Adolescent religious experiences

Church at Papatoetoe

 

In my eighth year we left the cosy, happy, child-friendly world of the Sandringham Baptist Church for a different environment at Papatoetoe.  The Sandringham Church was in a new, developing suburb, recently founded as an offshoot from the strong Grange Road Baptist congregation.

 

Papatoetoe was a church which had arisen from a collection of people from Baptist, Open Brethren, and other backgrounds who had found no sympathetic congregation in the sparsely settled, semi-rural district of Papatoetoe. This meant it was more conservative and exclusive than Sandringham.

 

Not that the theological niceties worried us as children.  Papatoetoe had a large and growing Sunday School, with lots of potential friends our own age.  There was plenty of opportunity for enjoyment at social events like picnics, camps and social evenings, especially as we grew into the exciting new world of teenage years.

 

And during the later years of the war, Paptoetoe became the site of a large US Marine camp, which housed large numbers of Southern Baptist young men, who swelled our congregation on Sundays, and our dinner table following the services.

 

Baptist Churches were founded on the doctrine that commitment to Christianity was a decision which each individual person had to make for themself; it is not good enough to accept passively the tradition of one’s village or family. This commitment, which was usually described from pulpits as “accepting Jesus Christ as Saviour” was talked about every Sunday evening at the 7 pm service, and from time to time in Sunday School as well, so it was no surprise to anyone elese when I succumbed to this constant brainwashing, like most of my friends.

 

A few years later, it was expected that one confirmed this commitment by following the practice of “Baptism by full immersion”, which consisted of being ducked in a full baptistery by the minister during what was called a “baptismal” service. The baptism was supposed to demonstrate that one was following Jesus through death, burial and resurrection, as St Paul had taught in the New Testament Epistles. So I did.

 

Again, the emphasis on active commitment to one’s ideals and principles, exemplified by this central Baptist tenet, has been an important part of my thinking about life.  My father’s baptism had taken place in the sea at Milford Beach during a Bible Class Easter camp there; no commitment behind closed walls for him!

A Bible Class camp group, my father front left, me in the diamond-pattern shirt.

Paul Cooke, who has been a great friend for the last 30 years, on the right.