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The emergence of school curricula, the current version of the old ‘3 Rs’, as an election topic is a reminder of the important place that education has had in the history of the Methodist Church.
Think of the role of Sunday Schools in the second half of the 18th century. A century ago, in 1923, one of the foremost ministers in the Connexion, C.H. Laws, travelled for some months in the United Kingdom to “keep abreast of modern scientific and social thought”. He was also, at that time, the Principal of the Theological Institution, and another of his tasks while travelling was to encourage likely young men to come to this country.
He was especially impressed by a newly formed group of about 250 younger English ministers - calling themselves the ‘Fellowship of the Kingdom’ – who gathered annually to glean and share knowledge, and who sought to influence attitudes within the church. Their freshness and virility, their unconventionality and their spirit of optimism in respect to current religious and social questions caught Laws’ imagination. He was excited by what he saw and heard, and though in his sixties clearly hoped that such an example would be followed in Aotearoa. He wanted his Methodist Church to be in the vanguard when it came to the development of new ideas for a new future. That was the preacher’s primary role, after all.
Joseph Horner Fletcher was born in the West Indies two hundred years ago. He was the eldest son of Rev Joseph Fletcher, Wesleyan missionary, and his wife Mary, also from a missionary family. Methodist ministers were liberally scattered among his relatives. He attended a Methodist school in Kingswood, England, and then his uncle's school in Bath. He entered business but became a local preacher and was accepted for the Wesleyan ministry in 1845.
After training at Richmond College, Fletcher married Kate Green in December 1848 and was sent to Auckland, where he became, at 25, the founding principal of Wesley College. He was a key player in the first moves towards the creation of New Zealand as a separate District. In 1856 poor health obliged him to take up circuit work in Auckland and then New Plymouth. He moved to Queensland and in 1861 was on circuit in Brisbane. In 1863 he became the first chairman of the Queensland Wesleyan District.
In 1865 Fletcher succeeded John Manton as president of Newington College, the Methodist teaching institution in Sydney. By contrast with the more conservative nature of Wesleyan schools in England, and as evidence of his independence of mind, Fletcher believed that the main business of the school was secular education in a Christian atmosphere. Education could help to overcome sectarianism rather than perpetuate it.
He invited distinguished academics to examine Newington students and strongly supported the State government’s education policies. He opposed the formation of a Methodist university college until strong secondary schooling was established. He believed that boys should be taught to appreciate orderly conduct rather than to fear punishment and that corporal punishment was degrading and to be used only in extreme circumstances.
He encouraged the development of institutional social work which grew into the Central Methodist Mission in Sydney. As a preacher Fletcher had exceptional power, expressing his thoughts in a fresh way with “sparkling illustrations and characteristic humour”. Fletcher was elected as the first president of the New South Wales and Queensland Wesleyan Methodist Conference in 1874 and again in 1884, when he was also president of the General Conference of the Australasian Wesleyan Methodist Church. As the Conference-appointed editor in 1868, 1871 and 1873, Fletcher contributed more than 50 articles, numerous essays and reviews of books to the Weekly Advocate. He read widely, deeply and with discrimination. Never robust in health, he suffered months of illness before he died aged 66 at Stanmore, Sydney, on 30 June 1890.
Education, in its most basic sense – reading, writing and mathematics – is currently election fodder. This contribution is not concerned with those basics of universal education. But it makes the claim that Methodists, and all Christian churches, must engage in education – in the sense referred to above as “scientific and social thought.” Is that what happens of a Sunday morning week by week? How far is the sermon these days directed towards engaging with the world. This writer doubts it. But there are six other days in the week when we can glean and share knowledge – knowledge that will make us better informed about our world, and then enable us to be in a situation where we can contribute to, even lead, change. In education, maybe, is to be found the future of the Church.