Paul Thomas: Some things do change, but not always for the better

COMMENT

I went to church last week. It's not something I make a habit of but this was a special occasion: it was 62 years to the day since my father became an ordained minister of the Anglican Church.

He grew up on a tenant farm in Wales, west of Carmarthen, supposedly Merlin's home town, where Welsh was the first language.

The lord of the manor was Lord Kylsant, an English shipping magnate who was jailed for issuing a false prospectus.

Some things don't change.

The Great Depression set in. He left school at 13 to work on the farm. Five years later he went to theological college.

World war broke out. He volunteered for the Army but was turned down because theological students, like coal miners, were in a reserved occupation, meaning their value on the home front was considered greater than their potential contribution on the battlefield.

A schoolyard soccer player, he took up rugby on a dare and made the college's first XV. These days, theological students don't play rugby as a rule, and society's well-being isn't dependent on a guaranteed supply of vicars - or coal for that matter.

He became a curate in the Welsh seaside town of Laugharne, the model for Llareggub ("bugger-all" spelled backwards), the setting of Dylan Thomas' play for voices, Under Milk Wood. He met the poet once, in the bar of Brown's Hotel.

He went to Cambridge University and heard Bertrand Russell declaim against the war.

He played for the combined Oxford-Cambridge team against the famous New Zealand Army team, the Kiwis, and was kicked in the shins so badly that he was in danger of missing the annual Varsities match at Twickenham and thereby forfeiting his Blue.

The injury healed in time. His father came up for the game, the first time he'd been to London or seen a rugby match. Cambridge won and my father had his picture in The Times, shaking hands with King George VI.

He graduated and married a red-headed Irish Wren he'd met at Brown's Hotel. The war was over but rationing was still in force. You received less than 350g of meat a week.

Despite Bertrand Russell, he re-volunteered for the Army and was posted to Palestine where the Stern Gang was waging a terrorist campaign aimed at driving out the British and securing a Jewish state. Some things don't change.

He went to a parish in North Yorkshire. The winters were severe - 2m of snow - and he suffered a serious and mysterious illness that focused his vague notions of emigration.

That same winter Dylan Thomas died in New York, aged 39. Alcohol was the prime suspect.

Patagonia was too Welsh and Canada too cold, so he settled on New Zealand. We arrived in Timaru in January 1955. It didn't rain for four months and there were power cuts. Some things don't change.

The parish had been through eight vicars in 18 years and there were no records of who was or wasn't a churchgoer, so he visited all 670 families on his patch. A confirmed atheist said he was the first churchman who had ever visited him. My father took his funeral.

He coached the Boys' High Old Boys senior team and in 1960 joined the No Maoris, No Tour protest against an all-white All Black team going to South Africa.

We moved to Christchurch, then Auckland. Anglicans were split over the ordination of women. At one meeting a delegate stalked to the dais, glared at the audience for 30 tense seconds, then bellowed, "There's a saying among us Maoris: if a hen crows, wring her neck". That was all he had to say.

We never discussed religion. One Christmas I gave him a book by the controversial Catholic theologian Hans Kung.

He looked at it and me with bemusement, as if to say, "What's wrong with T.P. McLean's latest rugby book?"

He'll be 86 soon. The day after the service he came around with his chainsaw and helped me to cut up logs for firewood. If he was a young man today, I asked, would he join the church? Probably not, he said.

Sixty-two years ago, most people were practising Christians, the church was involved in the day-to-day life of the community and a vicar had an important and clearly defined pastoral role.

Since then religious belief has waned in most Western societies. Organised religion has tried watering itself down and jazzing itself up but has failed to arrest its slide into marginalisation.

Some things do change.