Alan Brash

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Alan Anderson Brash OBE (5 June 1913 – 24 August 2002) was a leading New Zealand Presbyterian minister and a key figure in the global ecumenical movement. He was the son of Thomas Brash, a prominent dairy industry leader, and the father of Don Brash, a future political leader and central banker. Brash was born in Wellington and raised in Miramar, where he grew up in the Presbyterian Church.

He earned an MA in philosophy from the University of Otago and studied theology at New College, Edinburgh. While in the United Kingdom, he represented the Presbyterian Church of New Zealand at the 1937 Faith and Order Conference in Edinburgh and the Life and Work conference in Oxford; these events helped launch the worldwide ecumenical movement, and Brash became a strong supporter of it. He met his future wife, Eljean Hill, during this time.

Brash returned to New Zealand in 1938 and became the minister of St Andrews parish in Wanganui. He married Eljean, and they had two children, Donald and Lynette. They also adopted an orphan boy from Edinburgh and sheltered a European refugee during the war. His pacifist beliefs sometimes made ministry difficult during the war years.

In 1947 Brash was appointed General Secretary of the National Council of Churches in New Zealand, a role he held until 1964. From 1952 to 1956 he also served in parish ministry at St Giles in Christchurch. His ecumenical work expanded beyond New Zealand when he joined the East Asian Christian Conference in 1957, later moving to Singapore in 1964 to work there full-time. For his work in Asia he was made an Officer of the Order of the British Empire in 1962.

In 1968 he moved to London to become Director of Christian Aid for the British Council of Churches. Two years later he moved to Geneva to head a World Council of Churches division on inter-church aid, refugee matters and world service, and in 1974 he was appointed Deputy General Secretary of the World Council of Churches. Brash retired from the WCC in 1978 and returned to New Zealand, where he served as Moderator of the General Assembly for a year.

During the 1980s Brash worked part-time at the Auckland branch of the National Council of Churches, continued preaching, and remained active in the Mairangi Bay parish. He also spoke out in protests against Waitangi Day celebrations in the early 1980s, feeling the treaty had been breached in various ways.

Eljean Brash died in 1991, and Alan moved to Christchurch to be near his daughter. He passed away on 24 August 2002. The Presbyterian Church of Aotearoa NZ described him as a person of deep justice, a commitment to serving the world’s poor, a steadfast pacifist who pursued peace, and a lifelong advocate of ecumenism and church unity.