By Steve Weatherbe

PATRICIA ROOKE had already abandoned her Marxist rearing for Catholicism when she began her doctoral thesis work on the Protestant missions in the West Indies.

But she hadn’t integrated her faith with her career. She had intended her study – for a history PhD at the University of Alberta – to use a Marxist framework.

“But it did not work,” she says today from her Victoria home. According to the Marxist theory the missionaries could only be working in the interests of their middle and upper classes, and as such, should have enjoyed the support of the West Indies plantation aristocracy. In fact, the upper classes persecuted the missionaries severely because the latter taught the slaves and freedmen to read and write.

“Some people will say, ‘But they only taught them scripture and obedience to their masters,’” says Rooke. “But with those tools the Christian freedmen started schools for the slaves and other freedmen and organized the trade union movement.” Christianity also held great appeal to women slaves, she notes, because it gave them a moral reason to resist the sexual advances of male slaves and white masters.

Rooke pursued the Protestant revival in England and its social justice fruits in anti-slavery and child welfare.

Such studies gave her a new way to understand history, not as the great and irresistible movement that Karl Marx described, leading inevitably to Communism, but as the story dependent on the actions of individuals with free will. “I came to believe that a core in all of history is individuals acting out our own lives and destinies.”

A high regard for history was one of the gifts bestowed on Rooke by her Communist father, because, she says, “Marxism is an historical approach, even though its version of history is a perverted one.” Two other gifts were her skill at teaching and speaking: she used to accompany her father on his expeditions to a Melbourne park where he would orate for Communism.

What turned her against the teachings of her father were the deceitful actions required of her as a young party member and public school teacher in Australia.

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“We were infiltrating the teachers’ union but we never would admit it. We lied about it and there was something in me that knew this was immoral. The Communist Party taught that it was amoral, something that had to be done for the good of the people.”

Looking for spirituality in the late 60s led her inevitably to eastern religions, but with her own attitudes shaped by a love of history, she decided it made more sense to look at her own cultural roots for spirituality. “My issue was with God. Nothing else really mattered. Once I had accepted God, nothing about the Virgin Birth or the miraculous was a problem. The world calls them preposterous but nothing is as preposterous as God.” Studying the theology behind the Protestant revival also forced Rooke to do her homework on Catholic teaching.

However, personally integrated Rooke was able to become in her career and faith, she was not able to “come out of the closet” academically. “Fundamentalists had it worse than Catholics,” she said. “My fellow academics think Catholics are superstitious, but they think Fundamentalists are idiots because they believe scripture and probably creationism. I had a good career but I am glad to be out of it.”

Since retirement to Victoria, Rooke has devoted her efforts to teaching church doctrine and history for St. Andrew’s Cathedral. In both categories interest has exceeded her expectations. She expected 45 people for her latest course (offered for the whole Diocese of Victoria) on the history of Christianity in the first six centuries, and so far 65 have enrolled.

“Older people are more interested in history, I think because as we get older we want to put our own lives in context. The classes on doctrine have more appeal for younger people, because they have been fed pretty thin gruel both by Catholic schools and by priests from the pulpit for 40 years. They are afraid to tackle the hard teachings. Young people have a real hunger for some real meat.”

In a way, Rooke is making up for her years in Australian schools, when she used her position to deliver a subversive, Marxist perspective. Now she helps young and old understand and defend Christianity.

October 2007