered two miscarriages and the death of her husband. On returning home to Tasmania, She wrote in her diary: ‘Of my own feelings I might write to you forever without being able to express the half of what I have felt… But my dear Mumma, He who has seen me knows them all, who having formed me, understands them all, is ever ready to listen to all which we find it impossible to express to any human being...
Jan 1st 1837: ‘All are gone to Church, & I remained at home to commune with my own thoughts & to retrace the steps I have taken this last year; to look back & think of all that forever is passed to me in this life; to pray for the grace to improve by my afflictions & losses - for support on my entrance on this new year; to thank thee, my righteous God & Saviour, for the blessings still spared me, & for the protection & quiet of the past year.
As we close, I hope today you have an opportunity to reflect on the grace, blessings, and protection and meet with Jesus in the queitness.
Prayer - power of your love