“We live in uncertain times. People are looking for identity”. This is a quote from Dawn Casey, the newly appointed director of the Sydney Powerhouse Museum. She believes that museums have an important role to play in shaping a community’s identity.
Dawn Casey’s goal is to promote the Powerhouse Museum as Australia’s premier museum in the areas of science and technology. In order to achieve this she has a wish list of improvements to the site at an estimated cost of $25 million. She accepts that currently in NSW, when hospitals and roads are the more pragmatic concerns of the government of the day, it may be difficult to argue for budgetary increases for the museum. Her rationale for a strengthening of the museum’s image is that at times when nations perceive their national identity to be in need of re-invigorating, regardless of their economic strength, part of the governmental strategy is to build or revamp their national museums. She points to nations such as South Africa, Vietnam and Germany where the shaping of a new national and cultural identity have gone hand-in-hand with refurbishment of national museums (Sydney Morning Herald, 21.3.08).
Given that there is some sense of uncertainty about our denominational identity, and that the goal of our Taskforce is to re-invigorate a sense of Baptist identity, perhaps one of our strategies ought to be the establishment of a Baptist Museum in Sydney.
Anyone who read “Weird and Wonderful”, the very amusing article on five of Sydney’s more quirky Museums in this month’s Sydney Magazine, might cringe at what would be found in a museum devoted to NSW Baptists. Images of large sepia photographs of bearded men arranged next to dusty artefacts from tribal regions of Papua New Guinea and Northern Australia. Perhaps we won’t do that.
In fact we do have a kind of a museum. The Baptist Archives are located on the Morling College Campus. The archives do indeed hold many sepia photographs of people, churches and events. They also contain early church records, old minute books, still photographs and films, and all kinds of documents that chronicle the activities of our churches since Baptist work began in NSW.
There are three reasons why the Archive is important for cultivating a sense of Baptist Identity today. The first is so that our sense of ourselves is based on fact not myth. We can only forge a healthy sense of identity if we have a realistic understanding our origins. By examining our past we may come to understand that some of the so-called villains may have had rather more complex motivations and insights than we at first believed. In contrast some of our heroes may have possessed some fairly human flaws. In turn this understanding allows us to have either more compassion for our predecessors or allows us to think that if this flawed person can achieve this then so too can I.
The second reason for the importance of a holding place for records of the past is the emotional connection they allow us to hold with our predecessors. Church Minute books are the every day account of a functioning church. They may seem to be dull reading but they provide the reader with a picture of how groups of believers seek to live out the great commission in their local area. On the one hand the subject of the maintenance of the pastor’s bicycle (a recurring topic in the Minute books of the Millthorpe Baptist Church) may seem mundane. However, on reading the accounts of such meetings it is clear that the concern is the ease and efficiency of the pastor’s travels in order for him to be with the people in his care. Details of the minutia of life in another era connect us with people of the past and remind us of the commonality, despite the separation of time, of our cause and our goals.
A third reason for the significance of the archives is that it supports the research work of students and academics who have a professional interest in Baptist History. It also assists the work of enthusiastic amateurs and groups such as the Baptist Historical Society.
On 1st May the Baptist Historical Society is hosting a lecture on the life and ministry of the Reverend John Saunders in the Morling College Chapel. Saunders was the second Baptist minister in NSW and an outstanding reformer for the rights of indigenous people, convicts and the poor. It will be a good opportunity for those of us who are able to attend to reflect on our origins and to consider ways to integrate traditions of social action with into our contemporary Baptist identity.
I believe that an accurate account of our past is necessary for the formation of a healthy identity. We don’t have a museum, and in truth we don’t really need one. However, we do have a working archive that, by its very existence as a place where historical records are ordered and organised, contributes in some part to the shaping of an authentic Baptist identity for the future.
Kristine Morrison is a midwife and attends Ashfield Baptist Church.
Dawn Casey’s goal is to promote the Powerhouse Museum as Australia’s premier museum in the areas of science and technology. In order to achieve this she has a wish list of improvements to the site at an estimated cost of $25 million. She accepts that currently in NSW, when hospitals and roads are the more pragmatic concerns of the government of the day, it may be difficult to argue for budgetary increases for the museum. Her rationale for a strengthening of the museum’s image is that at times when nations perceive their national identity to be in need of re-invigorating, regardless of their economic strength, part of the governmental strategy is to build or revamp their national museums. She points to nations such as South Africa, Vietnam and Germany where the shaping of a new national and cultural identity have gone hand-in-hand with refurbishment of national museums (Sydney Morning Herald, 21.3.08).
Given that there is some sense of uncertainty about our denominational identity, and that the goal of our Taskforce is to re-invigorate a sense of Baptist identity, perhaps one of our strategies ought to be the establishment of a Baptist Museum in Sydney.
Anyone who read “Weird and Wonderful”, the very amusing article on five of Sydney’s more quirky Museums in this month’s Sydney Magazine, might cringe at what would be found in a museum devoted to NSW Baptists. Images of large sepia photographs of bearded men arranged next to dusty artefacts from tribal regions of Papua New Guinea and Northern Australia. Perhaps we won’t do that.
In fact we do have a kind of a museum. The Baptist Archives are located on the Morling College Campus. The archives do indeed hold many sepia photographs of people, churches and events. They also contain early church records, old minute books, still photographs and films, and all kinds of documents that chronicle the activities of our churches since Baptist work began in NSW.
There are three reasons why the Archive is important for cultivating a sense of Baptist Identity today. The first is so that our sense of ourselves is based on fact not myth. We can only forge a healthy sense of identity if we have a realistic understanding our origins. By examining our past we may come to understand that some of the so-called villains may have had rather more complex motivations and insights than we at first believed. In contrast some of our heroes may have possessed some fairly human flaws. In turn this understanding allows us to have either more compassion for our predecessors or allows us to think that if this flawed person can achieve this then so too can I.
The second reason for the importance of a holding place for records of the past is the emotional connection they allow us to hold with our predecessors. Church Minute books are the every day account of a functioning church. They may seem to be dull reading but they provide the reader with a picture of how groups of believers seek to live out the great commission in their local area. On the one hand the subject of the maintenance of the pastor’s bicycle (a recurring topic in the Minute books of the Millthorpe Baptist Church) may seem mundane. However, on reading the accounts of such meetings it is clear that the concern is the ease and efficiency of the pastor’s travels in order for him to be with the people in his care. Details of the minutia of life in another era connect us with people of the past and remind us of the commonality, despite the separation of time, of our cause and our goals.
A third reason for the significance of the archives is that it supports the research work of students and academics who have a professional interest in Baptist History. It also assists the work of enthusiastic amateurs and groups such as the Baptist Historical Society.
On 1st May the Baptist Historical Society is hosting a lecture on the life and ministry of the Reverend John Saunders in the Morling College Chapel. Saunders was the second Baptist minister in NSW and an outstanding reformer for the rights of indigenous people, convicts and the poor. It will be a good opportunity for those of us who are able to attend to reflect on our origins and to consider ways to integrate traditions of social action with into our contemporary Baptist identity.I believe that an accurate account of our past is necessary for the formation of a healthy identity. We don’t have a museum, and in truth we don’t really need one. However, we do have a working archive that, by its very existence as a place where historical records are ordered and organised, contributes in some part to the shaping of an authentic Baptist identity for the future.
Kristine Morrison is a midwife and attends Ashfield Baptist Church.
1 comment:
Kristine is right on the money, the archives are a great resource and I'd just like to thank Ron Robb and his merry band for the great work they have done and continue to do.
Hefin Jones
Chatswood Baptist
Post a Comment