It is that time of the year again ...
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to all readers!
I will take a little blog holiday, per custom, and resume on Monday 12 January or Monday 19 January 2026.
Potentially at that point I will pick up on some discussions in recent weeks here ... and let's hope by then 2026 is off to a start which augurs well for a happier year than 2025 has turned out to be.
Till then.
Peter
Tomorrow, 16 December 2025, is the 175th anniversary of the arrival of the First Four Ships in Lyttelton Harbour on 16 December 1850 - the first ships carrying an intentional wave of new settlers to what would be the city of Christchurch and the province of Canterbury in the post Treaty of Waitangi (1840) emerging Aotearoa New Zealand, a land of Maori and Pakeha. Last night our Transitional Cathedral Evensong celebrated this anniversary. The following is the text of the sermon I preached.
175th
Anniversary Canterbury Settlement 1850-2025, 14 Dec 2025
Readings: Jeremiah 29:7, 11-14, Philippians 4:4-14
Introduction: On16 December 1850, four ships sailed
into what today we call Lyttelton Harbour and thus became the First Four Ships
carrying new settlers for a well planned Church of England settlement: a settlement
to be established over the hill from Lyttelton, with the name Christchurch,
after the Oxford college at which a number of the English planning committee
had been students.
These ships were filled with members of the Church of
England who settled into life in Christchurch or spread out across the
Canterbury plains and into the foothills of the Alps, developing churches,
schools, a university, businesses and farms, according to the plan.
And everything went well as a replication of the best life
England and the Church of England could offer English people. What took place
was a transplanting of English idealism into a place perfectly suited for
establishing an Anglican utopia.
Except that wasn’t exactly what happened.
There was a need to limit French settlement to Akaroa and
nearby bays.
We were eyed up by the Scottish Presbyterians. But for Lake
Ellesmere being in flood when a surveyor sought to find an easy flat route from
the sea to where our city now lies, we might have been Dunedin.
As it was, Scottish Presbyterians, including most famously
the Deans’ families were critical to the development of Christchurch and
Canterbury.
As were Australians who jumped the Ditch for a cooler
climate, for work preparing Lyttelton and Christchurch for the new settlers,
and, for some Australians, for securing better farming prospects than available
in those days in New South Wales and Victoria.
The first four ships were not filled with Anglicans – a
Europe in uproar in 1848 which might have pressed people to purchase their
places on the ships and their acreage in the new province gave way to a more
settled context in 1850.
So contented Anglicans remained in England and there were
spare spaces for non-Anglicans to travel out here.
10 of the 20 clergy who arrived on 16 December 1850 found
the going too tough or the prospects for a better life easier to secure
elsewhere in the new world.
Bishop Selwyn was keener on a separate diocese in the first
instance for the older settlement in Nelson. Jackson the first bishop designate
for the not yet agreed to Diocese of Christchurch came and went.
Initial planning in smoke filled committee rooms in England
made costs of going into sheep farming – farming for lucrative wool –
prohibitive. That was a misstep by our administrative forbears.
Only when a change was made to the pricing of land suitable
for sheep in the early 1850s (due to facts quickly learned, that other forms of
farming could not earn a living), did the financial future for Canterbury
brighten.
Many decades before we learned the word “globalization”, astute
commercial leaders and farmers in Canterbury knew that global trading in wool
counted ahead of local market sales of crops for local consumption.
Perhaps the best ever attempt at establishing an Anglican
utopia by English people outside of England failed - failed to become what it
was hoped and planned to be.
But what was established has been a success in this way:
those who sought a better life in Christchurch in 1850, through dint of hard
work and willingness to adjust plans to fit with reality, found that better
life.
But 175 years later, we also look back on the role of Kemp, Wakefield
and Godley, instrumental figures in the planned settlement becoming an actual
settlement, and wonder regretfully how things might have been different for
Ngai Tahu.
Has the English settlement here made life better for Ngai
Tahu? That is a question we should continue to ask ourselves.
Let’s never forget that land was purchased from Ngai Tahu at
such low prices that there is no case, from any perspective, that justice was
done – justice such as the Christian faith requires of its adherents.
Nevertheless,175 years after the First Four Ships arrived,
it remains the case that people move to Christchurch seeking a better life and
for the most part, a better life is found here.
Providing you can stand the frosts, bear the hot nor’ westers,
wrap up against the easterlies and
southerlies, and work your way round a very subtle class system with faint and
not so faint reminiscences of England’s class system.
Exposition: Jeremiah the prophet speaks to us through
our first reading this evening about finding a better life.
Israel is in exile in Babylon, in what today we call Iraq.
It is not there because an Israelite Association for Settlement in Iraq was
formed. It was there because Israel had been brutally conquered by Babylon and
now many of its citizens were in forced exile.
Our reading hints that Israel was not only exiled because
that is the way their history turned out but because that was God’s will – “I
have sent you into exile.” In that difficult situation, God speaks to Israel
through Jeremiah:
“But seek the welfare of the
city, where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for
in its welfare you will find your welfare” (29:7).
In more prosaic terms, God is asking Israel to make the most
of its situation. To pray for all in the new city in which they now lived,
because the well-being of the whole city will mean the welfare of the exiled
Israelites domiciled there.
Jeremiah also offers God’s promise that:
“For surely I know the plans I
have for you, says the Lord, plans for your welfare and not for harm, to give
you a future with hope” (29:11).
Tonight, we look back on what has been and acknowledge that
what Christchurch and Canterbury is today, is what it is, because when the
First Four Ships sailed into Lyttelton Harbour, there was a turning point, an
historical moment, which changed Ngai Tahu and changed British settlers for
ever, with benefits for all settlers since.
A new society has been forged – less than an Anglican
utopia, less than any utopia, yet a society in which striving for the welfare
of all continues and a society to which people are drawn.
New settlers come here from other parts of Aotearoa New
Zealand and other parts of the world because belief is strong that here,
welfare – a good life, well-being, a better life – is possible.
“A future with hope” is a plausible description of what
Christchurch is becoming.
Paul, writes to a church at Philippi in Greece, which,
incidentally, was a Roman colony – and he urges his readers to engage the life
they lived with at least three attitudes: thankfulness, peace and contentment.
Tonight, in Christchurch, this reading invites us to look on
our life here today in respect of these three themes.
Thankfulness: there is much to be thankful for here in this
city and in this province. Three things stand out for me – you might share them
as your thanksgiving standouts too.
1.
We have made important steps in righting wrongs
of the past in respect of Pakeha and Ngai Tahu. Not all is yet sorted but we
have begun to address that part of the past that we cannot be content with.
2.
We have made our way through the immense,
intense challenges of earthquake damage. Where we are today was not conceivable
in, say, March 2011, possibly not even on 22 February in, say, 2015. We have
had to forge a new settlement and been pioneers again in doing so.
3.
We are becoming a city and a province welcoming
new pilgrims to share our life in this place: welcoming people from many
nations, not just the British Isles; from several faiths, not only the Church
of England. We are forging a cosmopolitan settlement, inconceivable to the
original Canterbury Association.
Peace: this city has largely lived a peaceful life, if we
overlook the disturbing gusts of the strongest nor’ westers, and the brutal
shakes of earthquakes past and recent.
But on 15 March 2019, our peace was shattered by the
appalling mosques’ massacres. Any illusion that we might have had that a new
cosmopolitan settlement of this region was emerging smoothly and seamlessly
ended that day.
Peace cannot be taken for granted here. We must pray for
peace, we must work for peace, and we must be vigilant about the “isms” that
disrupt peace and harmony in our society: racism, fascism, misogynism and the
like.
The first pilgrims from Britain, arriving here in 1850,
found that the only way they could proximate to the vision of the Canterbury
Association was through hard work.
As pilgrims on the journey through the 21st
century for Christchurch and Canterbury, we also must work hard: not only in
building houses, roads, stadia, businesses and educational institutions, but
also on relationships between people, on respect for human dignity and on a just
society we are proud to belong to.
Thirdly, Contentment: “I have learned to be content with whatever I
have”, says the apostle Paul.
Christchurch is Christchurch (and not Auckland, Melbourne,
New York, Shanghai, or Rio de Janiero) and Canterbury is Canterbury (and not
Otago, California, Provence, the Gold Coast or Bali).
Other places have better beaches, finer fields for growing
crops, quainter places for picture postcard perfect holidays, Disneylands and
warmer nights for partying.
So what! We have much to be thankful for. Let us be content
with this good and blessed land in which God has placed us.
Conclusion: In 1850 a distinctive path for a new
settlement in this city and province began. At the end of it was presumed to be
a utopia. Not long after we began walking the path we found the initial
Anglican utopia vanished, and if we stop and pause, we can see the pain our ancestors’
settlement caused to those who had already settled here hundreds of years
before 16 December 1950.
Our journey continues along the path. It has had severe
recent disruptions. Yet we continue forward. May we seek the welfare of our
city and province, making our requests known to God for our future flourishing,
in prayers filled with thanksgiving for the blessings we have been privileged
to enjoy these past 175 years.
In recent days the Vatican has published a report on the possibility/not of women being ordained deacons. Reuters has a report here. The gist is that women deacons are not possible *for reasons* but further study is encouraged. A bob each way, but not such that women and men aspiring for the Catholic church to permit women to be deacons can expect change anytime in the next decade or century or longer. At least one commentator is furious with the decision.
My interest in the decision is not about the reasons (I simply disagree with any reasons advanced againt the ordination of women. If imaging Christ is critical to sacramental ministry, then Christ is human before he is male; if history is critical, then while evidence is not overwhelming, it is possible to find precedence; if scripture is important, then *Phoebe*; if apostleship is male, then what about Junia, Mary Magdalene.) My interest is about the fact that the report leaves the door slightly ajar to the future, "further study" covering a multitude of possible/eventual reconsiderations. Newman was recently made a doctor of the church and he was keen on *development* of doctrine. I predict change will come but it could be centuries.
The Anglican point here is that if change comes, then the Anglican church (and other churches) have been both the pioneer of change and sometimes the brunt of Catholic critique for being that pioneer. Such critique, incidentally, not being abstract and confined to academic papers, but something an Anglican deacon recently noted as her lived experience: Catholic friends making critical comment about her being ordained. (I hasten to add that, for the most part, I find nearly all Catholic clerical colleagues very, very respectful and honouring of Anglican women clergy in our ecumenical interactions.)
The future is an unknown country. Its boundaries may be porous compared to existing barbed wire borders.
There is an ongoing local church story which reappeared in The Press on Saturday - here - and tangentially refers to me, but the reference to me is not the point of this post.
What kind of Christ (or, should that be "Christ") is worshipped and, in the eucharist, received, who leads and nourishes a congregation in such a direction of doctrinal purity that it becomes at odds with its local and global leadership when those leaders are faithful and godly men?
(I am raising the question somewhat rhetorically - answers not expected in the comments.)
There is not one verse in Scripture which encourages us to think of eternal fellowship with the Trinity as reserved for the doctrinally pure. There are many verses in Scripture which highlight the extraordinary grace of God, the untraceable extent of God's love, and the inordinate variety of people who constitute the diverse church of God.
The Johannine Christians, the Petrine Christians, the Pauline Christians, the Jacobite [James] Christians, the Jewish Christians [think Matthew's Gospel] - all will be with God for eternity and if we believe we will be among them, we could reasonably, and helpfully, begin to prepare ourselves ecumenically for our extraordinary future as the heavenly saints constituted in one body.
Otherwise, heaven is going to be a shock.
There are not going to be separate enclosures for the purer than pure Catholics and for the purer than pure Protestants. Nor for each of the branches of Orthodoxy that have fallen out with each other!
This is a bit of non-post. Having come back to work, a lot of work is coming at me, and time is not available this week to post anything other than these few words, so sorry not sorry. Perhaps better luck next week re time. Maybe England will learn to play proper test cricket by then, Trump and Rubio will tell Russia their talking points are not Ukraine’s best peace plan, and Kiwiland will find a way through its economic torpor.
Today’s gospel, for Christ the King, Luke 23:33-43, portraying the king of kings dying in order that we may live, stands in stark contrast to the agenda of the world today.
POSTSCRIPT
Since writing the above I have come across a "well, worth reading" article for this week ...
They’re doing to America what they did to Christianity | Christianity | The Guardian https://www.theguardian.com/
I have been privileged these past two months to be on sabbatical leave (with July making up the third month of the allotted three months). These two months have actually seemed like a long time (rather than "flown by") and a long time is a good time when seeking some "r and r" from everyday working life.
A long time is also a good time when seeking some uncluttered-mind-space for some writing, which has been the focus of the "study" part of the sabbatical. I cannot tell you how many words I have written (because some writing has been re-writing some writing accomplished during two previous sabbaticals, and some writing has been re-writing what I have written - judged myself to be rather poor and in desparate need of improvement - along with a bunch of new words). Suffice to say, there are now about 100k words washing around in a folder on my laptop. I also should say, for any wonderful but far too eager supporters looking for imminent publication, that while I have perhaps 90% of sheer quantity of words written, the quality estimate is around 60%, so I envisage a lot more work before I have a draft to share with a few trusted friends for comment, and then - hopefully - with a publisher. The book is on interpreting the Bible. Yes, I know this has been done before, and by others. Needless to say, my book will be the last book on the subject you will ever feel the need to read ... :).
Here I share a few thoughts from my work over these past months, though with a certain constraint because I don't want to give away key ideas to another scholar working in a similar way. I have already come across a 2025 book a bit too like mine for my comfort!!
1. The Bible is a very complex book. More complex, to my mind, after forays into some of its nooks and crannies, than I have ever previously realised.
2. In the long run, despite many, many hermeneutical (interpretational) disputes, the church does get things right, eventually. The stand out example is slavery. We have interpreted the Bible correctly on this issue (that is, understood that though the Bible itself tolerates slavery, its overall message re human dignity means slavery has had to end). It only took about 1800 years.
3. Related question: could we have arrived at the abolition of slavery a lot sooner? (I am charting a possible pathway to an affirmative answer to that question.)
4. It is challenging to read the Bible consistently. In my research and reflections, I am struck by how the church has shifted its thinking on some issues the Bible addresses but not done so on others, when it is reasonable to assess that justice in life requires us to read (and apply) the Bible consistently. (Yes, this is a general statement without examples ... I don't want to give much away about the final content of the book!)
In my first year of secondary school, 52 years ago, with the madness of war in south-east Asia playing itself out, and the Cold War continuing to be very cold, I learned in English that "the first casualty of war is truth". I think the larger topic within the English curriculum was "Propaganda."
In 2025 this acute and accurate phrase seems as pertinent to discernment when reading the news as ever.
No one doubts that Gaza has been mostly destroyed, that a lot of people have lost their lives, many more injured, and there have been shortfalls of basic facilities to meet needs - damaged hospitals, interruptions to supplies of food and the like. But what is true and what are lies (or fudges) about precise numbers, about whether there has been famine, about whether Hamas or other gangs have stolen emergency supply lorries and subsequently sold goods at inflated prices, about whether the undestroyed parts of Gaza have flourishing food markets and restaurants (I have seen photos ... but photos can be doctored, produced from the past as though present reality, etc), about whether (say) journalists have been working for Hamas (so Israel claims in justification of killing them), hospitals have been used as military commands, schools have hidden entrances to tunnels (again, so Israel has claimed) ... there is a long list. My point here is not to take any one side re truth-telling/false-narrative-spreading in this (horrible) war and this consequential war on truth, but to observe that there are reasons to think that the adage I first came across as a thirteen year old continues to hold true.
This also seems to be the case in a very recent bit of news. The older news is that terrible, deadly conflict has been going on in Nigeria between (putting it evenly, even if that itself is not a true reflection of the conflict) Christians and Muslims, especially in rural areas. The recent news is that President Trump has offered assistance to the Nigerian government to bring an end to what he describes as "persecution of Christians." Clearly a number of concerned Christians in the West, presumably particularly in the USA itself, have found the ear of the President and he has listened. My interest has then been in seeing some news articles which have taken up the challenge of explanation: what is really going on, are Christians being persecuted by marauding Muslim forces (beyond control of the Nigerian government), or is there another explanation, a socio-economic one between different groups seen from an economy perspective (which happen to be Christian and Muslim respectively)? Now I don't know enough to give any kind of precise rebuttal to such articles, but reports of terrible atrocities against Nigerian Christians have been made for years now, if not in mainstream media, then in Christian media. Where does the truth lie? Is it possible that the truth (Christians are being killed and their buildings destroyed by Muslim forces such as Boko Haram) is becoming a casualty of this particular war, aided and abetted by some elements in Western media?
It is also the case that the truth of any situation can be challenging for any of us, whether we are in a a non-military conflict or a family argument or ... church life. What actually happened? Who provoked whom? Who said what? All too many inter-personal conflicts, in the church and outside the church, in my experience (and no doubt in yours) involve "she said/he said" versions of whatever it was that actually happened. Few of us have the time to engage in detailed enquiries to determine what was actually said and who, if anyone, was at fault. But there are other situations where it is important that we determine the truth of what happened - well-being of hearts and minds, appointments, employment are at stake, depending on what actually happened between two people or two factions. In the Anglican world, recent years have highlighted around the globe, and here in these islands, both that we are in a new world of transparency (things cannot and should not be "swept under the carpet") and that we are in a new world of public accountability: locally, this has been pressed on us by the recent Royal Commission on Abuse.
Within Christian contexts we may usefully recall texts such as 1 John 1:7, "If we walk in the light as [God] himself is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin."; and Ephesians 4:1-3, " ... lead a life worthy of the calling to which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love ... maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace."
But, if many conflicts most of us will experience in our lifetimes are helped by attitudes such as "patience", we should not lose sight of the crisis in Nigeria: the longer it takes to secure peace, the more people will be hurt, maimed and killed. We should be impatient for a resolution there and, of course, to what is continuing conflict in Gaza, despite the ceasefire, and what is terrifying for Palestians in the West Bank.
