Honour My God - Scripture at STHS (Paul Feldman)

It was a hard road to salvation for the Reverend RN Langshaw. Week after week, he stood before us in the dim back quarter of the auditorium, and week after week we teased him, rattled him, and brought forth from him the persecuted Christian. His pouchy, querulous face pursed, frowned and grimaced.

These were testing times for a 60 year old divine.  Billy Graham might have had the penitent masses queuing in the rain at the Sydney Showground, but these boys! Call them the best school in the St George district? Where was the discipline? When they sought to drown out the Lord's word with animal noises, loud humming and wild silly laughter, where were those good men who smote impious youth with rods? And that headmaster! You could look him in the eye and tell him that his boys were the worst-behaved in Sydney, and already lost to God, and what does he say? He says he's wanted on the telephone.

Was scripture like this for those of us who were not Church of England?  I learned at the age of five that I was something called 'Church of England' because everyone was, unless they were something else. My informant was an older boy (later, the same boy told me that school was the boss of me from the moment I went out the door until the moment I got home.) So that was how it was. I  had to go to Scripture and hear all about God and Jesus. (I already knew that Jesus had something to do with knowledge: 'Jesus Christ!' said the man next door. 'Where are those bloody hooks?')

Scripture Classes: a succession of men, most in late middle-age, began to appear in front of us, usually late in the morning. At Infants school there was a friendly old chap, a little like the English actor Stanley Holloway, who told us stories from the Old Testament. Through the terrible reign of Miss Peachey, a vigorous smiter of youth, I found comfort in his words about Daniel in the Lions' Den and took refuge in the tunes of certain hymns. This man came closer than anyone to  bringing me to God. I pleaded for my parents to visit the church one evening, as a family. Of course, I got to watch cartoons while my parents got a soft-sell about sending me to Sunday School. Still, I came close to disappointment when my father said he didn't believe that superstitious nonsense...

My first scripture teacher at Tech was a pharmacist with conviction, named Smythe - a red-haired man who put on a determined show of annoyance at our laziness and lack of interest. He made us bring exercise books, and dictated lists of Biblical facts to us, which we were then examined on a half-yearly basis. He tried to shame us into trying harder, by matching us against Narwee Primary.  Like Frazer, he wanted to see maximum colour in our books. As a cheerful insult to my father, I had decided to come top in scripture. A lesser McGonigal of Art, I tried hard with the cover of my exercise book. The result was an overweight Jesus with a Beatle haircut ascending to Heaven on a thought balloon. My book got ten out of ten 'because I cared'. Arkinstall (of 'The Plough' fame) didn't care, and what was worse, he argued with Smyth about the authority of The Bible.  Arkinstall was going to Hell. (He went instead, to the Public Service.)

Smyth begat Langshaw, who eventually left in a lather of vexation and was replaced by the Reverend Lindsay Bovis. A broad-faced man in a bad suit, Bovis faced down the animal chorus with weary contempt, and kept talking. There was something painful about him, which I later recognised as middle age.  The Reverend Bovis had been 'Called from business life'. You never knew when you were going to get The Call, it just happened. He wasn't expecting it, but it happened, and look at him now. Look at this suit I'm wearing, it's a bomb. I was a businessman and I could afford to wear good clothes and drive a decent car. But now I can't.  The Government says you need religious instruction and I'm going to give it to you. You don't care. I can tell you're not interested. But I'm going to give it to you, because I care. Apart from a burdensome sense of duty, religion seemed to have done nothing for him.

Stanley Holloway excepted, those men missed their mark badly.  They looked at the boys in front of them and saw spoilt lazy beings they could not reach, and retreated to their own displeasure. 'Plough' Arkinstall eventually responded to a challenge from two Christians and attended Inter School Christian Fellowship meetings - admittedly conversion did not follow, but that would indeed have been a miracle...