Religious Objectors in World War One New Zealand

Religious Objectors in World War One New Zealand

While looking through online New Zealand newspaper articles on family members on the website Paperspast to see what I could find. I came across an interesting article about one family member Herbert Milverton who in 1917 had declared that he was a religious objector as he was a Christadelphian. I found this to be interesting as I found several other articles throughout 1917 that began in February and went on until August. I knew I would have to do some research about the objectors in New Zealand, but first I will include the time line of events before explaining about New Zealand having compulsory service during WW1.

The Evening Post, 13 Feb 1917

 Wellington Recruitment district (No.5)

Under the list of people who had been called up from the 4^th ballot to fill vacancies in the 27^th and 28^th Reinforcements.

Milverton, HC. Gardener, 25 Jessie St.

The Evening Post, 13 March 1917

Religious Objections

Herbert was now before the Wellington Military Service board where he was refusing to serve in the military under religious grounds. He stated that he was a Christiadelpian and had been for the last 12 years. His appeal was dismissed and was suggested that Herbert to be given a non-combatant duty.

Dominion, 23 August 1917.

Sessions Resumed

Herbert Charles Milverton of Te Aro, a religious objector had his appeal allowed at the Third Wellington Military Service Board.

Feilding Star, 24 August 1917

Herbert a Christadelphian and another agreed to sign a statutory declaration and their appeals were allowed.

During World War One in New Zealand compulsory military service was passed on 1^st August 1916 as the Military Service Act as the government wanted to guarantee the supply of reinforcements. There had been the National Registration Act of 1^st October 1915 that provided a register of men between the ages of 17 and 60. The 1916 Act would be used by the government to ensure ‘shirkers’ would be hunted down and unable to avoid military service. The Act had similarities with its counterpart in the United Kingdom. After debate in parliament there was inclusion in the Bill allowing for religious objections when at first there were no grounds for conscientious objection. In 1917 new regulations allowed religious objectors to be taken out of military control and placed in non-combatant work on state farms controlled by the Agricultural Department.

Three religious groups were able to qualify as religious objectors and be exempt from service. These groups were The Society of Friends, The Christadelphians and The Seventh Day Adventist. They were sent to alternative service with the Department of Agriculture while others were treated more severely from goal sentences, deportation, compulsory front line service or non-combatant duties.

This information I gathered from several books in the National Army Museum in Waiouru and the staff there was helpful. I do believe there would be more information in the future on Herbert Milverton other than him being listed as being in the First Reserves in WW1, but I have not found a service record. I am guessing that he ended up on a farm though I do not have any ideas about the sort of conditions he would have received. There might be another blog about this at a later date, but for now this amount of information would provide a basic insight into New Zealand at war. There are other stories of Objectors being forcibly sent overseas to serve and of their treatment when they had arrived. Some stories are very graphic and people did write about their experiences.

Sources:

Pugsley, Christopher On the fringe of Hell: New Zealanders and military discipline in the First World War, pp. 224 – 225.

Holland, H.E. 1868 - 1933 Armageddon or Calvary: The Conscientious objectors of New Zealand and the process of their conversion, p. 244.

Dominion, Volume 10, Issue 3171, 23 August 1917, Page 4  

Evening Post, Volume XCIII, Issue 62, 13 March 1917 religious objections

Evening Post, Volume XCIII, Issue 38, 13 February 1917, Page 3

Further Reading

conscription conscientious objection and pacifism

New Zealand - Religious objection

ABC Conscientious objectors during WW1

Australian feminist historians

Australian feminist historians

The history from below movement did reach Australia in the form of feminist historians during the 1970s. When people think about feminism they think about writers like Germaine Greer’s The Female Eunuch or Betty Friedan with the Feminine Mystique. The actual historians who attended universities throughout Australia like Ann Curthoys and Beverley Kingston are usually overlooked. What people tend to focus on the issues of the time like women’s rights and equality. Books about women’s roles in the history of Australia began appearing as before then people would usually write about the male role and the writers were mainly men themselves. People usually think of the Second Wave feminism as the only feminist type movement when women were actually fighting for rights like voting back in the late 1800s with the suffrage movements.

The feminist literature and history coincided with the increase of women entering universities that had began in the early 1960s. Some during this time had been involved with protest movements within Australia like the Freedom Ride in NSW and anti-Vietnam war movements. Women studies had increased during the 1970s when more women were present and several in the mid 1970s has their PHDs or their Masters under their belt when they became lecturers in the universities like Beverley Kingston who had her book published around this time. Many women were looking into the roles of their female counterparts of the past. Text books began changing to include women when women had been largely ignored or their role in society had been omitted.

Before the 1970s there had been little interest in researching women in Australian history. The year of 1975 meant that it was International Women’s Year, which meant more publications would be published from books to journals. The most common books to appear in 1975 Australia were actually Beverly Kingston’s My wife, my daughter and poor Mary Ann, Anne Summers Damned Whores and God’s Police, Edna Ryan’s The real Matilda and Anne Conlon’s Gentle Invaders. Of these major publications they are known about today and still used for historical research. There were myths around that the Australian woman was better off from other women in the world. Much in the way of literature showed women in Australia to be very different from the reality of what was actually occurring. Women liberation or feminist magazines began appearing during the 1970s like the Refactory Girls and Hectate. They did spread around to different parts of the country where different branches existed in the Australian states. Some did not last for very long and others lasted until the 1980s. Many periodicals had appeared during the International year of the woman alongside the books. There has been within the feminist history during the 1970s something that had been lacking within their research. This had been the research of the Aboriginal woman, although this history would be looked at in later years. The feminist would usually look at the history of white woman and almost ignoring that of Aboriginal people.

Local or regional histories that had been written were usually written by women and were not thought about under the term of feminist writing. These were written around the 1920s and 1930s with The Country Women’s Association promoting competitions for the study of rural history. Many of the people involved with writing these were local women who ended up writing about their local community. History is usually interchangeable at times and there are many changes or revisions that tend to occur especially when politicians become involved especially during the Whitlam election and the feminist movement was thought to have gone until the early 1980s. There are thoughts that the movement was still around into the 2000s and not a whole new movement.

Sources

Arrow, Michelle ‘It has become my personal anthem’, Australian Feminist Studies, 22, 2007, pp. 213 – 230.

Curthoys, Ann ‘Gender studies in Australia: A history’, Australian Feminist Studies, 15, 2000, pp. 19 - 38.

Curthoys, Ann ‘Race and gender in recent Australian historiography’, Journal of Interdisciplinary gender studies, 1, 1995, pp. 1 – 9.

Curthoys, Ann ‘Feminism, Citizenship and national identity’, Feminist Review, 44, 1993, pp. 19 – 38.

Curthoys, Ann ‘Visions, Nightmares, Dreams: women’s history, 1975’, Australian Historical Studies, 27, 1996, pp. 1 – 13.

Curthoys, Ann and Docker, John Is History Fiction?, Sydney, UNSW Press, 2010.

Davison, Graeme The use and abuse of Australian history, Crows Nest, Allen & Unwin, 2000.

Gilding, Michael The making and breaking of the Australian family, St Leonards, Allen & Unwin, 1992.

Kingston, Beverley My Wife, My Daughter and poor Mary Ann, Melbourne, Thomas Nelson, 1975.

Kingston, Beverley ‘Home truths from the 1970s: Twenty years on’, Australian Historical Studies, 27, 1996, pp. 30 – 36.

Kingston, Beverley ‘Women in the nineteenth century Australian History’, Labor History. 67, 1994, pp. 84 – 96.

Jones, Megan ‘Historicising feminist knowledge: Notes toward a genealogy of academic feminism of the 1970s’, Australian Feminist Studies, 13, 1998, pp. 117 – 128.

Sewer, Marion ‘The impact of feminist scholarship on Australian political science’, Australian Journal of Political Science, 39, 2004, pp. 553 - 566. 

Summers, Anne Damned Whores and God’s Police, Camberwell, Penguin, 2002.

Thompson, E. P.  ‘Preface from The making of the English Working Class’, The Essential E. P. Thompson, New York, New Press, 2000, pp. 3 – 8. 

Comparing the deities in Hinduism and Christianity in the early years

Comparing the deities in Hinduism and Christianity in the early years

Note*

When writing this essay though it will have changed from that as I will have included more it made me feel in certain parts that I was writing something like the Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown. It has some of the ideas and I am used to writing history and not philosophy. I could have included a Babbelfish somewhere, but I know this blog would be awful regardless. I wasn’t sure what to call the Christian God like with Yahweh or just God. I stuck with God instead.  This blog would seem not to be covering the foundation period, but generally covering the periods.

Religions around the world are vastly different and people will always have differing interpretations to their religion. The foundation periods or early period for the deities from the two religions of Christianity and Hinduism were very different from each other. Religion used the worship of deities or the lack there of to explain the world around them and how the world came into being. Religion as a whole has the function to either bring people together or divide them into different categories. Religion nearly always has belief in one define being usually referred to as a God or The God. When looking at the deities within different religions there are several areas that may come under the interpretation of a deity. There has been the view of differences between that of the historical accounts of Jesus, his actions while alive and that of how he could be seen after the resurrection. Gods are interpreted differently along with their polar opposites being those of Satan or Hindu demons. The afterlife and the human soul both have different interpretations between the actions of the Gods or the one true God depending on the interpretation and how they are viewed around the world. Many Gods within Hinduism are based on nature and have explanations on how the world works such as weather events.

The Gods in religions are seen as both finite and infinite. They are there to explain myths so that the senseless world people live are made sense of and the stories empower people with the belief. Religion is the gathering of different beliefs into one that includes festivals, rituals and specialised people who tell stories for people to follow. Christianity is supposed to have been designed for people to easily understand the beliefs. In Christianity the religion is all about those of faith and belief especially when there is a huge difference between that and Judaism where there are different views towards Jesus. Judaism does not view the man as a Messiah at all. To put simple God’s revelations are placed into the here and now and their relevance is explained to people for their understanding. Within Hinduism there are many gods that are worshipped from the main ones like Siva or Shiva, but within the community there could be a pantheon unlike what is shown within Christianity. God according to people is meant to be transcendent and wholly independent from anything else in the universe. The world and people who live there are considered to be entirely dependent on this being. In Hinduism humans are part of some game that is played by their God. Everything within that life is ruled by that God down to the smallest detail.

Jesus could be viewed as two different deities and these will be placed in two different parts. The first deity of Jesus would be that of the man who performed deeds within the community where he resided. There have been many different views towards how the man himself lived especially from his birth. The birth could be viewed as being by divine will and act as his mother Mary had become pregnant as though it was a miracle. There was no possible way she could have become pregnant other than by divine means. The acts Jesus would later perform as an adult could be viewed as those of deities. There are similarities within the life of Jesus that could be explained within Hinduism. The life, death and rebirth aspect of his life could be considered to be that of the circle of life with that of the human soul. In Christianity, Jesus is considered to be that of the messiah who brings the message of Christianity to the people. He has many different roles that set him apart within his teachings. The miracles that Jesus performed for the people are well known today with the events of feeding a large group of people and that of walking on water as examples. The miracles teach people about their connection with the kingdom of God.

The second part to the deity of Jesus is his rebirth otherwise known as his resurrection, but has other interpretations too. There is the running thought where Jesus and his resurrection could be that of his baptism that is another way of rebirth. This would place the rebirth or resurrection into a whole new context. The resurrection does not make Jesus on a higher plane as that of God.  Jesus is actually on a lower level that that of the one God himself who is the creator. There is an argument about the resurrection as God himself taking on the appearance as a human and perform the acts that Jesus would perform. The resurrection of Jesus after several days takes on the meaning of being divine and a new incarnation. This means the rebirth is that of someone’s life or destiny is being fulfilled. Jesus is known to have inner divinity as that is well known that anything else in his life. What is considered to be that of mystical is considered in regards to that of Jesus is that to mean he could be classed as a deity. His story grows bigger with the telling after each person he crosses path with. Hinduism does have another view for the resurrection and that would be mentioned when considering the soul as deities themselves.

The God deity between Hinduism and Christianity are vastly different between the people who worship them and how they are explored by the people. The Christian God is usually described in mescaline terms as being the father, son and spirit. The three terms also come under another name known as the Trinity. The Trinity does bring up issues whether God is actually female in some way or form even though he is considered to be male. The belief in God being one, but also three is unique from Judaism and Islam. God is seen as being one being and is divine. The God of the Jews has thought to have been superseded by the God of Christ. The Christ God has been considered to be a completely new God that has been created. This would mean there are two Gods within similar religions. If God is uncaring and cold towards humanity, then why did he create the world is some of the questions that have been asked towards the action of the Christian God. Many would have unanswerable questions towards the action of any deity that is worshipped.

The deities within Hinduism are vastly different to that of the Christian God. The Hindu Gods are represented in many forms as they are symbols that point towards something that is beyond our comprehension. Each form are represented by the various views and worshipped for a lifetime. The Vedic Gods are taken from nature and explains how the world was created and the actions of the multiple Gods. The numbers towards the Gods in Hinduism does change upon each asking until the number is one. There are other religions that have similar views in regards to their Gods. The Gods usually come in three main forms. These are the Creator (Brahma), Preserver (Vishnu) and Destroyer (Shiva). The gods are meant to stand above the world as finite beings. Their roles are different to what they are meant to do as their roles as deities are important either as creator, protector or destroyer of the world. Their images are different depending on who interprets the image.  Shiva and Vishnu are classic Gods of Hinduism and are the primary deities. They are portrayed differently within the Vedas. 

Another major difference between Christianity and Hinduism is the worship of the female deities. In Christianity there is the lack of female deities while in Hinduism there are quite a few that are considered for worship. Some of the Gods could be considered to be sexless and having both parts of the two genders while the female form in Christianity has been hidden. The male and female parts of the figure that is Siva are one and not separated. This represents the totality of nature. Siva could change his form to that of animals found in nature. Many of the Hindu Gods can be worshipped as the mother figure like Kali who has been described as being of a divine nature. Female Gods are often seen as playing two roles. The first roles are usually that of bringing life and the other is to bring death in the form of disease to mankind. The female Gods can also be wild demon slaying virgins or the wife of a God. Many of the Vedic Gods in Hinduism have female counterparts as companions though the male Gods are usually more prominent. Some are seen as being of neither sex too. Kali and Siva are two Gods that are closely related to that of death and destruction. They are usually seen as being both male and female.

The opposite side of the coin exists in both Hinduism and Christianity and that is the presence of evil including demons and evil gods themselves.  Demons appear throughout Christianity and are seen as erratic behaviours within people. These are seen as people being possessed by either demons or Satan himself. Hordes of demons that are together are known as Legion. Satan can take the form of either human or that of a supernatural being. He is considered to be that of God’s opposite similar to that of the ying yang in other beliefs. The presence of the devil is meant to represent the Original Sin and that of evil. The use of the name of Jesus is supposed to cast the demons out of people’s bodies and gives you the power to control the unseen. Jesus is supposed to have cast out demons from a person and placed them into pigs. Demons in Hinduism are vastly different to that of Christianity. The local or community Gods that are meat eaters are not considered to be demons, but ‘fallen Vegetarians’. The deities are usually categorised by what they consume, which is either meat or are vegetarians. The meat eating Gods require bloody sacrifices and are considered to be different from the ones that are vegetarians. The sacrifices are performed outside of temples usually with blood mixed into rice offerings.

Within both Hinduism and Christianity the soul of a person has great consideration and is something that is of value. The soul itself can be eternal so this could mean that it would have to be classed as a deity in itself. The soul is different when put together with Christian beliefs and those of Hinduism. In Hinduism the soul belongs to one of the Gods so the actions of man could be that of a God and linked with Siva. The soul is supposed to be loved by the God and is handled in the pursuit. God is the father of the soul so all belongs to him. The human souls known as Jiva come into being mysteriously possibly by that of God’s power. The soul is meant to pass through different bodies as time goes on into a bigger vessel. This is known as reincarnation, which is an endless passage through life, rebirth and death. The soul eventually migrates into a human body where it gains experience. The human soul within Christianity is something that could either lead to salvation or damnation when someone dies. Another way this could be seen is as a positive and negative. There is the thought that one would be either staying for eternity in heaven or hell. The soul might not be fit for either eternal life or even eternal torment so would be going from life to life. The soul is meant to travel from life to life and the worlds in a way continuous existence without stopping in between. There are other religions that do cover the resurrection into other beings quite heavily and their actions are towards other people and animals are held into account.

Hinduism and Christianity are vastly different when comparing the deities between both religions. Every religion is different and all have their way of explaining things in life and how the world operates. One would have to have a fair idea what they would compare their God with and what they interpret as a deity in their religion. Some have multiple Gods and others have just one main God that they worship. The biggest differences between the two religions were that of the female deities. Hinduism worships the female deities and some are just companions to their respective Gods while Christianity worships one main deity although Jesus himself could be considered a deity. Jesus in Christianity has two different forms. That of the man before his resurrection and what occurred after the resurrection. Within all religions there is a presence of evil that can linger in many different forms. These can range from strange behaviours in people and caste out by invoking various words or even beings that have fallen from grace and began consuming bloody sacrifices. The afterlife and peoples soul could be held by the Gods themselves like they are playing an eternal game of tug a war to see what happens when every event that occurs within the human existence. The comparing of deities from different religions can provide stark differences between the two and an understanding on what happens within the religion when comparing the lives of the deities. Humanity is explained by the use of deities and their actions that could be held in account.

Sources used

Barua, Ankur ‘Myth as metaphysics: The Christian Saviour and the Hindu Gods’, Sophia, Springer, 51, 2012, pp. 379 – 393.

Conybeare, F. C. ‘Christian Demonology. IV’, The Jewish Quarterly Review, 9, 1897, pp. 581 – 603.

Crawford, Gregory A. ‘Dictionary of Deities and demons in the bible’, Reference and User services Quarterly, 29, 2000, p. 294.

Fuller, C. J. ‘The Hindu pantheon and the legitimation of hierarchy’, Man, 23, 1988, pp. 19 – 39.

Gross, Rita M. ‘Hindu female deities as a resource for contempory rediscovery of the Goddess’, Journal of the American Academy of Religion, 46, 1978, pp. 269 – 291.

Henry, Martin ‘How Christian is Christian Mysticism?’, Irish Theological Quarterly, 64, pp. 29 – 117.

 

McClymond, Michael James ‘Jesus’, The rivers of paradise: Moses, Buddha, Confucius, Jesus and Muhammad as religious founders, eds. David Noel Fredman and Michael J. McClymond, Grand Rapids, W. B. Eerdmans, 2001, pp. 390 – 456.

Pagels, Elaine H. ‘What became of God the mother? Conflicting images of God in early Christianity’, Signs, University of Chicago Press, 2, 1976, pp. 193 – 303.

Pratt, Douglas ‘Christianity: Foundation phenomena’, Religion: a first encounter, Auckland, Longman, 1993, pp. 95 – 111

Pratt, Douglas ‘Hinduism: expression phenomena’, Religion: a first encounter, Auckland, Longman, 1993, pp.194 – 208. 

Radhakrishnan, S. ‘Hinduism’, A cultural history of India, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1975, pp. 60 – 82.

 Siniscalchi, Glen ‘Early Christian worship and the historical argument for Jesus’ resurrection’, New Blackfriars, Oxford, Blackwell Publishing, 2011, pp. 710 – 732.

Smith, Heston The World’s Religions, New York, HarperSanFrancisco, 1991.

Stokes, Ryan E. ‘The devil made David do it.. or “did” he? The nature, identity and literary origins of the Satan’, Journal of Biblical Literature, 128, 2009, pp. 91 – 106.

Zaehner, R. C. ‘Brahman’, Hinduism, London, Oxford University Press, 1962, pp. 47 – 74.