together. Both Stuart Tipple and Michael Chamberlain saw tragic, premature deaths in their families when they were very young, followed by grieving and a search for spiritual rejuvenation. Stuart lost his father through complications from an asthma attack when he was 13 years old, Michael his brother, Geoffrey, though illness when Michael was only seven. Even Lindy, though not having tragedy in her early life, had it in her family history. Her mother, Avis Murchison, was only four years old when her father died and in her early teens when she lost her mother. This obliged Avis to become housemother to two brothers and it might have left her with a strident, authoritarian streak, passed on to Lindy. Both Tipple’s parents belonged to the Seventh-day Adventist (SDA) Church. Michael’s mother, Greta, brought up a Baptist, converted to Seventh-day Adventism following family trauma. Michael turned to Adventism because of another traumatic experience.
Lindy’s father, Cliff Murchison, was an SDA pastor. The church was established in Australia in January 1886, when 29 members met in Melbourne. It was established in New Zealand in October 1887 at Ponsonby, an inner suburb of Auckland. That year, Ellen White, an SDA pioneer from America, co-founded Avondale College, Cooranbong, as the “Avondale School for Christian Workers”. Cooranbong, in the Lake Macquarie hinterland, was on flat, rather marshy countryside, idyllic in some ways but rather isolated, perhaps a good place for a spiritual retreat and contemplation but hardly outward-looking, though the trainees were to go out into the world. The college’s primary purpose was to train missionaries and school teachers to move out into other parts of Australia, New Zealand the South Pacific rim and sow the seeds of its education and health message in the context of “apocalypse now”.
The SDA church, a New World church coming so lately onto the scene in Australia and New Zealand, after Old World Christian churches had established themselves, made headway as a revivalist movement. The SDAs preached the imminent Second Coming and the need for Humanity to be prepared for it. They were to live good lives, abstain from alcohol, preferably practise vegetarianism, observe the moral principles of their Christian faith, keep physically fit and turn themselves out neatly. The SDA Church stuck to the letter of the biblical text by observing the Saturday Sabbath, a point where the mainstream churches differed, saying the SDAs were taking the Fourth Commandment about observing the Sabbath to an extreme and it did not matter when the Sabbath fell.
Stuart Graeme Holden Tipple was born at Blenheim, on New Zealand’s South Island, in 1952, a third-generation New Zealander. His grandfather, John Tipple, an Anglican, had fought with the British Army in the Battle of the Somme, showing great proficiency as a sniper. In 1924, John migrated from Suffolk to New Zealand and took up employment as a builder. John Tipple’s wife died when his son, Frank, was very small. John brought up his two children by himself. Hearing about a new principal, sporting a Master’s degree, coming to the local SDA school at Papanui in suburban Christchurch, he sent Frank there. Frank finished his schooling and then went to Longburn College, an SDA establishment at Palmerston North on New Zealand’s North Island. At this time, Frank decided to become a Seventh-day Adventist. He met his wife-to-be, Margaret Gardener, a Seventh-day Adventist and a direct descendant of the great Scottish Reformation theologian, John Knox. The couple fell in love and they were married in Wellington. A son, John, was born in 1948, followed by Stuart in 1952, David in 1955, Trudi in 1958 and Barbara in 1964.
The Tipple family moved to Christchurch where Frank, not confident that the building trade he was engaged in could give him a steady income, decided to study for a Master’s degree in Education. The years Frank spent studying were difficult for the family because everyone had to be quiet at night while Frank studied. Frank graduated in 1961, joined the Education Department and was posted to Fairlie in rural New Zealand, near Lake Tekapo, looking out on New Zealand’s Southern Alps. Being the only Seventh-day Adventist family in town, the Tipples were looked at a little askance, but the family came to love the Fairlie community and because the family lived on a rural property, Stuart took quickly to the outdoor life. He also took a fancy to table tennis. The family didn’t have a table tennis table so his father set Stuart up a small table the father had used to help with his wallpapering. Because the table was small, Stuart had to acquire faster reflexes, and that enabled him to win the Fairlie junior table tennis championship.
After two years, Frank Tipple was transferred back to Christchurch, where the family settled in the suburb of Papanui. The fifth child, Barbara, was born in 1964. Frank became Geography master at Avonside Girls’ High. Stuart went to the Papanui SDA Church where, at the age of 11, he met Peter Chamberlain, younger brother of Michael, who was about the same age, and they struck up a friendship. Stuart was invited to the Chamberlains’ farm where Stuart met 21-year-old Michael. Stuart saw that Michael, a very presentable young man, was doted on and pampered by his mother. Stuart and Peter began hunting ducks, rabbits, hares and deer.
Michael Leigh Chamberlain was born in Christchurch, on the South Island of New Zealand, on 27th February 1944. His great-grandfather, William Chamberlain, had built one of the local Methodist churches and had, reportedly, raised a militia in New Zealand to send people to fight in the Boer War. Michael’s father, Ivan Chamberlain, was a warrant officer at the time, serving as a pilot instructor in the Royal New Zealand Air Force. Ivan married Greta and after the war took to farming and served as a Methodist Church trustee. Michael, their first-born, was given the middle name “Leigh” probably in memory of Samuel Leigh, the great Methodist missionary.
Michael was brought up an 81-hectare farm on the Canterbury Plains outside Christchurch. He had ill health as a child, surviving a bout of tuberculosis. He had a younger brother, Geoffrey, born with spina bifida, who died in 1951. Michael was to write: “I was too young to understand. I just saw the tragic consequences of my mother Greta’s spiritual struggle to keep Geoffrey alive. She was searching for an answer: What’s wrong with us? Why is this happening? Why is an innocent struck down? (These were questions I too had cause to answer later in life). My mother was a very religious Baptist woman. In her quest for hope, mother attended all sorts of spiritual experiences, some weren’t Christian. My father didn’t want to know about my mother’s spiritual search. I don’t think he knew how to deal with it. It was too painful. My mother even went inadvertently to a spiritualist who used charms, pendants and pendulums, hoping they could somehow save Geoffrey.”
Peter Chamberlain was born in 1952, and life resumed. Even that – a child born replacing one who had died – was to be repeated in Michael’s life. In the meantime, Michael went to Lincoln High School in Christchurch, where he became a prefect and represented the school in athletics, Rugby Union, tennis and cricket and was the captain of the 1st X1. Michael finished his schooling at Christchurch Boys’ High School and in 1963, he enrolled at Canterbury University in a Science degree, thinking he might become an industrial chemist.
Greta Chamberlain in her quest for spiritual fulfilment settled on Seventh-day Adventism and took Michael and Peter with her to the SDA church. In 1963, Michael suffered a serious motorcycle accident. He was counselled by an SDA pastor. During his convalescence, he thought about the serious issues in life and as a result decided to convert from Methodism to Seventh-day Adventism. He completed a second year of his Science degree in 1964 and then in 1965, at the age of 21, elected to become an SDA pastor and to travel to Australia and study theology at Avondale College.
At the time Michael Chamberlain embraced Adventism, the SDA church was changing. As author Lowell Tarling was to observe, the church was then seven or eight generations old and was “growing up”. It had dropped its sectarian characteristics and was becoming a proper denomination. Michael Chamberlain was to point out in his book, Beyond Azaria, Black Light/White Light, that in the mid-1950s two American protestant theologians had concluded that the SDA Church was not a cult at all. The problem was – and this was to come out later – the Seventh-day Adventists were still regarded as separate and to some extent exclusive; they were right, others were wrong, they would achieve salvation, others would not.
The problem facing Adventists was further compounded by the fact that they tended to stay with their own kind. Tipple said: “Most Adventists live their lives in a bubble. They are born SDAs, they
