John Archer

John Kendrick Archer (3 March 1865 – 25 July 1949) was a Baptist Minister, Mayor of Christchurch and member of the New Zealand Legislative Council.

Early life

Archer was born in Leicestershire, England on 3 March 1865, the son of Mary Kendrick and her husband, Thomas Archer, a master butcher. John was raised as a Methodist and educated at Market Bosworth Grammar School, Leicestershire, and University College Nottingham. From 1888 to 1891 he attended Midland Baptist College, Nottingham.

In 1901 he made a tentative entry into public life, being elected to the board of Hebden Bridge Grammar School. He was a poor law guardian at Grimsby from 1907 to 1908.

He married Phoebe Elizabeth Gee on 10 July 1894 at the Baptist chapel, Peterborough, Northamptonshire and they had two sons. Rev Archer and his family came to New Zealand in 1908.

Legislative Council

He was a member of the New Zealand Legislative Council 1937–1949.

Death Described as 'a man of war from his youth up', Archer was a blunt, some suggested abrasive, man. Certainly, he was not one to compromise his principles or the message which he believed had been entrusted to him by God. His preaching and actions reflected the moral righteousness and millennialism of British puritanism and the urgent and total commitment to social change of the Old Testament prophets such as Isaiah and Amos. Nonconformist in religion and politics, he argued that 'faith without works is dead' and that imperfect human relationships arose out of economic and social injustice caused by sin, which he defined as selfishness and the worship of material self-interest. To Archer there was no conflict between his political and religious activities; both were the same sacred vocation.

In 1944 the Archers celebrated their golden wedding. In 1949 ill-health forced Archer to retire from the Legislative Council. Rev Archer died in Christchurch on 25 July 1949. He was survived by his wife, Phoebe, and two sons.

Phoebe Elizabeth Archer, 87, died on 13 November 1953. The Baptist Union bought the couple's home at 166 Colombo Street and obtained a pound for pound subsidy from the Government with the intention that this should become 'a home for aged Baptists of the Canterbury-Westland Auxiliary Area'. Eventually the property was vested in the Baptist Union of New Zealand and the emphasis on the residents being Baptists removed. Instead the home would provide the residents with 'a maximum of individuality' and 'comfort and Christian fellowship for their declining years'. The institution was named in John and Phoebe's honour 'as an expression of thanksgiving to Almighty God for the outstanding and devoted service of the late Rev. and Mrs. J. K. Archer and as a permanent memorial'.

One of the Archers' sons, Kendrick Gee, was born at Heptonstall in the historic county of the West Riding, Yorkshire. He was educated at Napier and at Southland Boys' High School. In 1914 the Royal Humane Society awarded him its bronze medal and he graduated with an LL.B. from Canterbury University College, before practising as a barrister and solicitor in Christchurch.