Letting theology on campus

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1870s, 1940s, 1960s, 1970s, 1990s, Knox, religion, Selwyn, theology

Reverend Thomas Burns, here pictured with Bible in hand, was chancellor of the University of Otago from its foundation in 1869 until his death in 1871. Image courtesy of the Alexander Turnbull Library, reference 1/2-005013-F.

The University of Otago began in a colony of the Free Church of Scotland which was just a couple of decades old and, despite an influx of new migrants attracted by the gold rushes of the 1860s, Presbyterians still dominated the population. In this environment, you might expect that theology would be one of the subjects on offer at the fledgling university. After all, Presbyterians highly valued education and expected their clergy to complete both undergraduate degrees and postgraduate theological education. But as it turned out, the university was nearly seven decades old by the time it offered courses in theology, and these classes didn’t take place on the main campus until 1985.

Religion did, however, play an important role in the early university. The Presbyterian Synod of Otago and Southland funded some of the professorial chairs, including physics, philosophy, English and history, and clergy served on the council, with several filling the role of chancellor over the decades. And personal faith mattered to many staff and students, with Christian groups among the earliest and largest of student societies. Religion was a significant feature of society, but it was also a subject of much debate. It is perhaps symbolic that the man who claimed to be the first student to enrol at Otago, Robert Stout, was notorious as one of Dunedin’s leading freethinkers (he later became the first law lecturer, and later still Premier of New Zealand).

New Zealand was a country with no state religion and citizens of varied beliefs and none; the prospect of teaching theology raised the question, “whose theology?” To introduce theology as a subject, approval was necessary from the University of New Zealand, the body which set examinations and awarded degrees for all of the country’s university colleges. Here the proponents of university theology encountered stubborn resistance from those who believed religion had no place in public education, governments reluctant to court controversy, and some churches (notably the Catholic hierarchy), who did not want to see other flavours of theology taught.

Meanwhile, various churches established their own theological colleges in Otago. Anglican Bishop S.T. Nevill began educating Anglican ordinands in his home soon after his appointment in the early 1870s, and after many years of campaigning established Selwyn as a theological college in 1893. It was conveniently close to the university, where many students also attended classes. The Presbyterian Theological Hall started out in the professor’s home, where St Margaret’s stands today, in the mid-1870s, and was located at Knox College from 1909. Many future Presbyterian clergy completed a degree at the University of Otago before going on to their specialist post-graduate training at the Hall. From their foundation, both Knox and Selwyn also served as residential colleges for students in other disciplines. The Catholic Church opened a new national seminary, Holy Cross, at Mosgiel in 1900, and the Churches of Christ set up their New Zealand college at Glen Leith in 1927.

Finally, after decades of lobbying, in 1945 the University of New Zealand approved a postgraduate degree in theology, the Bachelor of Divinity, to be commenced in 1946; this required amendments to legislation. The academic staff of the Presbyterian, Anglican and Churches of Christ colleges became honorary staff of the University of Otago, creating the new Faculty of Theology. Their own churches continued to pay their salaries and classes took place in the colleges. As this was the only university-based theology programme, the faculty also offered extramural programmes to students from all over New Zealand.

An undated Burton Brothers photograph of Knox College. In 1945 the Presbyterian Theological Hall located at Knox became part of the University of Otago Faculty of Theology. Image courtesy of Te Papa Tongarewa, reference C.018128.

Not everybody who wanted to study theology or religion aimed to become an ordained priest, and there was a growing interest in study from lay people. In 1966 the university appointed its first lecturer in religion, Albert Moore (previous Faculty of Theology appointments were by the churches). This was a joint venture of the faculties of theology and arts, with Moore offering courses in the phenomenology of religion to undergraduates. The courses proved popular and the appointment of a second lecturer in 1974 increased options; it became available as a major for a BA in 1976. Phenomenology of religion, later known as religious studies, became a full department within the Division of Humanities around 1992.

Holy Cross College, Mosgiel, from a Muir and Moodie photograph, c.1905. From 1972 some classes for Otago’s Bachelor of Theology degree were taught at this Catholic seminary. Image courtesy of Te Papa Tongarewa, reference C.014129.

Meanwhile, the Faculty of Theology had begun negotiations to introduce an undergraduate degree, the Bachelor of Theology, to cater for a wider range of students, including people with no interest in ordination. For the first time, in the wake of Vatican II and with growing ecumenical cooperation, Catholics became involved, with the Rector of Holy Cross joining the faculty in 1970. The new degree was introduced in 1972, with classes held at Knox and Holy Cross (Selwyn had its last theological students in the 1960s). Students could also take papers in theology subjects as part of an arts degree, and numbers grew quickly. In 1985, with limited room available at Knox and Holy Cross and many students based at the university rather than theological colleges, first-year classes moved on campus.

Although the university provided some financial support to the church colleges (helping fund their libraries, for example), Faculty of Theology staff were still paid by the churches, despite the fact that many students they taught were not training for ministry. In 1991, when the government introduced EFTS-based funding, the university began paying the salaries of faculty staff (the churches continued to pay for the non-university parts of their employment) and also made a bigger contribution to the costs of the colleges’ teaching facilities. A formal agreement was signed between the university, the Presbyterian Church and the Catholic bishops in 1992.

Following a review in 1995, the university completely restructured its teaching of theology. The Faculty of Theology was merged with the Department of Religious Studies, and in 1997 the current Department of Theology and Religion came into being. The agreement with the churches ended and the university now had independent control of theology, including the employment of all staff. Rather than setting up alternative courses in opposition to the university, the Presbyterians restructured their ordination training programme (now provided by the Knox Centre for Ministry and Leadership) and the Catholics moved their ordination training to Auckland, merging with the Marists to form a new Holy Cross Seminary.

Religion has a complex history at the University of Otago, and a post this length could not touch on all of the controversies involved! Theology, once a subject of much suspicion, is now firmly entrenched as an academic discipline, though its path to acceptance was not easy. Do you have any memories to share of theology’s Otago past?

Building for the arts

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1960s, art history, classics, economics, education, English, geography, history, languages, music, philosophy, politics, religion, teacher education, theology

The new Arts Building, photographed around 1970 by Arthur Campbell. The open area at the northern end was later built in to create more teaching spaces. Image courtesy of Arthur Campbell.

“We hope to give the people of Dunedin an arts building they can be proud of,” commented vice-chancellor Arthur Beacham in 1964. Fifty years later, that building is listed for replacement as part of the university’s 15-year building development plan. A new arts building – indeed a whole new humanities precinct – is planned, with construction scheduled to commence late in 2019. It seems timely, then, to look back to the beginnings of the original Arts Building.

Beacham made his 1964 comment as he welcomed the news that the government had granted approval for the University of Otago to obtain sketch plans for a new building to house some of the Faculty of Arts. This was a period of strong central government control over university development. The national University Grants Committee juggled requests for new buildings from the various institutions and made recommendations, which were then approved and funded by the government.

Otago arts student numbers were growing steadily, having doubled to reach nearly 1000 over a decade; they were predicted – fairly accurately as it turned out – to double again by the early 1980s. “Students are being taught in every basement, attic and old house we can bring into use,” noted Beacham. The English department was based in Cameron House, a grand old house which would later make way for Unicol; it also shared space in Lower Studholme, a neighbouring house, with the geography and education departments. Education, one of the largest university departments, also used Marama Hall, while geography had space in Mellor House. Political science and history occupied St Anne’s, yet another old house, once part of Studholme Hall’s accommodation, which would be demolished to create the Unicol site. Classics and modern languages had their home in the old professorial houses, while music, economics and philosophy were in the houses at 403, 411 and 421 Castle Street. Some classes took place in the revealingly named “arts hut”.

A new library was under construction and would open in 1965. Plans were for this to house some of the arts departments – political science, English and geography – until the library expanded to fill the whole building. The new Arts Building would supply teaching space and offices for most of the remaining arts departments. Its site, which had been set aside for a proposed building by the university council as early as 1960, expanded the campus in a new direction.

The site of the new Arts Building is marked ‘Phase I’ in this plan from the 1964 Design Report. The Student Union building is under construction at front left, while in this photo work on the library is yet to commence. Image courtesy of the Hocken Collections, Angus Ross papers, MS-1050/014.

The new building was designed by J.O. Aimers of old Dunedin architectural firm Mason and Wales. His design report of 1964 noted that the long narrow building of six floors would allow for future developments nearby while providing well for “Staff Studies, Seminar Rooms and Research Rooms requiring good daylighting and aspect”. Larger lecture rooms would take up the ground floor space: “This avoids problems in vertical circulation.” Seminar rooms for smaller classes and tutorials were located at the centre portion of each floor, meaning staff offices were in “quiet cul-de-sacs which are desirable in a Faculty of Arts.” Those “cul-de-sacs” would not always be as quiet as the architect anticipated. Ninian Smart, a distinguished religious studies scholar who visited Otago in 1971, recalled “the former dean of arts, reprimanded by the registrar for playing cricket on the matted corridors of the new arts building” (please tell me if you know who that was!). The long corridors would prove a temptation to cricketers of later generations as well – I recall corridor cricket taking place in the history department early in the 21st century.

Building, noted the Otago Daily Times, was “dogged  by Government delays at each stage of planning,” but in 1966 the university received the good news that cabinet had approved a tender from Dunedin firm Mitchell Brothers Ltd for construction of the new building. The total cost, when equipped, would be around £550,000. Occupation was scheduled for 1969, but in September 1968 the builders made an “all-out effort” over two weeks to complete two of the larger ground floor lecture theatres so they could be used by the Dunedin Teachers College. The college’s buildings were destroyed by a large fire on 3 September 1968 and the university – then a separate institution – offered this, along with some other accommodation, as “rescue aid.”

The Minister of Education, Arthur Kinsella, formally opened the Arts Building on 5 March 1969. He noted that the building “was a particularly fine one. The planning had been done economically, and he felt it was good value for money.” These comments were presumably a reaction to the criticism of Prof Eric Herd, dean of the arts faculty, who informed him that the building was “already too small …. Surely it is less expensive in the long run to design a building which will last for 20 years instead of three.” In 1972 the government approved preliminary planning of another larger “arts-library block” – the future Hocken/Richardson Building – which would house several arts departments, allowing others to expand within the 1969 Arts Building.

People sometimes refer to the Arts Building as the Burns Building, as its larger teaching areas are known as the Burns lecture theatres. I was asked recently if these are named after Reverend Thomas Burns, the spiritual leader of the Otago colony and first chancellor of the university, or his nephew Robbie Burns, the poet. I haven’t managed to find the answer yet, but either – or both! – would be appropriate for a building which is now home to the Department of English and the Robert Burns Fellow as well as the Department of Theology and Religion. Others who call the Arts Building home at present are the Departments of Politics, Classics, Languages and Cultures, History and Art History, and the administrative staff of the Division of Humanities.

Like all parts of the university, the Arts Building has seen many interesting people come and go through its history. Though few of its current occupants seem to regret its planned future replacement, it does hold many memories. Do you have any to share?

Maori Club – the early years

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1960s, 1970s, clubs, Maori

Otago University Maori Club and visitors from Canterbury at Otakou Marae in 1974. Standing in the front (left to right) are Roslyn Quick, Talei Pickering, Mere Meanata, Sally Plunket and Brenda Burton. At the back are Ellen Robertson (partially obscured), unidentified Christchurch visitor, Jackie Haimoana, Wilson Whare Isaac, Mori Ellison, Laura Van Peer (behind Mere), Virginia Callahan and Simon Wenley (behind Virginia). Photograph courtesy of Mere Montgomery.

Many student clubs and societies have come and gone over the years, and some have survived through many generations of students. One which has had quite an impact on the lives of its members, and also on the wider university community, is the Otago University Maori Club. The club began in 1960, with law student Te Pakaka Tawhai as the first president; medical student Mason Durie was secretary. Durie, who went on to a very significant career in Maori health and became Professor of Maori Research and Development at Massey University, comments that they founded the club “although there were relatively few Maori students, or perhaps because there were so few” (Maori Medical Practioners Association, Te Paruhi a nga Takuta, 2013, p.99). There were perhaps thirty Maori studying at Otago at the time, and even fewer in the early 1970s.

Not all Maori students participated, but for those who did the Maori Club became an important network. From the beginning, kapa haka was one of its strengths – medical student Bruce Gregory was one of the first haka leaders. Club members performed at various functions, including the capping show. But the social element was just as important to the club as its cultural activities. “We had good parties,” recalls Prof John Broughton, who arrived at Otago as a dental student in 1974. Mere Montgomery (nee Meanata), who was very active in the club in the mid-1970s, recalls that the social side – and especially the food – attracted many students. By that time the Maori Club was one of the largest on campus, with about 80 members. Only 15 or so of those were actually Maori; it welcomed any student who had an interest in learning about things Maori, from haka and waiata to the gathering of kai moana for hangi. Maori, Pakeha, Pasifika and even a turbaned international student were all part of the community. Friendships made through the Maori Club survived after university and some members met their life partners there, with a spate of weddings in the 1970s.

Freddy Rewa (left) and Allan Ngaparu and Murray Goodall (right) attend to a Maori Club hangi in 1974. Photograph courtesy of Mere Montgomery.

The Maori Club was also a place for developing links with Maori beyond the university. Members of the local Maori community provided considerable support and hospitality to students. For instance, the Otepoti branch of the Maori Women’s Welfare League put on regular dinners for students, while Edna Parata cared for the club’s performing gear. Strong links were built with Otakou Marae and later the urban marae, Araiteuru, which some club members helped to build. Local Maori leaders such as Magda Wallscott, Edna Wesley, the Ellisons and the Pickerings welcomed Maori students from the north and helped them retain their sense of Maoritanga while far from home. The Maori Club also built links with students beyond Otago through the national Maori University Students Association. Members travelled to – and occasionally hosted – national hui where they met future Maori leaders from all over the country, and also gained inspiration from Maori graduates of the past.

Beyond the social and the cultural, the Maori Club also had its political side – it provided a voice for Maori on campus. Promoting the Maori language was an important activity for the club, which became involved in the campaign for an undergraduate Maori course at Otago. Club members also played an important part in Te Ra Nui o te Reo Maori – Maori Language Day – from its beginnings in 1973. On the first day, in 1973, they arranged for two speakers from Maori activist group Nga Tamatoa and also Koro Dewes, Maori language lecturer at Victoria University of Wellington, to visit Otago. The following year marked the beginning of an annual Maori Club hui at Otakou marae on Te Ra Nui o te Reo Maori. Some club members were dedicated political activists, like Mere Meanata, who had been involved in the Polynesian Panthers in Auckland and established a Dunedin branch when she came to Otago in 1973. The Panthers ran a homework centre for children from low income families (of all ethnic backgrounds), organised legal advice and visited prisoners. A few other Maori Club members joined her in the Panthers’ social justice activities.

Politics could be divisive at times. For example, not all club members supported the staff member who wanted all University of Otago staff and students to abandon work for a day to hold a hui about the Bastion Point protests – for some, getting on with their academic work was more of a priority. By the 1990s, the Maori Club had split into two groups, one with a focus on kapa haka and the other with more political goals (of course, some people belonged to both groups). Today, the stated aim of Te Roopu Maori is “the advancement of Maori through the halls of academia in every area of science, health, commerce, technology and social science.”

I am grateful to John Broughton and Mere Montgomery for sharing their memories of Maori Club in the 1970s, and to Mere for the wonderful photographs. Do you have any other memories to share of the Otago University Maori Club?

The first four professors

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1870s, 1880s, 1890s, 1900s, 1910s, chemistry, classics, English, geology, mathematics, philosophy, physics, psychology

The physically and intellectually imposing Professor George Sale, photographed around 1876. Image courtesy of the Alexander Turnbull Library, Rolleston album 2. Reference PA1-q-197-11-2.

You’d think it would be pretty tricky to recruit four good candidates to be the inaugural teaching staff of a tiny institution, located as far as it was possible to get from Europe, in a town which was the centre of a colony only a couple of decades old. But Otago managed to secure the services of four outstanding men as its first professors. All were young and presumably attracted to the idea of shaping a new university in a lively new colony; they must have had a considerable taste for adventure.

The oldest, George Sale (1831-1922), was just 39 years old when appointed Professor of Classics in 1870, while the youngest, Duncan Macgregor (1843-1906), was only 27 on his appointment as Professor of Mental and Moral Philosophy. Joining them on the foundation staff were John Shand (1834-1914), Professor of Mathematics and Natural Philosophy, and James Gow Black (1835-1914), Professor of Natural Science.

Sale, a Cambridge graduate, had already spent some years in New Zealand. He migrated in 1860, partly for health reasons, but probably also to escape the conventions of the life of an English gentleman. He worked on a Canterbury sheep run, was first editor of the Christchurch Press, joined the Otago goldrush as a miner, and then returned to Canterbury to become Provincial Treasurer; he later held various official posts on the West Coast goldfields. The illness of his father, a master at Rugby School, prompted his return to England in 1869; there he was selected over 61 other applicants for the Otago chair of classics.

Sale’s three professorial colleagues were all Scots of humble backgrounds whose academic ability had served them well; all had more conventional CVs than the colourful Sale. Black came from a poor Perthshire crofting family and started teaching at 14 years of age; he eventually obtained three degrees from the University of Edinburgh, including in 1869 a doctorate, an unusual and elite qualification in those days. Shand hailed from Morayshire, where his father was a farm steward. Capable in many fields, he excelled particularly at mathematics and obtained a master’s degree from the University of Aberdeen. After that he taught in various Scottish academies and also in the military mathematics department of the Royal Academy in Gosport, England. Macgregor was a mason’s son and another Aberdeen graduate; like Black he came from Perthshire. After completing his MA at Aberdeen, where he excelled in mental and moral philosophy, he graduated in medicine from the University of Edinburgh in 1870.

Fortunately all four men had broad academic interests, because they had to teach a variety of subjects in Otago’s early years. Sale was responsible for teaching English as well as Latin and Greek until the appointment of the first Professor of English, John Mainwaring Brown, in 1880. Shand taught both mathematics and physics (then termed natural philosophy) until 1886, when he was appointed to a newly-created chair of natural philosophy and Frederick Gibbons became Professor of Mathematics. As Professor of Natural Science, Black was responsible for teaching both chemistry and geology until 1874, when Frederick Hutton, newly appointed Provincial Geologist, became lecturer in geology and zoology, allowing Black to concentrate on chemistry. Macgregor’s subject, mental and moral philosophy (sometimes known as mental science) incorporated both philosophy and psychology.

Macgregor left the University of Otago to become national Inspector of Lunatic Asylums, Hospitals and Charitable Institutions in 1886. His Otago career of 15 years may seem long, but it paled next to those of his early colleagues. Sale retired in 1908, Black in 1911, and Shand was eventually forced to leave due to failing eyesight in 1913 after 42 years as an Otago professor. These four remarkable men not only shaped New Zealand’s first university, but also played an active part in the local community and were well-known citizens of Dunedin.

What did the students make of these men? Reminscences written by early students for the university’s jubilee help bring the professors to life. David Renfrew White, who later became Otago’s first Professor of Education, recalled that Macgregor was unconventional, had “no professorial airs or restraint,” and was much loved by his students. His lectures were very interesting and challenging: “there was no drudgery and wearisomeness about this class; the hour was all too short.” He once lit a cigar while supervising a written exam, and “one at least of the students thought that if he, too, were allowed to smoke he would do a better examination paper.”

Shand was “patient with the dullest student, and of a quiet, philosophic temperament. He looked with clear common-sense on men and things,” commented White. Violet Greig, another early student, remembered Shand’s “radiant smile and glorious white hair … I can see him now looking over his spectacles as he stands with that metre rule in his hand waiting for the students to assemble, and I can hear him now dictating our ‘expiriments for tu-marra’ …” The kindly Shand was a “born teacher,” commented Thomas Pearce: “who will ever forget his blackboard performances, his cancellations and eliminations and reductions from complexity to simplicity.”

Black was energetic and genial and “always doing kindnesses to someone” remembered Greig; he was a popular president of the university’s football association. His classes could be exciting and sometimes literally explosive. Greig could “still hear the thud of the rock sulphur on that table as the doctor held it high and threw it noisily down to impress upon his students that it was one form of sulphur.” Pearce  commented on his “ebullient nature” and original turn of phrase; “students flocked to his classes not to learn chemistry, but to feel the magic force of his originality.”

Sale was a highly respected scholar who was “a splendid guide” to anybody with an interest in classics, recalled 1890s student John Callan. Unfortunately many Otago students did not have an interest in, or gift for, Latin, which was a compulsory subject: “our knowledge of classics must have been a source of continual torture to the professor,” wrote John O’Shea. Callan commented that, if Sale struggled to teach adequate Latin to “the rest of us, he at least kept us in order, partly by his gift of crushing sarcasm, but more just by being what he was, a silent, massive man, full of unutterable possibilities.” He was a keen athlete, who preceded Black as president of that all-important football association.

1890s student John O’Shea sums it all up well. “I have heard it said by older students that when Sale, Shand, Black, and Macgregor taught the University the students felt that they were led by giants. I knew the first three in their later days, and I can believe the statement.”