Changes & Chances
Chapter 16 A Great Sadness
After Hunter’s departure the elderly English missionary-priest W S Kelley filled in for four months until W Coleman (May 1916-April 1919) arrived. He was remembered for introducing weekly celebrations of the Holy Communion on Sundays at 8 am and on the appointed feast days during the week, breaking with the custom of two celebrations per month.
When the Armistice was declared he was in Bandung, so he returned to Batavia as soon as possible to hold a Thanksgiving Service on 17 November “for a large and genuinely thankful congregation”. He reported in the diocesan magazine about the reaction to the Armistice that “it is no exaggeration to say that about eighty per cent of the English population hope to get home some time this year.” What he did need not to say was that almost every British resident of Java had a close relative who had either been killed or seriously wounded in the war.
The most visible legacy of the war was the substantial memorial on the rear wall of the church:
Erected by the British Community in Batavia to the memory of their fellow countrymen from Java who fell in the Great War 1914 - 1918.
A quick search on the Commonwealth War Graves website yielded details about all the men listed on the memorial. The last of the eleven names was “P N Hunter M.A. Chaplain to the Forces”. Of the other ten, nine were officers, comprising four second lieutenants, two lieutenants and two captains. Four served with Scottish regiments. The average age of the eight is thirty years. None of them appear to have been born in Java. The memorial helps profile the typical British male resident of Java at the halfway mark in the church's history as typical officer material: an early middle-aged businessman, managing a bank, a shipping line, a trading company, a factory or a plantation, as often as not a Scot.
The legacy of the war went beyond impressive memorials. There was a profound effect on the European psyche, evident in the churches' shift from robust, expansionist optimism to an anxious, introspective and cautious mood. Before the war the ecumenical movement's focus had been on world evangelisation, as evidenced by the Edinburgh Conference of 1910. After the war there were new agenda as is evident from the next two major ecumenical conferences. The 1925 “Universal Christian Conference on Life and Work” focussed on the application of Christianity to social, economic and political life, while the 1928 “World Conference on Faith and Order” focussed on the theological basis of the Church and its unity. The pastoral letters of the bishop of Singapore, leading what was still a colonial outpost of Western Protestantism, also reflected this change of agenda.
Many members of the British community in Java served in what was optimistically called “the war to end all wars”, including five of the Java chaplains: Hunter, Sowerbutts, Sillitoe, Cribb and Moore. The trench warfare of the Western Front saw unprecedented casualties, which numbered not only the dead and wounded but the psychologically traumatised. Post-traumatic stress disorder had not yet been identified, the closest category for this neurosis being bluntly termed “shell-shock”. With the medical profession not yet equipped to provide counselling and psychiatric services to the huge number of emotionally disturbed veterans, the churches played a central role in their care. An important ministry was to provide opportunities to remember those killed, missing or incapacitated. The “The Great War” memorial is the most impressive in the church and the best church attendances between the wars were on Remembrance Sunday, the anniversary of the signing of the Armistice. The accompanying British Legion Poppy Appeal, which assisted the casualties of the war and their families, was always generously supported
After Hunter’s departure the elderly English missionary-priest W S Kelley filled in for four months until W Coleman (May 1916-April 1919) arrived. He was remembered for introducing weekly celebrations of the Holy Communion on Sundays at 8 am and on the appointed feast days during the week, breaking with the custom of two celebrations per month.
When the Armistice was declared he was in Bandung, so he returned to Batavia as soon as possible to hold a Thanksgiving Service on 17 November “for a large and genuinely thankful congregation”. He reported in the diocesan magazine about the reaction to the Armistice that “it is no exaggeration to say that about eighty per cent of the English population hope to get home some time this year.” What he did need not to say was that almost every British resident of Java had a close relative who had either been killed or seriously wounded in the war.
The most visible legacy of the war was the substantial memorial on the rear wall of the church:
Erected by the British Community in Batavia to the memory of their fellow countrymen from Java who fell in the Great War 1914 - 1918.
A quick search on the Commonwealth War Graves website yielded details about all the men listed on the memorial. The last of the eleven names was “P N Hunter M.A. Chaplain to the Forces”. Of the other ten, nine were officers, comprising four second lieutenants, two lieutenants and two captains. Four served with Scottish regiments. The average age of the eight is thirty years. None of them appear to have been born in Java. The memorial helps profile the typical British male resident of Java at the halfway mark in the church's history as typical officer material: an early middle-aged businessman, managing a bank, a shipping line, a trading company, a factory or a plantation, as often as not a Scot.
The legacy of the war went beyond impressive memorials. There was a profound effect on the European psyche, evident in the churches' shift from robust, expansionist optimism to an anxious, introspective and cautious mood. Before the war the ecumenical movement's focus had been on world evangelisation, as evidenced by the Edinburgh Conference of 1910. After the war there were new agenda as is evident from the next two major ecumenical conferences. The 1925 “Universal Christian Conference on Life and Work” focussed on the application of Christianity to social, economic and political life, while the 1928 “World Conference on Faith and Order” focussed on the theological basis of the Church and its unity. The pastoral letters of the bishop of Singapore, leading what was still a colonial outpost of Western Protestantism, also reflected this change of agenda.
Many members of the British community in Java served in what was optimistically called “the war to end all wars”, including five of the Java chaplains: Hunter, Sowerbutts, Sillitoe, Cribb and Moore. The trench warfare of the Western Front saw unprecedented casualties, which numbered not only the dead and wounded but the psychologically traumatised. Post-traumatic stress disorder had not yet been identified, the closest category for this neurosis being bluntly termed “shell-shock”. With the medical profession not yet equipped to provide counselling and psychiatric services to the huge number of emotionally disturbed veterans, the churches played a central role in their care. An important ministry was to provide opportunities to remember those killed, missing or incapacitated. The “The Great War” memorial is the most impressive in the church and the best church attendances between the wars were on Remembrance Sunday, the anniversary of the signing of the Armistice. The accompanying British Legion Poppy Appeal, which assisted the casualties of the war and their families, was always generously supported
