Days of future past
Today there is lamenting over Israel Folau. The Australian rugby player has had the audacity to articulate his Christian faith on social media.
New Zealand’s belief in freedom of religion and freedom of expression is being tested. No matter that millions of people around the world would agree with Folau, or that his statement concerned the consequences of sin in the next world rather than sexual politics in this one.
A century ago religious freedom was challenged in Hamilton. In time of war, claims of conscientious objection on grounds of faith were looked on with extreme skepticism. So it was in the case of Tamahere farmer S. S. Bovill.
The Waikato Times was at pains to point out that Bovill was very much an exception. When the Second Military Service Board sat in Hamilton in late July, 1917, to consider his appeal against conscription, ‘‘it had been sometime’’ since they had to deal with the issue of conscientious objection. Bovill ‘‘bobbed up serenely’’ before this august body, declaring himself a member of the Christian ‘‘sect’’ known as ‘‘The Brethren’’.
Mr Rosser, chairman of the board, responded that ‘‘the tenets of this particular sect’’ did not qualify Bovill for excemption on religious grounds. Moreover, many of his fellow Brethren were already at the front, dying for king and empire.
Bovill retorted with scripture. Chapter and verse were recited, though presumably not those passages from the Old Testament given to celebrating violence and Jehovah’s wrath.
The Holy Bible was ‘‘the tenet of his creed’’, said Bovill and ‘‘the war would not conclude until the Lord willed it’’.
Rosser replied dryly, stating that ‘‘you evidently want the Lord to do the lot’’. Bovill declared that ‘‘the war was caused on account of sin’’.
A reasonable enough assertion, whatever one’s faith or lack thereof. A compromise was reached.
The board decided that as Bovill was the only man left on his dairy farm that he could better serve the war effort at home.
‘‘Your temporal claims are stronger than your spiritual ones’’, observed Rosser. ‘‘No. Christ comes first’’, replied Bovill.
Israel Folau would but agree.