The universe is our parish

Why I bought a share in John Wesley's chair

The chair floating in orbit on my front page was a challenge to me because it was owned by Methodist founder John Wesley who used it as a platform for speaking in towns and fields all over England. Thousands came to hear him, but he was only 150cm tall, so he would not have been seen or heard without this chair.

This actual chair was on sale in Auckland a few years back and I and a few other people from Pitt St Methodist Church bought it.

There was a negative twist. The reason he was preaching in the open air was he had been banned from numerous pulpits in his home church, the Church of England.

He was reluctant to go open-air at first but came to welcome the opportunity to speak to wider audiences and he joked: "The world is my parish."

He was active in a worldwide range of topics - slavery, prisons, mental hospitals, healtlh care and supported people in these areas, well beyond the usual image of a Christian evangelist.

So a few years ago I took courage from this picture.

• I had been a Minister from 1962 to 1971

• I found I was not cut out for administering a parish, so I resigned and took up and equally exciting career in journalism, still active as lay preacher, and working in Methodist and the Catholic magazine Zealandia at two stages of my career.

• I made an application to return to the Methodist Ministry in 2000, doing a post-graeduate paper in a Master of Theology degree to update my training. I was accepted, but the parish I was earmarked for turned out to be unsuitable. I did two supply ministries, in Henderson and Pitt Street, but then returned to journalism.

• So I started a website labelled wesleyschair.com, using Wesleys chair as my theme.

• As a Christian atheist, I also took courage from one of Wesleys classic sermons that was way off the agenda of most Christians. He called it A Caution Against Bigotry. He said God doesn't use only Methodists to do his work. He also uses Catholics. He also uses Muslims, etc. And at the end of a long line of God's allies he said God also uses Deists - people who don'believe in a personal God at all. So I figured that included me.
  

In 2012 this opened doors. As Christian atheist I joined the NZ Association of Humanists and Rationalists. They welcomed me, and the very night that I joined they set up what later became known as the Secular Education Network, and invited me as a religious member to seek support from other religious people.

That widened my parish even further, because my lobbying reached Muslims, Jews, Hindus, Buddhists. Some gave evidence for our Secular Education court case.

A high point for me was hosting a panel of people from these religions in December 2022, to discuss the Governments plan to include teaching about all religions and non-religious philosopies in its curriculum. They all favoured this!! A spokesperson for the Rationalists and Humanists also attended and discussed the value of including Humanism in the curriculum as well, and so did a spokesperson for the Secular Education Network. So we (briefly) had atheists and believers working together on this human rights cause.

In 2023, I moved to Takapuna Methodist Church and was delighted to find that they are atheist friendly, and welcome all kinds of contributions including mine.

I became a member of their leaders meeting, and they accepted my suggestion of starting Zooming Newsies, a current affairs group that meets on Zoom, and is now into its fifth month.

Members suggested we make the studies available on-line, so we can catch up on meetings we miss and share them with others. So I took this website out of mothballs, to make this material available to all interested people, including Methodists nationwide. I'm writing this on 2 August 2024, and it's not completed yet.

And since we meet on Zoom I've also inviting people outside Takapuna Methodist Church to join these discussions.

So far, we've hosted experts or people personally involved in the issues we want to study, including political expert Steve Hoadley on the Israel-Palestinian war, two transgender church leaders telling their stories and Black Power leader Denis O'Reilly on the government plan to ban the wearing of patches in public

On August 12, starting 7.30pm we will be studying the abuse of children in state and church care, including Methodist institutions led by religious history professor Peter Lineham, who helped the Royal Commission prepare its report.

Then I hope to post the earlier discussion papers.

Our Zooming Newsies posts will cover these addresses, and if you'd like to take part in future discussions, email me at davidhines5708@gmail.com, or phone 027-325-1382, to get a link to join in.

Our meetings will generally be on the second Wednesday of each month - the August meeting was put forward two days to fit Peter's timetable.

I hope you'll find this helpful.

David Hines, convenor.

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