- .././0, • ,r11. 1 Ir• ..1111111%iiilh11 ll1 1a11.1 IL885-1 I ^ :°R11,4111'q11111111,Allri'l''ii i'lill'ilk1111k11"11141 11'14111,1111:;1111::1 5111N 4 N K'Kq016 Seventh-day Adventists in the South Pacific 1885-1985 AUSTRALIA NEW ZEALAND SOUTH-SEA ISLANDS 1:C 1.5 33 6 Edited by Noel Clapham 1 DEDICATION This book is dedicated to those who pioneered the promulgation of the Advent message in Australia, New Zealand, and the islands of the South-West Pacific. Published and printed by the Signs Publishing Company, Warburton, Victoria, Australia, for the Australasian Division of the Seventh-day Adventist Church, 148 Fox Valley Road, Wahroonga, NSW, Australia. ISBN 0 949809 64 0 Credits: Cover design, John Clapham. It would be impossible to give individual credit to the many photographers whose work is represented in this book. The editors would like to deeply thank those who have kindly allowed their pictures to be reproduced. Art Director: Alan Holman. 3 CONTENTS Origins Noel Clapham 8 New Zealand Ross Goldstone 16 Public Evangelism Elaine Fletcher 34 The Adventist Press Donald Hansen 58 Herbert Clifford Hospitals and Healing and Noel Clapham 76 Sanitarium Health Food Company Robert Parr 98 The Founding Mothers Arthur Patrick 112 Adventist Youth Goldie Down 126 Avondale College Milton Hook 144 Church Schools Trevor Lloyd 166 The Aborigines Glynn Litster 186 The Pacific Islands Robert Dixon 198 The Church and the Community Reginald Brown 234 Multi-Cultural Adventism Stuart Uttley and Austin Townend 250 We Have This Hope Walter Scragg 260 Acknowledgements 268 5 FOREWORD Commencing in 1983 a group of Seventh-day Adventist scholars and church leaders accepted the responsibility of preparing a book to mark the 100th anniversary of the coming of the first Seventh-day Adventists to Australia and New Zealand. Much new research and careful checking has gone into Seventh-day Adventists in the South Pacific 1885-1985 in order to make it as authoritative as possible. Yet at the same time the editors have sought a readable and enjoyable style. The church takes pride in its place in society and the many contributions it has made in varying fields. These pages introduce the reader to what a relatively small number of people are able to do when they espouse a clear sense of purpose and mission. The committee met under the chairmanship of Dr Noel Clapham, of Avondale College. He and his associates have produced a book to inform and inspire its readers. We commend it to you as a way of understanding how faith can contribute in contemporary society. Walter R. L. Scragg, President, Australasian Division of the Seventh-day Adventist Church. 6 PREFACE This book, written by a number of Seventh-day Adventist authors, traces in broad outline the development of this religious movement in Australia, New Zealand and the South-West Pacific region during a period of one hundred years. It is not encyclopaedic in design; it is not intended to be a reference work, although care has been taken to ensure accuracy. The facts used are there because they illustrate some significant facets of Adventist development and were fairly readily available or because they make for good reading, giving a measure of reality to the story. It is an important task of an historian to recreate as best he may the lives of those whom he portrays. Some readers will be disappointed not to find described the work of a favourite ancestor, minister or teacher. Many worthy men and women who, selflessly and for the whole of their lives, gave skilled and devoted service to the cause they loved, are scarcely mentioned—if at all. Those whose names appear, often do so quite fortuitously; there is no systematic scale of achievement. Material for this book has not come easily, for well-developed archives have not been available; the authors, not all by any means trained historians, have often found themselves on shifting sand. At the end of this volume there is to be found some acknowledgement due to the many people who by their help have made these chapters possible. This volume should assist Seventh-day Adventists to gain an improved sense of perspective, a look at themselves and their ways of thinking and acting in the stream of time. It also provides our friends who are not Adventists with an authentic view of Adventist aspirations and ways of attempting to reach their goals. It is hoped that all will find in these pages a sense of the Providential, and discover a people of prayer and conviction, not sanctimonious, but caring, a movement looking to Christ Himself, and consisting of forward-thinking men and women who see the Invisible with the eye of faith. Adventists are proud of the pioneers, but this book has not been written proudly. We commemorate rather than celebrate, for we wish that more could have been done. Our gratitude ascends to a beneficent Father who, we believe, has made possible the progress of this church. All who read these pages should obtain a better understanding of part of one of the most remarkable Christian movements of modern times. N.P.C. 7 Noel Clapham Seventh-day Adventist views had, in fact, penetrated Australia twenty years earlier. Alexander Dickson, an Australian mission- ary to Africa, had met there an American • woman, Hannah More, who, having come .;;,••••,‘•• ••,•,••••• under the influence of Seventh-day Adven- tists while on furlough in the United States, On Saturday, the 6th of June 1885, a party was intent on making known their doctrines of eleven Seventh-day Adventists landed in among mission communities in her field of Sydney, New South Wales, from the Royal labour. Relieved of his mission duties Mail Steamship Australia. Apart from Mes- dames Corliss and Israel with two children each, the group consisted of three preachers—Stephen Haskell, John Corliss and Mendel Israel—together with Henry Scott, a printer, and William Arnold, a man experienced in selling denominational liter- ature from door to door. Of these, S. N. Haskell, the leader of the group, had long been an advocate of a mission to Australia to spread the distinctive teachings of the Seventh-day Adventist movement. All were fired with the prospect of a challenging task before them. This was the beginning of the Seventh-day Adventist Church in Australia. JOHN ORR CORLISS (1845-1923) One of Seventh-day Adventism's most vigorous exponents was John On- Corliss, who came to Australia in the first missionary team. When he departed after two years he left behind over 200 converts won to the Adventist cause in Melbourne, Ballarat, Adelaide and elsewhere. He returned fora second period of service in Australia, from 1893 to 1896. An advocate of Christian education, he used means which he inherited to educate twenty-five boys and girls apart from members of his own family. because of his change of views, Dickson had returned to Australia. There he, for a time, taught others, but when he left Australia for San Francisco, later abandoning his new- STEPHEN NELSON HASKELL (1833-1922) found faith, the infant movement he had begun came to nothing. Thus, the 6th of Stephen Nelson Haskell, the leader of the pioneer missionary group who came to Australia in 1885, also June, 1885, remains unchallenged as the won the first Adventist convert in New Zealand, Edward date for the founding of the Seventh-day Hare. Haskell was a self-supporting preacher in New Adventist Church in Australia. England, USA, as a young man, before he became a These Seventh-day Adventists who came Seventh-day Adventist, and was later ordained to the ministry. For a period of seventy years he served the to Australia believed themselves to be part of church as a preacher and teacher in every continent a development having its origins in the except South 'America. An innovator and energetic Reformation of the sixteenth century. organiser, he created the first Tract and Missionary Luther, Zwingli, Calvin and other reformers Society, organised the first coloured church in New had shattered the unity of Christendom in York, and began the printing of books for the blind. He taught Bible at the Avondale School, Australia, was a western Europe proclaiming salvation as a leader in temperance work in Maine, USA, assisted in product of God's grace, and asserting the the development of the White Memorial Hospital in Los right of the individual to direct access to Angeles, and in the course of a world tour is believed to God. In England, Henry VIII, for dynastic have baptised the first Chinese convert, and the first Japanese convert to Adventism. Haskell was a man of reasons, broke from the Roman ecclestiasti- remarkable character and dedication. cal system, but rejected innovation in 10 doctrine. However, in the midst of the power nineteenth centuries found even more struggles which followed in the sixteenth intense expression in the New World. New and seventeenth centuries, theological dis- England Congregationalism had provided cussion became a way of life in the more its own brand of religious intolerance, but literate segment of the European popula- had been unable to check the burgeoning tion. In England, it picked up speed in the religious thought which developed in the reign of Henry's Protestant son, Edward VI. freer air of American society. The Methodist After the Marian persecution which followed, movement in England jumped the Atlantic and the accession of Elizabeth, reformers and expressed itself in the preaching of flooded back into England replete with ideas Methodist itinerant preachers, and the and attitudes of great variety, developed thunder of George Whitefield and Jonathan during their continental exile.