The Patriarchs

Code 1080462

ISBN 9780646517117

204p paperback

There have been Lutheran schools in Australia for more than 170 years.

This book examines the first 80 years of that history through a series of biographies of the patriarchs, those educational leaders who established

the rich traditions which still influence the church and its approach to formal

schooling. The eight profiles in this book not only cover the broad sweep of Lutheran educational history from1839 to 1919, but also explore the personalities of people who were leading players in its development.

Book review
RJ Hauser, The Patriarchs: A History of Australian Lutheran Schooling, 1839-1919, Lutheran Education
Australia, North Adelaide.
With good reason the Board for Lutheran Education Australia commissioned a history of Lutheran schooling
in Australia to be written, and with good reason Richard Hauser was asked to do the job. A church school
system that has grown to 37000 students has a history that needs to be told, because without an
understanding of the history there can be neither a clear sense of identity nor an informed perspective for the
future. Even apart from the appropriate beard, Richard Hauser’s photo could be tacked on to the row of
persons depicted across the top of the book’s cover, because with almost forty years experience in teaching
and leading in Lutheran colleges Richard is a sort of modern ‘patriarch’ of Lutheran schooling. The writing
and presentation of this carefully researched book, with its imaginative headings and brilliant use of old
photos, is in itself an advertisement for the excellence of history teaching and pedagogy in Lutheran schools.
One of the marks of a good book is that you don’t want to put it down once you start. This is no dry-as-dust
chronicle, but a lively history that engages the reader as it interprets the formative decades through the
stories of eight key players who both typified and shaped Lutheran schooling through their varying
contributions to it. By taking readers into the lives of these eight persons, they are given a close-up and
personal perspective on the history, warts and all, sins and weakness and all, grace and forgiveness and
all—a history that despite many failings comes with a long list of astonishing achievements.
‘The Patriarchs’—the title itself is a little confronting, but then our author is not one to duck issues. These
men were patriarchs in the positive sense in that they were ‘the pioneers of character, the fathers with
influence, who established the Lutheran schooling tradition in Australia’ (p 27), and negatively in that they
presided over a system that discriminated against women, despite the fact that Lutheran schooling had to be
co-educational by virtue of its self-understanding in connection with the doctrine of the ‘priesthood of all
believers’..
Of course no book is perfect, and people have various ideas about what might be lacking. I for one would
like to hear more about the connection between the gospel at the heart of the church’s proclamation and the
tradition of schooling which Lutherans in Australia have always seen as one of its essential tasks.
At one level Richard Hauser provides a well-written and witty ‘good read’ that will entertain, stimulate, and
cause one to reflect. At another level here is a book that will surely become an indispensable text-book for
people wanting to be involved in Lutheran schooling in Australia, whether as teachers, other staff members,
students, pastors or interested laypeople.
Dean Zweck
Australian Lutheran College
North Adelaide SA