Shedding Light: a history of St Columb’s Anglican Church Hawthorn through its stained glass windows
MALCOLM WOOLRICH
Port Adelaide: Green Hill Publishing, 2023
REVIEWED BY STEPHEN HALE
Malcolm Woolrich’s history of St Columb’s Anglican Church, Hawthorn is a remarkable achievement. There are many church histories of particular parishes and each in their own way are useful records of the life of a particular church. Most are reasonably modest publications for understandable reasons.
Shedding Light is remarkable in both its scale, quality and ambition! 500 pages, full colour, meticulous research from a wide range of sources, hundreds of pictures. I was tempted to weigh it on the scales because it is in every sense weighty!
Malcom initially set out to write a book about the 32 stained glass windows in the church. This evolved into using the windows to tell the story of the church and to use the windows to thematically capture the many different aspects of the church and its life, worship and witness since it was founded in 1883. More especially it is a wonderful reflection on the Christian faith as captured in each of the windows.
The book starts with a fascinating introduction on the place of stained glass windows in church history and the journey from the 3rd century to today. It is then broken up into 7 chapters that thematically reflect on the key themes reflected in the 32 windows in the church. If it was just a beautiful book with lovely photos and a description of each window that would have been good, but one could suggest, of limited interest. Rather each of the windows is put into its context and then connected with what was happening in the world (especially two world wars), society and the church in Melbourne and Hawthorn.
Hawthorn in 1883 was an outer suburb and it grew rapidly. As the suburb grew so did the church. In its heyday over 500 people filled the pews at each of the three Sunday services. It had a huge Sunday School and groups for just about anything you can think of – sporting, social, welfare, musical, educational, women and men, the wealthy and the needy. We all know it was a different world from today and it is a remarkable insight into the nature of that era. We tend to assume that it was a time when church attendance and involvement was not connected to deep faith, but more a standard part of middle-class society. The book dispels that myth with the stories and depictions of mission endeavour, both local and abroad. There was a keen sense of worship, growing in faith, as well as a desire to serve and actively support the needy and the marginalised.
The book is full of surprises like the outreach to the Chinese market gardeners and the challenges offered by the clergy in responding to our first nations people, which must have been controversial in their day. I did like the line on page 241 ‘parish leadership appeared unconducive to good health’, which went on to describe a bout of illness suffered by Rev Nash.
The book tells the stories of hundreds of people and their lives, faith and actions. The decline of St Columb’s in the late 20th Century is described as well as its renewal under the leadership of Rev Neil Bach and those who have followed on from him. St Columb’s distinctive and unbroken commitment to being an evangelical church is also captured. A fascinating appendix tells of the Nash controversy in the 1930’s!
Shedding Light is full of theological and pastoral insight, especially as it describes the wonderful windows which capture the range of the words and actions of Jesus. As such it is more than history, but a beautiful work of devotion as we seek to respond to and live out Christ’s example and teachings today.
Bishop Stephen Hale is Chair of EFAC Australia and EFAC Global.