Dorothy – 02/07/04
Church going was an accepted part of the week for many families in the first quarter of the twentieth century. Whole families would attend weekly services, often walking quite long distances to church – dressed formally in their best clothes. Children were expected to sit beside their parents through a service which could take one and a half hours without any provision being made for activities to keep them entertained as happens in many churches today. Then children went to Sunday School in the afternoon, and possibly to church at night.
Memories of Sunday activities have remained vivid for some people even after more than eighty years.
The late Margaret Royds (née MacGibbon), born 1910, described the Sunday programme in her childhood, when interviewed in 1999.
On Sundays we were expected to go church with the family at 11 a.m. We walked there. I started with clean shoes because we had to clean our shoes on Saturdays and we weren’t allowed to shuffle in the leaves in the autumn on the way to church, but we could shuffle in them on the way home and my mother would do it too.
Sunday was busy because we went to Sunday School in the afternoon as well as church in the morning. I remember when I was small swinging my short legs and counting to while away the time during the long prayers.
However dinner on Sunday was a special meal and we always had a hot roast meal cooked in the coal range. The roast meat and vegetables were put in the oven before we left and we returned to an appetising smell.
We weren’t allowed to play tennis or cards on Sundays.
We were read to regularly, not just on Sundays, and I remember readings from the Bible and ‘The Swiss Family Robinson.”
Zoe Hepburn, born 1907, still recalls a vivid memory associated with Sunday School.
On Sundays I went to Sunday School in the afternoon. On one occasion after I had broken a cup and fibbed to my parents about it, we had the Sunday School anniversary and a visiting preacher who pointed, it seemed, directly at my black heart and said, “What about that cup that was broken this week?” I tore home because I thought I was either going to be eaten by bears or struck by lightning (even though it was a fine afternoon with no sign of lightning or of bears). I flung myself into the house and confessed to my parents who laughed and said that they knew all the time that I had done it.
The late Very Rev Dr Alan Brash, born 1913, remembered Sunday as a busy day. He described the Sunday programme when interviewed in 1999. It was taken for granted that children would accompany their parents to church and sit quietly through a sermon lasting forty to fifty minutes. Nothing was provided for the entertainment of the children. They were expected to be seen and not heard.
A set of best clothes was kept for wearing to church or when very important visitors were coming.
“My father had a Model T Ford of which he was immensely proud. He would clean it to within an inch of its life every Saturday which meant that if it was wet on Sunday we walked to church. If it was fine we could drive!”
Lilian Butcher (née Martin), born 1915, grew up in the country and has clear memories of the long distances the family travelled to go to church.
“There was a Presbyterian church service once a month in Sheffield. If it was fine we went there and travelled by gig. I have a vivid memory of a flighty horse called Ngaire who shied when we had to cross the Hawkins River bridge. She didn’t like the railings. On other Sundays the children walked the five miles to Sunday School at the little Russells Flat Methodist church near the school.”
Edna Crumpton (née Pedder), born 1908, has memories of very Presbyterian Sundays as there was little contact with people in other churches. When she was a small child the town was booming. There was a good congregation for the Presbyterian, Methodist and Roman Catholic churches, and a small congregation at the Church of England parish. The Catholic church was on the other side of the town, and there was a great divide between them. As a small child she could not understand why the children all went together to the same school during the week, but went to different churches and Sunday Schools on Sundays.
It was taken for granted that the family would walk to church every Sunday, except perhaps in the heaviest West Coast rain. I remember sitting looking at the women in the choir. They all looked so stern in their very sensible hats.
When my mother was having a baby we had a helper in the house and she had a little boy. I was about six years old and was asked to take him to church with me. He was very small and sat swinging his legs and holding on to the pew in front. Then he fell on the floor. People behind me whispered, ‘Pick him up.’ I did and whispered firmly, ‘Don’t you move!’
The service in the morning was long and in the afternoon we always went to Sunday school – never missed. It was part of life. We were given little pictures with a Bible text for attendance and when we had six we could change them for a bigger one, and so on. I still have one of the tickets in my Bible. I remember my Sunday School teacher Maggie Hunter who lived next door.
Each Christmas the Presbyterians and the Methodists walked along the Inangahua Valley to Blacks Point for a special anniversary service before Christmas. I remember the church which had tiered seating put in for the children to make room for us all. As we sang the carols all the people up and down the valley would listen to the music coming from the church.
Bible Class Bible Class followed Sunday School when people went to secondary school. In the first part of the century people remained Bible Class members long after they left school. Some members of the St Ninian’s Bible Class stayed till they were in their twenties. The Young Men’s Bible Class and the Young Women’s Bible Class met separately.
Many members of the Men’s Bible Class joined Harriers Groups and made firm friends there. Some churches had their own tennis courts which were much used by the Bible Class members – both men and women.
The Reverend Professor Ian Dixon, born 1912, remembers Sundays fully taken up by church going.
On Sunday mornings he went to Christian Endeavour at 10am, the whole family went to church at 11am, in the afternoons the children went to Sunday School and the whole family usually went to church again for the evening service. Getting to and from the church meant quite a long walk.
“The fire in the sitting room was lit only on Sundays. We sat beside it and made toast on toasting forks. The warmth was so seductive that sometimes in the winter we didn’t go to church in the evening,” Ian recalls.
Thinking back to his early years in preparation for sharing his memories with me Ian was quite surprised to find what pleasant recollections he has of Sunday School on Sunday afternoons.
When I was of kindergarten age I enjoyed sitting in the special little Sunday School chairs, having nice ladies lead us in singing, especially “Hear the pennies dropping” when we put our pennies in the collection plate, listening to the story, scrawling on the blackboards and making images of Mary and Jesus out of plasticine. It was a warm and happy time.
Sunday School for the older children began with the superintendent talking to all the children in a large group and then we went to our individual classes. I remember nice teachers telling us stories. There were little written exercises like filling in gaps, and little pieces of homework to complete.
Highlights were the socials that happened some Saturday nights and the Sunday School picnic was the most wonderful event in the year. We usually got into a large launch and went up the Wanganui River for what seemed like hours and hours, and then played in the forest, and had lolly scrambles and three-legged races. Most of our parents were there, and we had a beautiful day getting thoroughly sunburnt, though our parents made sure we always wore hats.
Sunday School concerts were great fun with plays and pageants, and I remember being Little Red Riding Hood when I was small.
“I loved singing and had a rather nice boy soprano voice. We used to have Sunday School anniversaries where I would sing to a packed church. Ladies used to sit in the pews and cry because my singing was so sweet! All the feedback I was getting from my church connections was positive and pleasant. The ministers were nice and friendly people who would call quite regularly at the house. My parents and I all thought some of the people in the church were ‘fuddy duddies”, so my views of them did not cause a problem.
“I had quite a happy home. My parents were strict about discipline but for their time quite liberal about Sabbath observance. On Sundays we could play darts or drafts, and I was allowed to read anything I liked. They had a good sense of humour and we laughed a lot.”
Why did church attendance and social activities play such a large part in our lives? Looking back and thinking of the pleasure I had from church activities I can see that it was partly because so little happened in our week. We had no radio, we didn’t even have a gramophone, and there was nothing happening six nights a week except Friday night when we went to town to change the library books and usually to have a milkshake. We spent almost every hour, when we weren’t outside, in the kitchen at the big, kitchen table where my sister and I did our homework, and my mother did the ironing. My father sat reading the paper by the range and smoking his pipe. We had all our meals in the kitchen – we LIVED in the kitchen. I recently saw that kitchen again and I was amazed at how small it was.
The only outings and socialising and all that goes with them – such as lolly scrambles and fruit salad – were all associated with the church. My memories of it all have a pleasant flavour. I think now that attending them was a sociological rather than a religious need. We were a small working class family who walked many miles in the week, and only later were able to buy a Model T Ford. Sunday was our ‘outing day’. I’m sure it was good for my religious education. Nobody in our circle had any trouble believing in God. God was not in question for five seconds! He was at the top of the apex and nobody questioned that.
“Looking back theologically I had a lot of problems with Jesus, but as far as the church life was concerned I didn’t find church boring. I just took it for granted. ”
Ian wrote in his “Theological Graffiti”: What did I know about Jesus as a child? Simply what I was told and what was implied by what I was told and what was in some of those awful children’s hymns..
“For we know the Lord of Glory Always knows what children do And is writing now the story Of our thoughts and actions too.”
It was not fitting to say your prayers in your warm bed but only while kneeling on the cold floor.
“Jesus was WONDERFUL. He was perfect in every way. He very much wanted us to love him. And he knew everything. Indeed he knew far too much. Not to love Jesus could be risky if we happened to die without loving him.”
Because of some bad behaviour on my part I was told by my father that I had hurt my mother – who was weeping bitterly. But I had also hurt Jesus, and that was much worse. I really wanted to hate Jesus for snooping on me like that. But Jesus would snoop up on that as well. It was hardly worth the risk. Don’t get me wrong. I had very good parents and I knew that their love for me was genuine. But I could see why our school head was known informally as “Creeping Jesus”. He wore soft soled shoes (any decent man in those days would have worn boots) and he could catch you out anywhere by snooping up on you – just like Jesus. In hindsight it shows me that the Jesus image is formed in all sorts of ways like that. Jesus on the whole has a bad press, and still has except for people in the church and a few other nice people.
Sundays nearly a century ago very different from Sundays in 2004 The people interviewed for this article described their Sundays and their church going as pleasant memories. I doubt whether many of today’s children would think of such experiences as enjoyable. They need to be seen in the context of the life patterns and attitudes of society as a whole.
