Auckland launches diocesan history
Janine Baalbergen
| 28 May 2011
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Chris Honore and Allan Davidson holding their copies of Living Legacy, the new Auckland diocesan history.
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Bishop John Paterson, the driving force behind the history, seen here with Adrienne Puckey, Margaret McLure and Allan Davidson.
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The ten authors who contribued chapters to Living Legacy, the new released hisotry of the Diocese of Auckland.
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Bishop Ross Bay commends Allan Davidson, the editor of Living Legacy, for his labours.
At last, the Anglican Diocese of Auckland can read the full sweep of its story.
Living Legacy , as the new diocesan history is titled, was launched on Friday 27 May in the presence of its authors, collaborators, numerous bishops, two deans and several hundred well-wishers.
The Rt Rev’d John Bluck, who has worked in every single Diocese in this country and resides within the Auckland Diocese these days, has read the book and told the gathering that it captured Auckland’s character perfectly.
“It is readable, beautifully bound, illustrated, designed, a book that will be around for a long time. You can show it off on your coffee table. This Diocese deserves a heavy book like this.”
“A diocese is not defined by its buildings, its cathedral or its bishops,” he said.
“A diocese is defined by its story, the narrative that has been created by a journey of faith, a pilgrimage made by a particular people of God across a landscape like nowhere else through a history like no other. Living Legacy puts its fingers on what makes Auckland so different from the rest.”
“The achievement of this book is this: in a diocese that is too big to be manageable most of the time, too diverse in its theologies to be easily coherent, too poor despite its wealth to afford to offer even half of the ministry it needs to offer, too full of contradictions, to make much sense to any outsider, and most insiders as well, the story that binds this diocese is as elusive as an eel and Living Legacy has caught the eel and it succeeds in catching us up in its story.”
“Living Legacy also shows how precious and how fragile the bicultural part of our story is, how easily it comes unstuck and its tells us how much work there still is to do in realising the dream of partnership between Maori and Pakeha, bound by justice and truth by Gospel and Treaty.”
The book’s editor, the Rev’d Dr Allan Davidson, managed to convince no less than nine other authors to contribute to Living Legacy . He said his biggest dilemma had been how to capture the richness of the past.
“How do we do justice to the many people of faiths, the buildings, the institutions which are all part of the fabric and being of this body we call church?
“The past in many ways shapes the present, and it is from the present that we go into the uncertain future, but as people of faith we are part of a living legacy, not confined or imprisoned by the past.”
The driving force behind the book has always been the Rt Rev John Paterson, the newly retired 10th Bishop of Auckland.
As early as 2004 he’d been urging both General Synod and the Auckland Diocesan Synod to do something about writing down the story of the beginnings of the Anglican faith in these islands, and in this diocese.
About time too, many would say. After all, our Bicentennial is now only four years away.
Said Bishop John: “We can be grateful to Dr Allan Davidson for bringing together the work of a diverse group of scholars whose contributions endeavour to record our history so a greater understanding of our tasks, our achievements and our failures can be reached.
“The men and the women of the Diocese of Auckland are the real stars of the story."
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