Seventh-day Adventists in the South Pacific, 1885-1985

285 Pages·2014·14.73 MB·English

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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.
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CONTENTS
(cid:9)
Origins Noel Clapham 8
(cid:9)
New Zealand Ross Goldstone 16
(cid:9)
Public Evangelism Elaine Fletcher 34
(cid:9)
The Adventist Press Donald Hansen 58
Hospitals and Healing Herbert Clifford
(cid:9)
and Noel Clapham 76
(cid:9)
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.
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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,
was intent on making known their doctrines
On Saturday, the 6th of June 1885, a party
among mission communities in her field of
of eleven Seventh-day Adventists landed in
labour. Relieved of his mission duties
Sydney, New South Wales, from the Royal
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-
found faith, the infant movement he had
STEPHEN NELSON HASKELL (1833-1922)
begun came to nothing. Thus, the 6th of
Stephen Nelson Haskell, the leader of the pioneer
June, 1885, remains unchallenged as the
missionary group who came to Australia in 1885, also
date for the founding of the Seventh-day
won the first Adventist convert in New Zealand, Edward
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 to Australia believed themselves to be part of
ministry. For a period of seventy years he served the
a development having its origins in the
church as a preacher and teacher in every continent
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
western Europe proclaiming salvation as a
taught Bible at the Avondale School, Australia, was a
product of God's grace, and asserting the
leader in temperance work in Maine, USA, assisted in
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 reasons, broke from the Roman ecclestiasti-
Japanese convert to Adventism. Haskell was a man of
cal system, but rejected innovation in
remarkable character and dedication.
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