Celebrating 50 Years of Te Aka Puaho

‘Spanz' Sept 2004

Celebrating 50 Years of Te Aka Puaho

By Yvonne Wilkie

Director of Archives

Amidst excitement, anticipation, tradition, symbolism and ceremony the May 1953 Te Hinota meeting at the Synod House, Ohope received the Rev. James Baird, Moderator of the General Assembly. On this auspicious occasion the Moderator formally conveyed the General Assembly's decision to grant Te Hinota Maori full Presbyterial powers. The decisions and resolutions outlined in a Scroll were handed to the youngest Te Hinota Elder, Warren Foster and then passed through the hands of all Te Hinota Elders to the Moderator the Rev. Jack Smith. This act symbolised the Pakeha Church 's offering and Maori acknowledgement and acceptance of their new status.

The Scroll being handed by the Moderator to Warren Foster

It was a watershed year for Maori Presbyterianism. With Te Hinota Maori raised to full Presbyterial status Maori had a greater promise of an equal footing with other Presbyteries and members of the National Church . Significantly for Maori, noted the Moderator of Te Hinota Maori, the Rev. Jack Smith, “this [status] brings untold opportunities for Te Hinota Maori to express its evangelism in terms and methods best suited to its own situation, and to match the stirring within Maori racial consciousness with a Church and Gospel untrammelled by pakeha frills and formalities.”

Though not acknowledged at the time, 1953 was the 60-year jubilee of the ‘modern' Presbyterian Maori Mission. The Rev. Henry Fletcher recommended that a mission station be established in the isolated region of Taupo in 1893 and he commenced working there in 1895.

The Pakeha Church has sadly neglected Fletcher, an enlightened and respected scholar in the field of Maori anthropology. To him the Church owes much. He supported a strong ministry among Maori and Pakeha in the Taupo district, encouraged mission extension into the lower King Country centred on Taumarunui in 1900 where the Rev. John Ward ministered for 32 years. Sister Alison Spence the first Maori Mission Deaconess in 1907 worked in the area until she retired in 1948.

Three schemes he introduced left a lasting mark on Presbyterian Maori and the wider Church. Fletcher's immense energy and determination to establish a school for Maori girls at Turakina in 1905 has proven to be an innovative and rewarding scheme with the College now nearing its centenary.

He believed in women's contribution to mission and raised a keen awareness among Deaconesses and women to undertake work in the Maori field. They worked as teachers, nurses, evangelists, and whatever they were called upon to do. By 1942 it could be reported that 9 men and 29 women sustained Maori work. Many gave a lifetime of faithful service

It is because of his dedication and deep interest of Maori as a race that Te Aka Puaho is centred at Ohope and Whakatane. His push for the establishment of mission stations among Tuhoe in the Ureweras from 1916 saw eight stations open over the following five years. He retired from the Mission in 1925. Ready in the wings to take on the mantel of leadership was the Rev. John Laughton who for the Church at large became synonymous with Maori Mission.

The ensuing years saw the establishment of the Maori Mission Printery (1933) later known as the Te Waka Karaitiana Press, the Maori Mission Office, Whakatane (1933) Te Whaiti Nui-a-toi Maori Boys' Training Farm (1937), and the Language School (1940).

The Mission established three hostels in Auckland , Pentland Avenue for Maori School Girls, (1944), Dominion Road , for Maori Boys (1948) and the Ponsonby Hostel for workings girls and students (1953), and the David Hogg Memorial in Whakatane (1947),

The first moves to form Te Hinota Maori in 1945 are a curious mix of sentiment. The centennial of Presbyterian Maori Mission promoted a sense that Maori should control their own spiritual destiny. Prevalent within this thinking was the notion that Maori war service had proven the ‘race had reached maturity'. The naming of Te Hinota Maori in 1945 was a hesitant step towards the recognition that an indigenous Maori Church was possible. The Assembly had been assured however, that the Te Hinota Maori would not “exercise any independent administrative initiative or control…”. These duties would continue to fall under Mission Committee control.

Whether it was due to Presbyterian Maori reluctance to take an independent step from their mission roots, or the paternalism of the Presbyterian fathers or a mix of both, a decade passed before full synodical powers were granted. The 1956 General Assembly approved the Constitution but along side Te Hinota Maori a Joint Assembly Committee continued to sit. Nineteen years later the Convener of this Committee noted its changing role and could write, “Any element of oversight has tended to disappear”. The Committee had become a forum “for two contributing cultures” to exchange “imaginative ideas and a new kind of contribution to the ongoing work of the Church.”

The conversations of bi-cultural understanding, Waitangi Treaty recognition and partnership emanated from the Joint Committee. Renamed Te Ripoata O Te Komiti Takawaenga O Te Haahi in 1991 the Church has been regularly challenged to move to a fuller commitment to bi-cultural partnership.

Te Hinota Maori, no longer a mission church, has been beset with the frustrations of change confronting all Presbyterians. From 1956 they have undertaken their own administrative restructuring and financial responsibilities, confronted the changes and tensions from within the Maori church and societal stresses, and sought their own spiritual renewal.

These reflections are evident with the name change to Te Aka Puaho (the glowing vine) in 1997. The new name “captures the essence of history and the grounds the Presbyterian burning bush in an indigenous image.”

One hundred and sixty years from the first tentative steps to evangelise Maori by the Presbyterian Church, the promise of the 1953 Assembly to grant autonomy, Te Aka Puaho is emerging as Maori Presbyterian Church. The challenge remains for the wider Church “to be keepers of one another, to honour the Treaty, its obligations and promises of justice may cover our land and our life, to together grow, and build new forms of partnership”.

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