Robert John HEWETT

HEWETT (ROBERT) JOHN (b. Williamstown, Vic, 13 Jan 1894; d. Sydney, NSW, 5 June 1984). Mission society organiser.

John Hewett, fourth son of Robert Henry Hewett, engineer and Susan née Stephens, grew up in the Melbourne waterfront area of Williamstown, and despite his Methodist family background was drawn to the ministry of the local Anglican church. Educated at Williamstown Central School and Melbourne Technical College, he worked as a printer. He worked with YMCA aboard the hospital ship Kanowna 1917-18. His acquaintance and later marriage to Winifred Dakin, of an active Sydney evangelical family prompted Hewett to train for Anglican ordination in the Sydney diocese at MTC.

Ordained in 1922, and after a curacy at St Clement's, Marrickville (1922-24), Hewett moved to the CMS Sydney office, as assistant to, and then as deputy general secretary of the NSW branch (1925). That year he organised the celebration of the centenary of CMS in Australia. CMS UK was urging CMS in Australia to take over the CMS work in Tanganyika. G A Chambers (q.v.) volunteered to lead this project: and it fell to Sydney, and to Hewett, to mobilise the home support.

After ministry in St Paul's, Wahroonga, 1928-31, he moved hack to CMS, firstly as organiser of the Tanganyika appeal, then as general secretary of the CMS NSW (1933-35). In 1933 H W K Mowll (q.v.) came to the diocese and Hewett became one of his inner core of trusted lieutenants, firstly in key evangelical parishes (Chatswood 1935-37,

Mosman 1937-45) and then in the CMS, 194549 as federal secretary. He was appointed a Canon of St Andrew's Cathedral in 1945 and archdeacon of Ryde in 1956.

Hewett was an excellent instrument for Mowll's extra-diocesan vision for the post-war Australian church. Within Australia the CMS organisation was extended and strengthened in all state capitals. These branches were focal points for evangelical Anglican activity. Clerics, suitably flexible, but sound of mind and heart, were sent from Sydney to lead them. In particular, Hewett's Victorian origins also enabled him to handle the traditional Melbourne-Sydney CMS polarity with positive good sense.

Simultaneously Mowll headed the nationwide joint episcopal appeal for South East Asia and Hewett worked with R K Sorby Adams, the erstwhile Singapore Headmaster in doing the groundwork. There were propitious overseas contacts. CMS UK, was anxious to meet the new post-war South East Asian situation with a greater contribution from the Australian CMS. CMS UK found Hewett an able, flexible negotiator. Bishops who had survived the Japanese visited Australia and they graphically demonstrated the 'missionary opportunity to the north' now open to the Australian church.

The result was openings for Australian CMS missionaries in Malaysia, Singapore and North Borneo, and ultimately Indonesia as well as Hong Kong. On the other hand CMS attempts to secure entry to other closer areas for Australia (New Guinea, Melanesia etc) were not welcomed, and evangelical initiatives in those places largely passed into non-Anglican channels. The same was largely true of Japan itself.

Hewett's strengths were administrative, not public leadership. He steered CMS policy through a period of rapid and radical change in the 'ex-colonial churches', encouraged CMS branches to maintain a lively ministry through summer schools, conventions, and deputations, and found recruits and finance. From 1945-60 CMS income quadrupled, and the number of missionaries doubled.

There were problems of growth and a changing political environment e.g. for Aboriginal work in NT, which Hewett had largely delegated to his fellow Victorian, J B Montgomerie (q.v.). There was a rising tide of nationalism in Africa and East Asia. Much more was being asked of missionaries, there was an increase in early retirements, and a plain need for better pre-service missionary training. Furthermore, Mowll, with his intimate knowledge of, and influence in, the world wide missionary movement, died in 1958. But by then CMS Australia was soundly established as a vigorous self-governing body, with its own distinctives as a national, Anglican Australian organisation.

Hewett had a long retirement as a rather colourful older churchman.

L M ABBOTT