Evangelicals and the End of Christendom: Religion, Australia and the Crises of the 1960s 1138087785, 9781138087781

Table of contents :
Cover
Half Title
Series Page
Title
Copyright
Dedication
Contents
List of abbreviations
Acknowledgments
Prologue: Billy Graham, 1959 and 1979
Introduction: The rupture of the 1960s
1 Citizenship: Fred Nile, political activism and the World’s Christian Endeavour Convention, 1962
2 Relevance: Hans Mol, secularisation and the Religion in Australia Survey, 1966
3 America: Billy Graham, Americanisation and the 1968–1969 crusades
4 Empire: Marcus Loane, Britishness and the Cook Bicentenary, 1970
5 Renewal: The Jesus People, the counter-culture and Kairos, 1973
6 World: Jack Dain, Athol Gill and the Lausanne Congress on World Evangelisation, 1974
Conclusion: Evangelicals and the end of Christendom
Bibliography
Index

Citation preview

Evangelicals and the End of Christendom

Exploring the response of evangelicals to the collapse of ‘Greater Christian Britain’ in Australia during the long 1960s, this book provides a new religious perspective to the end of empire and a fresh national perspective to the end of Christendom. In the turbulent 1960s, two foundations of the Western world rapidly and unexpectedly collapsed. ‘Christendom’, marked by the dominance of discursive Christianity in public culture, and ‘Greater Britain’, the powerful sentimental and strategic union of Britain and its settler societies, disappeared from the collective mental map with startling speed. To illuminate these contemporaneous global shifts, this book takes as a case study the response of Australian evangelical Christian leaders to the cultural and religious crises encountered between 1959 and 1979. Far from being a narrow national study, this book places its case studies in the context of the latest North American and European scholarship on secularisation, imperialism and evangelicalism. Drawing on a wide range of archival sources, it examines critical figures such as Billy Graham, Fred Nile and Hans Mol, as well as issues of empire, counter-cultural movements and racial and national identity. This study will be of particular interest to any scholar of evangelicalism in the twentieth century. It will also be a useful resource for academics looking into the wider impacts of the decline of Christianity and the British Empire in Western civilisation. Hugh Chilton is a Conjoint Lecturer in the Faculty of Education and Arts at the University of Newcastle, Australia, Director of Research and Professional Learning at The Scots College, Sydney, and Vice-President of the Evangelical History Association.

Routledge Studies in Evangelicalism Series editors: Andrew Atherstone Wycliffe Hall Oxford, UK

David Ceri Jones Aberystwyth University, UK

The study of evangelicalism is a well-developed discipline with a strong international readership. A major movement within global Christianity, it continues to attract considerable scholarly and ‘popular’ interest on both sides of the Atlantic and further afield. The Routledge Studies in Evangelicalism series publishes monographs and collaborative volumes of significant original research in any aspect of evangelical history or historical theology from the eighteenth century to the present, and is global in its scope. This series will appeal both to the flourishing community of scholars of religious history and to informed practitioners within the evangelical constituency. Philip Doddridge and the Shaping of Evangelical Dissent Robert Strivens The Routledge Research Companion to the History of Evangelicalism Edited by Andrew Atherstone and David Ceri Jones Religion and Relationships in Ragged Schools An Intimate History of Educating the Poor, 1844–1870 Laura M. Mair Making Evangelical History Faith, Scholarship and the Evangelical Past Edited by Andrew Atherstone and David Ceri Jones Evangelicals and the End of Christendom: Religion, Australia, and the Crises of the 1960s Hugh Chilton For more information about this series, please visit: www.routledge.com/ religion/series/AEVANGE

Evangelicals and the End of Christendom Religion, Australia, and the Crises of the 1960s Hugh Chilton

First published 2020 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2020 Hugh Chilton The right of Hugh Chilton to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record for this book has been requested ISBN: 978-1-138-08778-1 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-315-11024-0 (ebk) Typeset in Sabon by Apex CoVantage, LLC

To Sarah

Contents

List of abbreviations Acknowledgments

1

2

3

4

5

6

viii ix

Prologue: Billy Graham, 1959 and 1979

1

Introduction: The rupture of the 1960s

8

Citizenship: Fred Nile, political activism and the World’s Christian Endeavour Convention, 1962

24

Relevance: Hans Mol, secularisation and the Religion in Australia Survey, 1966

51

America: Billy Graham, Americanisation and the 1968–1969 crusades

78

Empire: Marcus Loane, Britishness and the Cook Bicentenary, 1970

111

Renewal: The Jesus People, the counter-culture and Kairos, 1973

142

World: Jack Dain, Athol Gill and the Lausanne Congress on World Evangelisation, 1974

171

Conclusion: Evangelicals and the end of Christendom

203

Bibliography Index

216 243

Abbreviations

ABC ACC ACEUFR1 ACEUFR2

ACT AFOL ANU BGCA BGEA CE CMS EA HGBC ICOWE NSW NSWCEU PHM WCC

Australian Broadcasting Corporation Australian Council of the World Council of Churches Australian Christian Endeavour Union Further Records, ca. 1880–1996, Mitchell Library, Sydney, MLMSS 8089 Australian Christian Endeavour Union further records, 1892–1995, being mainly New South Wales Christian Endeavour Union further records, Mitchell Library, Sydney, MLMSS 8092 Australian Capital Territory Festival of Light Australian National University Billy Graham Center Archives Billy Graham Evangelistic Association Christian Endeavour Church Missionary Society Evangelical Alliance House of the Gentle Bunyip Collection, Whitley College Archives International Congress on World Evangelization (the Lausanne Congress, 1974) New South Wales Records of the NSW Christian Endeavour Union, Mitchell Library, Sydney, MLMSS 6753 Papers of Hans Mol, National Library of Australia MS Acc00.203 and Acc00.207 World Council of Churches

Acknowledgments

If one necessarily incurs several debts in the writing of a book, then I am greatly and gratefully ‘in the red’. Thanks are due to the custodians of records consulted in the course of my research: the staff at Fisher Library in The University of Sydney, Moore Theological College Library, the Leon Morris Library at Ridley College Melbourne, the State Library of New South Wales, the Public Library of Victoria and the National Library of Australia; Marita Munro, who shared both her deep knowledge of the Jesus People Movement and the contents of the House of the Gentle Bunyip Collection at Whitley College, Melbourne; Peter Corney, Warwick Olson and Judith Gill, who leant me valuable documents; the helpful and immensely knowledgeable Bob Shuster, Paul Ericksen, Wayne Weber and Marlene Matthews at the Billy Graham Center Archives in Wheaton, Illinois; and the unfailingly generous Stuart Piggin, who spent several hours acquainting me with the treasures of the Centre for the History of Christian Thought and Experience Archives in Macquarie Park, Sydney. The research journey and the book itself have been enriched by those who graciously shared their memories of the 1960s and 1970s with me in formal interviews: the late Stuart Barton Babbage, Ross Langmead, Roderick West, Hans Mol and John Smith, Donald Cameron, David Claydon, John Hirt, Alan Nichols, Fred Nile, Warwick Olson and Janet West. Gratitude is also due to the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, the Christian Endeavour Union of Australia, Joanna Zubrzycki, Gillian Beaumont, John Hirt and Ramon Williams for permission to access and copy private papers and images, and to Geoffrey Treloar and Ellie Woodacre for permission to reproduce previously published elements of this book. The encouragement and advice of many other scholars at various stages of my research has greatly enriched this book and my formation as a historian. Particular gratitude is due to James Curran, my wise and kind doctoral supervisor, along with associate supervisors Mark McKenna and Carole Cusack, my ever-generous mentor and colleague Mark Hutchinson, and David Hilliard, the late John Hirst, Geoff Treloar and Stuart Piggin. I also wish to thank Patrick Benn, Margaret Barrett, David Bebbington, Rhys Bezzant, Allan Blanch, Hillary Carey, Marcia Cameron, Stephen Chavura, Peter

x Acknowledgments Corney, Graeme Davison, Richard Ely, Larry Eskridge, Tom Frame, Stephen Judd, Michael Gladwin, Billy Griffiths, Peter Hobbins, Rowan Kemp, Matt Kennedy, Jonathan Wei-Han Kuan, Donald Lewis, Robert D. Linder, Ed Loane, Ruth Lukabyo, John McIntosh, Neville Meaney, Peter Moore, Greg Murrie, Mark Noll, Paul Oslington, Malcolm Prentis, Deryck Schreduer, Rory Shiner, Mike Thompson, Grant Wacker and Robert Withycombe. The fellowship of the Evangelical History Association, and particularly Meredith Lake, Stephen Chavura, Paul Cooper, Laura Rademaker, Peter Elliott and Geoff Treloar, has been an especial delight. A number of the aforementioned have read and commented on sections of the work. It goes without saying that any shortcomings of this book are mine. To those who accommodated me on research trips, thanks are also due: Jake and Kate Sarkodee in Melbourne; Lionel and Jenny Henderson, and Alec Sewell and Timothy Robertson in Canberra; BJ and Ester Wisdom in Wheaton, Illinois; and, on the long way round to Canada, Alex and Meg McCoy in Hong Kong, Lucinda Beck in London, and Don and Lindy Lewis in Vancouver. The hospitality of Ken and Jane Chandler at ‘Mullenroo’, Fred and Jill Chilton at ‘Nerrima’, John and Jules Cordingley at ‘Topdale’ and Peter and Judy Taylor at Lake Macquarie, where I have escaped on writing retreats, was essential to the completion of the project. Funding for such trips was generously provided by the Department of History at The University of Sydney through the John Frazer Travelling Scholarship and Grants-in-Aid programme, and by the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences through the PhD Travel Grant Scheme and the Postgraduate Research Support Scheme. Friends and colleagues too numerous to count have enlivened this journey. Special thanks go to fellow travellers Andrew Cooper, Jamie Dunk, James Goulding, Nathan Lyons, Matt Moffitt, Caitlin Munday and Alec Sewell. I also wish to thank the Principal of The Scots College, Ian Lambert, for his support and encouragement. I would like to thank Andrew Atherstone and David Ceri Jones for the opportunity to have this volume join their excellent series on evangelicalism, and, with Joshua Wells and Jack Boothroyd of Routledge, their patience and support in bringing it to completion. Family have provided both level-headedness and levity in equal measure. Brothers and sisters at West Ryde Anglican have also been a blessing. My parents, Roger and Sue, have been unfailingly supportive in ways practical as well as emotional; sharing books, discussing ideas and proof-reading drafts. Their commitment to education as formation has been a rich gift. Thanks too to my parents-in-law Ken and Dianne. Most thanks are due to my wife Sarah, who was brave enough to marry a man halfway through a PhD and, along with our son Hamish, graciously give up countless weekends to ‘the book’. Her encouragement, exhortation, patience and joy have been instrumental in seeing this to completion. To her it is dedicated. Hugh Chilton Sydney, November 2019

Prologue Billy Graham, 1959 and 1979

‘The buses will wait. You come. You come, right now.’ Sitting high up in the back row of the Sydney Showground’s stands, Ron Baker heard words like these, gentle but firm, echo around him on an autumn evening in 1959. The voice he heard was that of Billy Graham, the world-famous evangelist, nearing the end of his phenomenally successful 15-week Southern Cross crusade. Baker, a bus driver himself, was a sorry case. As Graham recalled in his autobiography, Baker ‘had almost everything going against him’: he was illiterate, with a speech impediment from an abusive childhood, heavily involved in witchcraft and addicted to alcohol and poker machines.1 For several nights he had been driving buses to the crusade meetings but was determined not to go himself. After his wife was converted and a Christian friend literally begged him, on Tuesday 5 May, he finally attended a meeting himself. As the hymn ‘Just As I Am’ went into its fourth repetition, with its refrain, ‘O Lamb of God, I come, I come’, Baker got up out of his seat and followed the throng of men, women and children who had surged forward to give or recommit their lives to Christ. He did likewise. Over the next few years, he gradually learnt to read and write, overcame his addictions, and went on to become an evangelist himself. Baker’s story was exceptional in some ways but remarkably common in most: 130,751 other Australians, roughly 1.24 per cent of the population, also ‘went forward’ and left singing revival hymns on the buses out into the night.2 In 114 meetings over 106 days, Billy Graham preached in every capital city in Australia and New Zealand about individual and national sin, impending judgement and nuclear cataclysm, and the good news of eternal life through faith in Christ. Total audiences exceeded 3.5 million, with a significant proportion of this figure being those who attended multiple times, some even nightly.3 Countless thousands more heard Graham via landline radio broadcasts in churches and community halls across the nation, listened on the radio at home or, for some, watched the meetings replayed on television, a medium introduced to Australia just three years before. Individual churches such as St Stephen’s Presbyterian on Macquarie Street, Sydney, grew by as many as 400 new members; numbers of theological college enrolments and missionary volunteers boomed; on the evidence of statistics

2

Prologue

of crime and alcohol consumption, for a brief moment ‘the rising tide of iniquity’ was held back; and as several later reflected, never had it been easier to strike up a conversation about religion on the streets.4 Australians, it seemed, were not as immune to evangelical Christianity as most – even within the churches – had thought. The Graham crusade was predicated on a historic assumption by evangelicals, as true in Australia as in Britain, Canada or the United States: this was a Christian country, but one not Christian enough. Evangelicals accordingly sought to call the citizens of ‘Christian Australia’ out of a cultural nominalism and into a living faith in Christ, to be ‘born again’.5 It went without saying that almost everyone was familiar with the Bible, identified with a Christian denomination and understood their identity as an Australian to be broadly ‘British’, ‘white’ and ‘Christian’. Furthermore, the conversion of the individual was seen as the key to the renewal of the nation. ‘National Revival through a revived Church’ was the Australian organisers’ slogan.6 A handbill for the Melbourne crusade put it thus: ‘Thinking men in every walk of life are agreed that our civilisation . . . our way of life . . . has little hope for survival on a local, national or international level unless we see, and soon, a return to God . . . to the faith of our fathers’.7 Frank Nicklin, the Premier of Queensland and an active Methodist, echoed similar sentiments: ‘If we are to live worthy of our heritage we must live by the Christian faith.’8 Other premiers and parliamentarians, governors and judges, and, most significantly, the mainstream press, also enthusiastically endorsed the crusade as an important event in the life of the nation. ‘Big Billy’ was ‘the talk of the town’.9 That Graham read a message of greeting from President Dwight D. Eisenhower to the 143,750 people at his final Melbourne Cricket Ground meeting (a ground record still unbroken), and weeks later was reporting on the crusade over tea with the Queen, assured Australians that their faith – in Graham’s message as evangelist and, perhaps equally, as Cold Warrior – was part of a global spiritual and cultural community: Christendom.10 The 1959 Graham crusade came at the crest of a ‘modest religious boom’ in the 1950s, a boom also evident in Britain, Canada, New Zealand and the United States.11 Historian Ken Inglis, in his 1958 Current Affairs Bulletin essay on ‘Churchgoing in Australia’, began by pointing out that Australia’s ‘political life and our education system’, to name just two aspects of society, were ‘not really intelligible without some knowledge of the religious patterns in our population’. ‘By the simplest test of numbers’, Inglis went on, ‘Australia must seem an overwhelmingly Christian nation.’12 The number of Australians identifying with a Christian denomination, which had hovered around 90 per cent since the first national Census in 1901, had actually increased between 1947 and 1954. Marriages conducted by clergy had also held at around 90 per cent.13 No more than half of 1 per cent of the population claimed to have ‘no religion’.14 Three in ten Australians indicated in opinion polls that they were regular churchgoers, a number which had stayed relatively constant between 1947 and 1961, and was higher than that

Prologue

3

recorded in 1901.15 Even if they were not weekly church attenders, most believed that Christian moral conduct was essential to the ‘Australian way of life’, a belief attested to by the number of families who sent their children to Sunday school, played in church sporting competitions or responded financially to the numerous ‘every-member canvasses’ that funded new (often tax-deductible war memorial) church buildings.16 David Hilliard, a leading historian of religious change in 1950s and 1960s Australia, summed up the picture of religious confidence thus: Since the mid-1950s, in every denomination all the measurable indices of religious life – church membership, Sunday school enrolments, the number of new congregations, church income and enrolments in theological colleges and seminaries – had gone steadily upwards. The churches were confident in their special role of moral leadership. The opinions and prejudices of their leaders received respectful attention in the news media.17 Christians – and especially the evangelicals behind the triumph of interdenominational cooperation and public religion that was the Graham crusade – had every reason to be optimistic about the spread of ‘the righteousness which exalts a nation’.18 ‘The religious future seemed bright,’ concluded Hilliard; ‘it seemed that the 1960s would be rather like the previous decade, but better.’19 *** The 1960s were anything but bright for religion in Australia. At the close of that decade, evangelical sociologist of religion Hans Mol wrote of a crisis of identity and mission in the churches, entitling his book Christianity in Chains. ‘In a previous era the usefulness of religion was never questioned,’ he began, ‘but nowadays one perpetually hears the churches speak about the need for religion as though it is a bad-selling item which needs vigorous promotion.’20 Statistics were already beginning to show signs of serious decline, especially in the all-important area of Sunday school enrolments, central to the transmission of the faith.21 As part of a general attack on ‘conservative’ institutions in Australia, Christian moral standards, long upheld by law and social custom, were being openly challenged and abandoned in the libertarian impulses of sexual, cultural and political ‘revolutions’.22 And when Christian leaders spoke out on social or political affairs, they were no longer automatically afforded a respectful ear on the basis of their social role. Wrote one anxious observer in 1966, after Australians had been exposed to new satires of authority figures, especially Church leaders: ‘now they are fortunate to be heard as private citizens’.23 Contemporaneous with these shifts in the place of religion in public life was a wider sense of cultural dislocation and reorientation brought about by the collapse of the British Empire. Australians’ long-held attachment to

4

Prologue

‘being British’ – the central collective myth that had provided the language, narrative and symbols of nationalism – was rapidly undone in the 1960s. Expanding non-British immigration, increasing trade with Japan and Korea, the withdrawal of both British forces from Southeast Asia to the west of Suez and British pounds from the Commonwealth to the European Common Market all contributed to a weakening of the real and imagined bonds of what late-nineteenth-century imperial administrator Alfred Milner had called ‘British race patriotism’.24 Far from this giving way to the flowering of a long-suppressed ‘distinctive’ Australian identity, the post-imperial nation was more often spoken of as suffering from an ‘identity void’. Politicians, bureaucrats and cultural critics made various attempts at diagnosing and remedying this cultural malaise (from flag and anthem competitions to a focus on ‘engagement’ with Asia and the ‘projection’ of home-grown high culture), calling for a ‘new nationalism’ to make Australia ‘great materially and great spiritually’.25 But despite their best attempts, the demise of ‘Britishness’, and its corollary, ‘whiteness’, remained a source of deep cultural uncertainty in the 1960s and after.26 Protestant leaders were profoundly affected by this shift, for the assumptions they had made about Australia being a ‘Christian nation’ were intimately tied up with it also being a British dominion. The end of empire challenged spiritual identities as much as it did cultural and racial ones. By May 1979, when Billy Graham returned to Australia for his last crusade (this time only in Sydney), the indicators of a markedly changed environment were unavoidable. Many people had stopped going to church or their attendance became much less regular; total attendance had declined from 30 per cent to 20 per cent of the population, a trend more pronounced among Protestants than Roman Catholics.27 Baptisms, confirmations and Sunday school enrolments had collapsed.28 The crusade itself was not without successes. More than 22,000 responded to Graham’s invitation, and not merely those reliving the glories of 1959; over half inquired about salvation (compared to a quarter re-dedicating themselves), and almost three-quarters of all inquirers were under the age of 26.29 As an opportunity for training the laity in evangelism, Graham’s visit was exploited to great effect, engaging those who may have been loosely connected to the churches but without a personal commitment to Christ. Yet the hoped-for national revival seemed even further from reach and the memory of 1959’s deep cultural impact grew all the more distant. Bishop Jack Dain, the crusade chairman, confided to a colleague that Graham himself had ‘expressed some apprehension’ about his ability ‘to relate his preaching to the particular cultural and spiritual factors of the Australian scene’, where, compared to the United States, most people were ‘literally unchurched’.30 Despite every home in Sydney being given a portion of the New Testament as part of the crusade, just a year later, the general secretary of the Bible Society lamented that Australians were mostly ‘spiritual illiterates’.31 Anglican Archbishop of Sydney Sir Marcus Loane, the crusade’s

Prologue

5

instigator, admitted that it ‘didn’t crack the secular city in the same way’ as it had in 1959.32 At the final rally, through the torrential rain that had so curiously cursed the whole crusade, Graham told his 85,000-strong audience that they might still see a revival that would make Australia ‘the great religious super power of the world’.33 But looking at the society around them, few in those stands could have held out much hope. Evangelicals, who had achieved such success just two decades before, now consoled themselves with the thought that public religious gatherings of that ilk might not be ‘really appropriately Australian’ after all.34 In an article in 1979 for the International Review of Mission, later republished under the title ‘A Genuinely Evangelical Church’, one theologian from the newly formed Uniting Church in Australia gave voice to the undeniable loss of those historic evangelical assumptions of Christian nationhood. ‘The churches in Australia have an enormous missionary task within the nation,’ he wrote. ‘The vision of a Christian Australia will have to be exchanged for a more realistic goal’.35

Notes 1 Billy Graham, Just As I Am: The Autobiography of Billy Graham (San Francisco: HarperCollins, 1997), p. 335. This observation, and the general account of Baker’s conversion, is also made by Graham’s associates George Beverley Shea and Cliff Barrows, along with Baker himself, in Karl Faase, Remembering ’59: Billy Graham’s Legacy, 50 Years On, documentary(Sydney: Olive Tree Media with the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, 2009). 2 Stuart Piggin, Spirit, Word and World: Evangelical Christianity in Australia (Brunswick East, Vic.: Acorn Press, 2012), p. 168. 3 ‘Billy Graham Australia and New Zealand Crusades’, Billy Graham Center Archives, updated 25 September 2009, , accessed 23 June 2018. 4 Stuart Piggin, ‘Billy Graham in Australia, 1959: Was It Revival?’, Lucas: An Evangelical History Review no. 6 (1989), pp. 12, 24–5, 27–9. 5 Brian Stanley, The Global Diffusion of Evangelicalism: The Age of Billy Graham and John Stott (Nottingham: Inter-Varsity Press, 2013), pp. 11–2. 6 Gordon Powell, foreword to, Tell Australia by Harold Whitney (Brisbane: WR Smith and Paterson Pty Ltd, 1957), p. 8. 7 Piggin, Spirit, Word and World, p. 160. 8 Stuart Barton Babbage and Ian Siggins, Light Beneath the Cross: The Story of Billy Graham’s Crusade in Australia (Melbourne: The World’s Work, 1960), p. 50. 9 Warwick Olson, interview with the author, 24 October 2012. 10 Piggin, Spirit, Word and World, p. 163; William Martin, A Prophet with Honor: The Billy Graham Story (New York: William Morrow and Co.: 1991), p. 254. Cf. Hugh Chilton, ‘How Billy Graham Got under Our Secular Skin’, Centre for Public Christianity, , 5 March 2018; Hugh Chilton, ‘Billy Graham: 1959 and 1979’, Ethos, Special Issue: ‘The End of Evangelicalism?’, December 2014. 11 David Hilliard, ‘The Religious Crisis of the 1960s: The Experience of the Australian Churches’, Journal of Religious History 21 (June 1997), p. 211. On Britain, see Callum Brown, The Death of Christian Britain: Understanding Secularisation 1800–2000, second edition (London: Routledge, 2009), pp. 170–5, with a

6

12

13 14

15

16 17 18 19 20 21

22

Prologue contested view in S.J.D. Green, The Passing of Protestant England: Secularisation and Social Change, c. 1920–1960 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), Chapter 7, and Clive Field, Britain’s Last Religious Revival? Quantifying Belonging, Believing and Behaving in the Long 1950s (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015). On the United States, see Jonathan P. Herzog, The SpiritualIndustrial Complex: America’s Religious Battle Against Communism in the Early Cold War (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011). On Canada, see Gary R. Miedema, For Canada’s Sake: Public Religion, Centennial Celebrations, and the Re-Making of Canada in the 1960s (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2005), Chapter 2; Mark Noll, ‘What Happened to Christian Canada?’, Church History 75 (July 2009), pp. 245–52. On New Zealand, see Kevin Ward, ‘Religion in New Zealand since the 1960s: Some Sociological Perspectives’, New Zealand Sociology 31 (2016), pp. 186–206; Allen Davidson and Peter Lineham, Transplanted Christianity: Documents Illustrating Aspects of New Zealand Church History (Auckland: College Communications, 1987), Chapter 6. ‘Churchgoing in Australia’, Current Affairs Bulletin 22 (June 1958), p. 50. The essay was originally published anonymously. Inglis’s authorship is disclosed in the bibliography of his writings found in K.S. Inglis and Craig Wilcox (eds.), Observing Australia: 1959 to 1999 (Carlton South, Vic.: Melbourne University Press, 1999), p. 251. Bruce Wilson, Can God Survive in Australia? (Sutherland, NSW: Albatross Books, 1983), p. 22. On the changing wording of the ‘religion question’ in the census, and the problems this creates for adequately determining the extent of ‘unbelief’ before the introduction of a ‘no religion’ option in the 1971 census, see Tom Frame, Losing My Religion: Unbelief in Australia (Sydney: UNSW Press, 2009), pp. 88–90. ‘Church Attendance, Australia 1947–1983’, in Murray Goot, ‘Public Opinion’, in Wray Vamplew (ed.), Australians: Historical Statistics (Broadway, NSW: Fairfax, Syme and Weldon Associates, 1987), p. 438, Table PO 1–28. On comparisons to attendance figures in 1901, which are for Victoria and New South Wales only, see Hans Mol, Religion in Australia: A Sociological Investigation (Melbourne: Thomas Nelson, 1971), Tables 2.1 and 2.2, p. 11. David Hilliard, ‘God in the Suburbs: The Religious Culture of Australian Cities in the 1950s’, Australian Historical Studies 97 (October 1991), p. 414. Hilliard, ‘The Religious Crisis of the 1960s’, p. 211. Babbage and Siggins, Light Beneath the Cross, p. 181. Hilliard, ‘The Religious Crisis of the 1960s’, p. 211. Hans Mol, Christianity in Chains: A Sociologist’s Interpretation of the Churches’ Dilemma in a Secular World (Melbourne: Thomas Nelson, 1969), p. 3. In every state and every major denomination except the Baptists, total Sunday school enrolments declined between 1961 and 1976. W.W. Phillips, ‘Religion’, in Vamplew (ed.), Australians: Historical Statistics, pp. 432–5, REL 325–346; Stan Stewart, The Church’s Ministry with Children Report (Canberra: Commission on Christian Education, Australian Council of Churches, 1976); Wilson, Can God Survive in Australia?, pp. 19–20. On the challenge to Christian moral standards, see Hilliard, ‘The Religious Crisis of the 1960s’, pp.  215, 221; David Hilliard, ‘Australian Anglicanism and the Radical Sixties’, in Susan Emilsen (ed.), Mapping the Landscape: Essays in Australian and New Zealand Christianity: Festschrift in Honour of Professor Ian Breward (New York: Peter Lang, 2000), pp. 99–117. Helpful overviews of cultural change in the 1960s include Shirleene Robinson, ‘1960s Counter-Culture in Australia: The Search for Personal Freedom’, in Shirleene Robinson and Julie Ustinoff (eds.), The 1960s in Australia: Power, People and Politics (Newcastle

Prologue

23 24 25

26 27 28

29

30 31 32 33 34 35

7

Upon Tyne, UK: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2012), pp. 123–42; Tanja Luckins and Seamus O’Hanlon (eds.), Go! Melbourne in the Sixties (Melbourne: Melbourne Publishing Group, 2005); Robin Gerster and Jan Bassett, Seizures of Youth: The Sixties and Australia (South Yarra, Vic.: Hyland House, 1991). For comparable studies in Britain and the United States respectively, see Nigel Yates, Love Now, Pay Later?: Sex and Religion in the Fifties and Sixties (London: SPCK, 2010); Alan Petigny, The Permissive Society: America, 1941–1965 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009). Ivan Southall, ‘Preface’, in Ivan Southall (ed.), The Challenge: Is the Church Obsolete? An Australian Response to the Challenge of Modern Society (Melbourne: Lansdowne Press, 1966), p. v. James Curran and Stuart Ward, The Unknown Nation: Australia after Empire (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 2010), p. 10. Donald Horne in ‘The New Nationalism?’, Bulletin, 5 October 1968, pp. 36–8. ‘Great materially and great spiritually’: John Gorton, Address at the Opening of Young Liberal Year, Brisbane, 18 January 1968, transcript in possession of James Curran. Curran and Ward, The Unknown Nation. ‘Church Attendance, Australia 1947–1983’, in Goot, ‘Public Opinion’, pp. 438–9. Reliable national statistics are hard to come by. For baptism figures, see Stewart, The Church’s Ministry With Children, p.  62. Stewart acknowledges the shortcomings of his data, but also notes how some denominations kept little or no statistics, and were not interested in providing them (pp. 9–12). Confirmations in the Anglican Diocese of Sydney (omitted from Stewart’s survey) fell by as much as 50 per cent between 1970 and 1978, according to a survey by Bruce Wilson, in Can God Survive in Australia?, p. 21. On Sunday school enrolment figures, see note 21. James W. Newton and Leon Mann, ‘Crowd Size as a Factor in the Persuasion Process: A Study of Religious Crusade Meetings’, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 39 (1980), pp. 876–9. There was an almost even mix of men and women, and telephone surveys indicated that 89 per cent of the inquirers began attending church and 70 per cent joined a nurture group. Michael Orpwood, Chappo: For the Sake of the Gospel (Russell Lea, NSW: Eagleswift Press, 1995), p. 144. Jack Dain to John Reid, 23 August 1978, in BGCA, Collection 245: BGEA: Records of the Billy Graham Association’s Australian Affiliate, Box 29, Folder 4: ‘Correspondence: Billy Graham Sydney Crusade – Vice Chairmen; 1977–1979’. James Pyne, quoted in ‘Nation of “spiritual illiterates”’, Canberra Times, 21 May 1980, p. 21. Marcus Loane, Interview with Lois Ferm, 29 May 1982, transcript, in BGCA CN 141, Box 13, Folder 28, ‘Loane, #468, 1982’. ‘85,000 at Final Graham Rally’, Canberra Times, 21 May 1979, p. 3. John Chapman, quoted in Orpwood, Chappo, p. 144. Gordon Dicker, ‘Mission in Australia: A New Perspective’, International Review of Mission 68 (January 1979), republished as Gordon Dicker, ‘A Genuinely Evangelical Church’, in Vaughan Hinton (ed.), Being Christian in Australia (Melbourne: Joint Board of Christian Education, 1983), p. 30.

Introduction The rupture of the 1960s

What happened to the idea of ‘Christian Australia’ and the larger mental map of ‘Christendom’, so long and widely assumed, and so quickly abandoned? And more specifically, how did evangelical Christian leaders respond to its demise? This is the central question to which this book is addressed. It explores, for the first time, how, between the emblematic events of the 1959 and 1979 Graham crusades, evangelicals redefined their role in a national public culture that was no longer explicitly ‘Christian’ (nor ‘British’ or ‘white’). Rather than viewing them as either belligerent fundamentalists or ineffectual pietists, it argues that evangelicals responded to the collapse of Christendom in a range of ways which, often creative, sometimes angry and defensive, belied widely held caricatures of the movement as monochrome, anti-intellectual and disengaged from the central currents of national life. It uses the Australian experience as a case study of the as-yet-unexamined relationship between two hotly debated phenomena – secularisation and the end of empire. Exploring parallels with declining Christian national identity in the metropole itself, it broadens the usual European and North American focus of secularisation studies to suggest that the ‘long 1960s’ signalled the death of not just ‘Christian Britain’, but ‘Greater Christian Britain’. In doing so, it repositions the ‘religious crisis of the 1960s’ and the response of evangelicals within broader debates: those occurring within Australian over the search for a ‘new nationalism’ that would replace long-held imperial, racial and religious myths; and those taking place more broadly, as ‘Western Christendom’ disintegrated and ‘the next Christendom’ of the Global South emerged.1

Re-examining religion in the 1960s The relationship between religion, nationalism and the 1960s is an increasingly strong preoccupation within and beyond the academy. The muchheralded ‘return of religion’ as a feature of public commentary and political reckoning in the West has left scholars who once dismissed faith as of little relevance to the real business of politics, economics, sociology and history scrambling to reacquaint themselves with the complexities of the world

Introduction

9

religions, now often very apparent in their own metaphorical ‘back yards’.2 So, too, has there been a resurgence in the historical and sociological attention paid to the changing religious character of Western democracies. Part of that renewed interest is a shift in what might be termed secularisation studies – a shift away from that very label. In the 1960s, amid the rise of sociology and signs of the decline of Christianity, several prominent sociologists such as Bryan Wilson and Peter Berger interpreted such changes as the outworking a long-term gradual decline in religion’s social and personal significance. The cause, they maintained, was modernity, marching onwards since the Enlightenment in differentiating society into increasingly distinct spheres, rationalising the supernatural, and shifting the locus of identity away from the collective and towards the individual.3 While the better sociologists of the 1960s and after, including Wilson and Berger, ought not be caricatured as proponents of a mechanistic and totalising theory, nor as advocates for the decline of religion’s significance per se, it was hard to escape the Whiggish sense of inevitability bound up in their depiction of, in Wilson’s words, a ‘process of secularisation’.4 In a postmodern period self-consciously sceptical of any grand theory, the irony was that it became ‘really the only master narrative’, ‘virtually unchallenged as an explanatory paradigm for religion in the modern world’.5 That argument no longer holds sway. Particularly through the work of David Martin, Hugh McLeod and Callum Brown, the so-called ‘secularisation thesis’ has come to be seen as rather more prescriptive than descriptive, and unable to assimilate the evidence of the simultaneously highly modern and overtly religious United States as the great exception, or the rapid growth of Christianity in the majority world in tandem with the spread of modernity.6 Rather than adopt this more linear reading which is often preoccupied with statistical shifts and institutional fortunes, sociologists and historians – primarily in Britain, but also in North America, continental Europe and, to a degree, the Antipodean settler societies of Australia and New Zealand – are considering more deeply the changing nature of belief, behaviour and belonging ‘after Christendom’. In this reassessment, causation has come to have both a longer durée, as well as a concentration on the turbulent atmosphere of the 1960s.7 For instance, in A Secular Age, his magisterial account of long-term changes in Western habits of mind, Charles Taylor argued that the 1960s signalled the rapid collapse of a powerful mentality, even as the seeds of this collapse were sown centuries before within Reformation and then Enlightenment ideas of morality and duty. In the ‘age of mobilisation’ beginning in the nineteenth century, religion had served as a bulwark against the dislocating pressures of modernity, fulfilling much the same function as nationalism. But come the ‘age of authenticity’ that began in the 1960s, this communal function had less appeal than the ‘expressive individualism’ that was newly ascendant.8 The loss of this role in the 1960s was ‘a shattering development, if we think of the way until quite recently, that Christian churches conceived of their task’.9 Belgian historian Patrick

10

Introduction

Pasture went further in describing the European experience of the secularising 1960s as ‘a fundamental break with history’.10 Even in the case of the United States, often seen as curiously exceptional for its high modernity married to overt religiosity, the 1960s signalled a crisis of religious identity.11 Eminent historian Sidney Ahlstrom wrote in 1970 of a ‘sudden, traumatic and disruptive’ end to the religious revival of the postwar period.12 While recent interpretations have challenged the binary of ‘conservative 1950s’ and ‘radical 1960s’, and identified the attenuating influences on religious commitment in the decades (even the century) before, the actual and symbolic changes of the 1960s nevertheless deserve closer attention.13 Australians’ experiences of the 1960s differ from those of Europeans and North Americans, not least in what constitutes ‘the 1960s’. There was, until very recently, an ostensible cultural time lag created, in part, by the physical distance from the metropoles of the North. Billy Graham debuted in Australia five years after his Haringay triumph in Britain, and ten years after Los Angeles. The great representative of the progressive spirit of ‘new nationalism’, Gough Whitlam, did not become Prime Minister until the end of 1972, and the disillusionment that had already been reshaping the North was not markedly felt in Australia until the mid-1970s.14 A longer ‘long 1960s’ is needed to seriously comprehend the Australian case.15 Casting a wider frame between 1959 and 1979, this book takes stock of the way both gradual shifts, such as the increasing importance to identity of personal authenticity rather than collective values, and sudden representative moments, like the staging of the full-frontal nude plays Hair and Oh! Calcutta! in 1969, contributed to the relegation of the long-standing idea of Christendom.

Defining ‘Christendom’ and ‘Christian Australia’ What, then, was bound up in this ‘Christendom’ that was lost in the crises of the 1960s? And what, more specifically, was meant by the idea of ‘Christian Australia’ within a broader imaginary of ‘Christian Greater Britain’? Two things are specifically not meant. First, that Australia was ever a ‘Christian nation’ in any theological or theocratic sense; and second, that Christian language and habits in the broader culture were necessarily synonymous with personal Christian belief. Histories of belief and unbelief by Tom Frame and Hugh Jackson suggest how vaguely and loosely Australians tended to affirm the central Christian doctrines of the Nicene Creed, and how this more formal expression of belief declined over time.16 Cultural commentators like Donald Horne, the famed author of The Lucky Country (1964) – a recurrent foil in this book – dismissive of the influence of Christianity on national character, may well have been right in suggesting that much that was called ‘religious’ was more about being ‘respectable’.17 Nevertheless, the very fact of identifying religion with respectability ensured that some form of Christianity remained a potent determinant of the everyday habits and assumptions of most Australians, especially in the 1950s when respectability

Introduction

11

seemed a highly desirable good across social and political divides – if only as a psychological defence against the return of Depression and war. What is meant by ‘Christian Australia’ is the (often implicitly) privileged position of Christian ideas, institutions and leaders in public expressions of national identity, undergirded by a near-universal familiarity with, and appreciation of, biblical narratives, motifs and moral norms.18 It is to go beyond the standard emphasis on sectarianism and Church-state relations that has characterised much of the historiography of Christianity in Australia, and focus on the religious dimension to, in cultural historian Alan Atkinson’s words, the ‘common imagination’ which undergirded Australia’s ‘commonwealth of speech’.19 Or, to develop a term employed by Horne, this book examines the relationship between evangelicalism and ‘national public culture’ – the ‘public and visible culture in which all the citizens are made to appear to be common, if differentiated, participants’.20 Social historian Richard Ely enumerated the characteristics of a shared ‘civic Protestantism’, a ‘forgotten nationalism’ ascendant in understandings of Australia’s national public culture up until the 1960s: All one can safely say – and yet to a student of Australian culture these might be important things to say – is that a non-denominational, civically-focussed Protestantism was, until recent decades, widespread in Australian society; that most or many Australians were literate, at least in a responsive way, in its Old Testament oriented vocabulary; that it was nationally-focussed, although in the inclusive sense of presupposing that individual Australians were members both of God’s Australian people in this continent, and God’s Imperial British people on whom the sun never sets; and that, finally, it was civic, in addressing not just a people, but the polity they lived under.21 While to speak of ‘Christian Australia’ provokes protest from some contemporary historians and social commentators – the dismissal or derogation of Christianity’s influence on Australia is an increasingly challenged but still pervasive orthodoxy – it ought be noted that historians are employing the term in broadly consonant contexts, writing of ‘Christian Britain’, ‘Christian Canada’ and, with several differences, ‘Christian America’.22 The same contours of a shared biblical literacy, legal framework and sense of being a ‘chosen people’ animated those members of the Anglo-Protestant world, such that one can trace the contours of what might be termed a ‘Christian Greater Britain’. This book does not attempt to cast judgement on the benefits or otherwise of this form of national public culture, nor to argue that it should have continued beyond the 1960s. It does, however, argue, alongside a growing chorus of revisionist histories of religion in Australia, that ‘Christian Australia’ was a powerful discursive reality which ought not be dismissed out of hand if we are to take seriously the way Australians during the long 1960s described the changes they witnessed – religious or otherwise – as ‘crises’.23

12

Introduction

‘Christian Australia’ was, for many of its citizens, broadly synonymous with the idea of ‘Christendom’, which could mean at least three things. First, Christendom could refer, in Taylor’s words, to ‘a civilisation where society and culture are profoundly informed by Christian faith’.24 Though this was, as John Gascoigne and Hilary Carey point out, only ever a complete reality in tiny confessional states, the ideal was widely and deeply held.25 In the era of ‘late Christendom’ in which Australia’s European settlement began, shaped by the Reformation, the Enlightenment and the Evangelical Revival, denominationalism was the primary structure for this ideal.26 At least until the rise of the twentieth-century ecumenical movement, which tended to consider denominationalism incompatible with unity, for Australian Protestants, Christendom comfortably accommodated ‘godly competition’ between denominations in the service of ‘common Christianity’.27 This approach had proved remarkably successful. In Stuart Piggin and Robert Linder’s forensic reassessment of the influence of evangelical Christianity on Australia, it had become, especially by the end of the nineteenth century, ‘one of the most highly “Christianised” nations on earth in terms of values’.28 Catholics, of course, stood at odds with this vision of civic Protestantism, providing one of the animating tensions of Australian nationalism. Yet as Steven Chavura, Ian Tregenza and John Gascoigne observe in their study of the secular in Australia, sectarian debates were ‘a contest between rival versions of Christianity, rather than between Christianity and a non-religious or even anti-religious secularism’.29 Second, because of Christianity’s broad cultural influence, Christendom could also mean the mode by which Christian leaders engaged with their society – the ‘Christendom mindset’ sometimes used as a shorthand in Anabaptist critiques of the posture of mainline Protestantism.30 Such a mode comfortably assumed that everyone was familiar with Christian symbols and stories (so much so that references were often not spelled out), that the opinion of Church leaders would be afforded some weight in public debate and that legislation and social conventions would be broadly consonant with Christian moral norms, such as sexual abstinence before marriage or the preservation of ‘the British Sunday’.31 Where such norms seemed under threat, Church leaders called on Australians to return to the civic Protestant compact of their forebears, and tended to receive a good hearing. For instance, the ‘Call to the Nation’ – a brief manifesto signed by all the state chief justices, the Catholic Archbishop of Sydney and leaders of the Church of England, Baptist, Presbyterian and Methodist denominations – was read by the Chairman of the Australian Broadcasting on Remembrance Day in 1951 to a broadcast audience of more than 100 commercial radio stations, and published the following day in every major newspaper, with 1.5 million printed copies of the Call distributed in the following months.32 The Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition both enthusiastically endorsed it.33 It sought to remind Australians of their common bond as ‘members one of another’, called to ‘a just return of loyalty and service’ in preserving ‘the

Introduction

13

heritage which we, please God, shall hold and enlarge for our children and their children’.34 The Call ended with a crisp (though unattributed) quote from the New Testament: ‘Fear God, Honour the King’. Though admittedly with broad, non-sectarian moral aims, the Call expressed the long-standing civic Protestant belief that the nation’s health was dependent on its fidelity to God’s moral laws. That it was rich with biblical language without needing to quote chapter and verse further suggests the assumption that most Australians who heard its words knew from whence they came. Such beliefs shaped other attempts at preserving traditional ‘moral standards’, including the Moral Re-Armament Movement, marriage counselling programmes, lectures and paperbacks on ‘juvenile delinquency’, and continued lobbying against Sunday trading and later hotel closing hours.35 Up to the 1960s, these tended not to be rear-guard actions or lost causes. When emphasising the political dimension to this understanding of ‘Christendom’, the more specific term ‘Constantinian’ is often used, albeit in an anachronistic way.36 Constantinian, Augustinian, Erastian or, to do violence to Ernst Troeltsch’s church-sect dialectic, ‘Churchian’ – all share in French sociologist Émile Durkheim’s classic thesis, a common conviction amongst most 1960s Christians and reinforced by the Cold War, that the churches ought to play a central role in unifying and ennobling national life. Third, given that such assumptions were broadly shared throughout Western societies, ‘Christendom’ could also be used as a geographic descriptor (the prefix ‘Western’ usually redundant). To reappropriate the famous phrase of Catholic intellectual Hilaire Belloc, not only was Europe synonymous with ‘the faith’, but so too were settler societies in North America, Southern Africa, Australia and New Zealand, where Christians, and especially British Protestants, had spread since the seventeenth century. In the 1950s, the early Cold War served to heighten identification of Australia with a global Christian bloc. Calling young men to enlist for service in the Korean War in 1950, Prime Minister Robert Menzies described Australians as, ‘with all our imperfections, a Christian nation, believing in man’s brotherhood, anxious to live at peace with our neighbour, willing to go the second mile to help him if he is less fortunate than we are’.37 William McMahon, Minister for Social Services and later Prime Minister, put it more starkly in 1955: ‘[w]e are a Christian land opposing barbarians’.38 Such a view was generally bipartisan. The Australian Labor Party’s manifesto for 1954 envisaged Australia as: a growing nation integrally associated with the British Commonwealth. Labor sees Australia living in peace with other nations; associated very specially with the United States in all Pacific affairs, destined under Divine Providence to be truly great . . . and making a worthy contribution to Christian ideals.39 This wider ‘imagined British World’, the ‘informal empire’ of ‘Greater Britain’, increasingly the subject of historical study, was also a global Protestant

14

Introduction

world.40 Hilary Carey, in her edited volume Empires of Religion, has called for greater attention to the way religion held together the imperial ideal, consonant with the growing scholarship on the role of Protestantism in defining British national identity and in shaping its imperial project.41 Other historians have shown how religion helped provide much of the discursive and institutional basis for uniting far-flung members of the empire with each other and with the metropole.42 It provided another rationale for multivalent national identities – simultaneously British and Australian or Canadian – to emerge in the case of settler colonies, affirming Douglas Cole’s description of an ‘ambiguous extension of kinship’ uniting British people worldwide without supplanting their own distinct expressions of what it meant to be British.43

Evangelicals and the problem of Christendom What has yet to emerge in the copious literature on the end of empire is a detailed appreciation of the significance of the lost ‘glue’ of civic Protestantism.44 If, as Linda Colley, John Wolffe and others have so persuasively established, a sense of civic Protestantism tied Great Britain and Greater Britain together, why have the growing number of studies of its untying not seriously examined the changed place of religion in national life?45 While the connection between the end of empire and the end of Christendom is more correlative than causal – other economic, social and geopolitical factors were definitely at work – the very contemporaneity of the loss of the identity markers of both empire and Christendom deserves more attention. This book seeks to highlight how religion, alongside the usual lenses of race and ethnicity, gave content to Australian national identity up to the 1960s, and, more to the point, how evangelical Christians – the first Europeans to practise organised religion in Australia – responded to the loss of that glue in the 1960s and 1970s. For the denominationally centred but not establishmentarian evangelicalism which predominated in Australia (in contrast to the more democratised form of American evangelicalism), the idea of Christendom was an indispensable framework for their conception of the world.46 The particular challenge that the end of Christendom presented to evangelicals makes an appreciation of their responses all the more important. Whereas most Christian traditions experienced the 1960s and 1970s as a time of religious challenge, for evangelicalism, the collapse of the idea of Australia and other Western nations as essentially Christian threatened one of its central assumptions: the prevalence of nominal Christianity. As eminent missiologist Andrew Walls argued of the origins of the movement, ‘historic evangelicalism is a religion of protest against a Christian society that is not Christian enough. The evangelical bugbears were less professed infidelity than professed Christianity without “the distinguishing doctrines of the gospel” ’. As a form of social critique, ‘Evangelicalism,

Introduction

15

in a word, assumes Christendom’.47 It has been a proximate, if not a primary, cause of evangelicalism’s rise and expansion. Brian Stanley, in his study of postwar Anglophone evangelicalism, draws out these unifying, mobilising assumptions of pre-1960s evangelical identity and mission in more detail: Evangelical identity had in a paradoxical way been dependent on the surrounding Christendom culture, whose all-pervasive influence constituted the need for individuals to differentiate their faith and commitment from the nominal forms of Christian adherence that were socially acceptable. It also supplied the very widespread familiarity with the bare rudiments of Christian doctrine and vocabulary that made possible the verbal proclamation of the gospel, whether from the pulpit or in the home, to crowds gathered in the streets or fields, in terms that were broadly comparable, whether the evangelist was Calvinist or Arminian, churchman or dissenter, and in a measure intelligible, whether the hearers were American or British, Canadian or Australian, socially respectable or from the ranks of the poor.48 Stanley then points out the sudden loss of these Christendom assumptions: ‘In the decades following the conclusion of the Second World War these commonalities of context and even of theological substance could no longer be taken for granted within the evangelical world.’49 Bishop Goodwin Hudson, Dean of St Andrew’s Cathedral in Sydney, aptly gave voice to this sense of alienation in 1963: Christendom has been disrupted, and millions of our fellow travelers have taken farewell of Christ and Christian hope and Christian civilization, because they no longer interpret life within the framework of the Book and are divorced from the Christian creeds.50 If a call to conversion lay at the heart of evangelicalism – that ‘fellow travelers’ must be ‘born again’ – this raised particular problems for evangelical witness in a more pluralist society, in which the dominant totems, tales and traditions of national public culture were no longer explicitly grounded in even a nominally Christian framework. Or, to put it another way, a setting in which there was less and less of a dormant religiosity to revive. If it is true that evangelicals are compelled by their gospel to activism in evangelism and social reform, then it follows that even when this persistent minority has seemed to be retreating to the margins, they have actually been formulating new ways of understanding, engaging with, and reforming their world.51 This book demonstrates the persistence of such activism, and explores the variety of ways evangelicals went about understanding and interacting with the profound challenges and the possible opportunities presented by a postChristendom national public culture.

16

Introduction

Structure Evangelicals and the End of Christendom is structured around the intellectual history of six key leaders (or groups of leaders) responding to a particular challenge presented by the crises of the 1960s. Each chapter has a triple focus: a theme (for example, the end of empire), a group or individual (for example, Marcus Loane) and a representative ‘moment’ (for example, the 1970 Cook Bicentenary). As to the choice of case studies, while a number of other evangelicals may have also been worthy of inclusion, these men – unfortunately there were, in this period, few comparably significant public women to include – have been chosen for their representativeness of both the range of changes evangelicals had to negotiate and the breadth of the movement itself, politically, theologically, geographically and socially. They embodied in differing ways the four defining qualities of evangelicalism that David Bebbington outlined in Evangelicalism in Modern Britain (1989), which still holds carriage as the standard definition of the movement: an emphasis on the authority of the Bible, on the centrality of the cross, on calling people to conversion, and on persistent activism in evangelism and (to varying degrees) social good as a result of the new birth.52 They were also all significant agents within the evangelical movement in Australia and globally  – a reminder of the inherently transnational nature of evangelicalism.53 To varying degrees, they also made their mark on wider cultural debates. As with the larger question of how and why Christian Australia came to an end in the 1960s, a complex understanding of these individuals requires their actions and ideas to be situated within what David Hackett Fischer has termed a ‘web of contingency’.54 The web suggests the deeper and broader currents in Australian history, while the emphasis on contingency underscores their genuine agency. To strike this balance is part of the challenge of intellectual history: sympathetically to interpret the words and actions of past individuals – following Cambridge intellectual historian Quentin Skinner’s appeal to ‘see things their way’ – while taking into account the deeper narrative structures and symbols within which their ideas had particular carriage.55 Chapter 1 provides the first portrait of an evangelical responding to the shocks of the 1960s. Fred Nile (born 1934) was the founding leader of the Christian Democratic Party and, at 2019, still held the seat in the New South Wales Legislative Council he won in 1981 and still courted regular attention in public debates about the religious character of the nation. Nile’s crusading expression of ‘Christian citizenship’ provoked a range of responses, from enthusiasm to derision, from fellow Christians as much as secular observers. To understand its origins, this chapter examines Nile’s involvement in the once-flourishing but now almost non-existent international evangelical youth movement Christian Endeavour, which held its quadrennial World’s Convention in Sydney in 1962. Nile’s schooling in the

Introduction

17

movement, his leadership of it, and his transition from it into parliamentary politics centred on a particular conception of the nation which was radically challenged by moral libertarianism. His muscular response to the ‘permissive society’, ‘standing up to be counted’ for the ‘silent majority’ through leadership of the Australian Festival of Light and the Call to Australia Party into the 1970s and 1980s, evinced a deep sense of responsibility for a nation Nile saw under threat. Rather than fight to return to Christian Australia, Dutch Presbyterian clergyman and sociologist Hans Mol (1922–2017) conducted his landmark Religion in Australia Survey in 1966 to understand just what was changing and why. Chapter 2 examines Mol’s intellectual formation in settings of mobility and marginality, showing how these shaped his penchant for questioning the need for evangelicals to pursue ‘relevance’ on secular terms. He argued from the Survey that the nation was more religious than often made out, and yet, that evangelicals should embrace their theological distinctiveness and not capitulate to the dominant utilitarian understanding of religion’s relevance. Drawing extensively on Mol’s published and archival material, as well as an interview with him, this chapter provides the first sustained examination of his pioneering role in the sociology of religion in Australia and evangelicals’ intellectual response to the secularisation thesis which rose to such dominance in the 1960s. Chapter 3, ‘American Revival’, returns to the character who opened the book, Billy Graham (1918–2018), but asks how he was received almost a decade after his triumphant first crusade. Dismissed or demonised as an agent of American evangelical imperialism during his 1968–1969 crusades and by some historians since, Graham’s national identity was presented by him and received by Australians in much more complex ways. Drawing on extensive and largely unexamined archival material, this chapter situates Graham’s return visit within a complex transnational narrative of American influence on post-Imperial, post-Christendom Australian Protestantism. By investigating Graham’s view of Australia and Australians views of Graham on issues like the Vietnam War, it explores the relationship between evangelistic preaching and national identity. It argues that the Billy Graham crusades were more indicative of globalisation than the Americanisation of Australian evangelicalism, and reflect the broader Australian experience of modernity and its discontents. Changed relations with Britain, Australia’s other ‘great and powerful friend’, forms the context of Chapter 4. The anxieties about Australia’s lost place in the world expressed by Anglican Archbishop of Sydney Marcus Loane (1911–2009) around the 1970 Bicentenary of Captain James Cook’s ‘discovery’ of Australia animates the challenges of articulating an evangelical identity amidst the erosion of British Protestant symbols and memories. The first papal visit to Australia, later in that same year, also confronted Loane with the new realities of civic pluralism. Yet rather than view him as a nostalgic relic of a bygone imperial and sectarian era, this chapter argues that Loane’s

18

Introduction

concern about the lost verities of civic Protestantism was borne of complex and nuanced engagement with the nation’s heritage and destiny. His enthusiasm for engagement with post-imperial Southeast Asia sat alongside his plea that Australia’s British inheritance be preserved. While more conservative evangelicals like Loane saw the rupture of the Sixties as cause for concern, others – especially the long-haired, Levi-clad hippies, bikies and ordinary youth of the Jesus People movement – greeted it with enthusiasm. With particular reference to key leaders including John Hirt (born 1942), John Smith (born 1942) and Mal Garvin (born 1941), and drawing on participant interviews and a wealth of unpublished material, Chapter 5 explores the Jesus People’s colourful, conscientious and, at times, contradictory response to both the end of Christendom and the rise of the counter-culture. Their ‘Kairos’ protest festival outside Parliament House just before Gough Whitlam’s new progressive government convened in March 1973 frames this book’s argument about the diversity of ways evangelicals related to the nation and reconstructed their identity within it. The Jesus People’s determination to present a form of evangelical Christianity that was ‘distinctively’ Australian – especially in a ‘gum-leaf theology’ – and their difficulty in doing so suggests how evangelicals were attuned to both the mood of ‘new nationalism’ and the struggle to give it compelling content. Their novel approach to progressive culture, imbibing as well as critiquing, laid some of the foundations for the remarkable rise of new and globally influential Pentecostal churches in Australia from the 1980s onwards, such as Hillsong. The changing place of Australian evangelicalism in national public culture after the 1960s intimately, though not uniformly, reflected the broader rise of global Christianity and the declining hegemony of Western culture. The new reality of global evangelicalism, the theme of Chapter 6, is delineated through the experience of Anglican bishop Jack Dain (1912–2003) and Baptist theologian Athol Gill (1937–1992) at the momentous International Congress on World Evangelisation in Lausanne, Switzerland in 1974. Dain, the impeccably credentialed chairman of the Congress, and Gill, a radical leader of the Jesus People, had different approaches to the global identity and mission of the evangelical movement. Dain sought to hold its culturally diverse members together through a posture of conciliation; Gill aimed to subvert its Western materialist presumptions and broaden its commitment to social responsibility. Through the lens of these two contrasting figures, along with a cast of other Australian evangelical leaders, this chapter argues for the critical role Australians played at the Lausanne Congress in shaping postimperial global Christianity. Yet it also shows their struggles to translate the lessons of faith and culture learnt at Lausanne into their post-Christendom identity and mission in Australia. Preserving cooperative unity amidst diversity of ages and cultural outlooks, contextualising the gospel in a pluralist setting, and balancing the priorities of evangelism and social action – such points were persistently debated. That these issues continue to be points of

Introduction

19

contention underscores the ongoing significance of the 1960s and 1970s in evangelicals’ understanding of their place in Australia and the wider world.

Notes 1 Philip Jenkins, The Next Christendom: The Coming of Global Christianity, third edition (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011). 2 See, for instance, Monica Duffy Toft, Daniel Philpott, and Timothy Samuel Shah, God’s Century: Resurgent Religion and Global Politics (New York: W.W. Norton, 2011). 3 Bryan Wilson, Religion in Secular Society: A Sociological Comment (London: C.A. Watts and Co., 1966); Peter Berger, The Sacred Canopy: Elements of a Sociological Theory of Religion (New York: Anchor Books, 1967). 4 Wilson, Religion in Secular Society, p. 14. For a contemporary defence of secularisation, see Steve Bruce, Secularization: In Defence of an Unfashionable Theory (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011). 5 Alistair Chapman, ‘Intellectual History and Religion in Modern Britain’, in Alistair Chapman, Jeffrey Coffey, and Brad S. Gregory (eds.), Seeing Things Their Way: Intellectual History and the Return of Religion (South Bend: University of Notre Dame Press, 2009), p. 228. 6 The definitive works by these three scholars are Martin, On Secularization: Towards a Revised General Theory (Aldershot, Surrey: Ashgate, 2005); McLeod, The Religious Crisis of the 1960s (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007); and Brown, The Death of Christian Britain. 7 The literature on the secularisation debate is substantial. For overviews, see Dominic Erdozain, ‘“Cause is Not Quite What It Used to Be”: The Return of Secularisation’, English Historical Review 127 (April 2012), pp. 377–400, and Callum G. Brown and Michael Snape, ‘Introduction: Conceptualising Secularisation 1974–2010: The Influence of Hugh McLeod’, in Callum G. Brown and Michael Snape (eds.), Secularisation in the Christian World: Essays in Honour of Hugh McLeod (Farnham, Surrey: Ashgate, 2010), pp. 1–12. For comparative works, see especially Secularisation in the Christian World, and Nancy Christie and Michael Gauvreau (eds.), The Sixties and Beyond: Dechristianization in North America and Western Europe, 1945–2000 (Toronto: Toronto University Press, 2013). On New Zealand, see Kevin Ward, The Church in Post-Sixties New Zealand: Decline, Growth, and Change (Auckland: Archer Press, 2013). 8 Charles Taylor, A Secular Age (Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University, 2007), p. 473. 9 Taylor, A Secular Age, p. 514. 10 Patrick Pasture, ‘Christendom and the Legacy of the Sixties: Between the Secular City and the Age of Aquarius’, Revue d’Histoire Ecclesiastique 99 (2004), p. 113. 11 Peter Berger, Grace Davie, and Effie Fokas (eds.), Religious America, Secular Europe? A Theme and Variations (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008). 12 Sidney Ahlstrom, ‘The Radical Turn in Theology and Ethics: Why It Occurred in the 1960s’, Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 387, no. 1 (January 1970), p. 1. 13 Green, The Passing of Protestant England; Field, Britain’s Last Religious Revival?; Laura Jane Gifford and Daniel K. Williams (eds.), The Right Side of the Sixties: Re-Examining Conservatism’s Decade of Transformation (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012). 14 Michelle Arrow, The Seventies: The Personal, the Political and the Making of Modern Australia (Sydney: NewSouth Publishing, 2019).

20

Introduction

15 Clive Field adopts a similar emphasis on the 1970s in addressing the ‘long 1960s’. Secularization in the Long 1960s: Numerating Religion in Britain (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017). 16 Hugh Jackson, Australians and the Christian God: An Historical Study (Preston, Vic.: Mosaic Press, 2013); Frame, Losing My Religion. 17 Donald Horne, The Next Australia (Sydney: Angus and Robertson, 1970), p. 163. 18 On the emergence in the 1960s of the term ‘national identity’ in place of ‘national character’, particularly in settler societies such as Canada, New Zealand and Australia, see K.S. Inglis, ‘Multiculturalism and National Identity’, in Craig Wilcox (ed.), Observing Australia, 1959–1999 (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1999), p. 192; Curran and Ward, The Unknown Nation, pp. 16–21. 19 Alan Atkinson, The Europeans in Australia: A History, vol. 1 (Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1997), p. ix; Alan Atkinson, The Commonwealth of Speech: An Argument about Australia’s Past, Present and Future (Melbourne: Australian Scholarly Publishing, 2002). On sectarianism, see, Benjamin Edwards, WASPS, Tykes and Ecumaniacs: Aspects of Australian Sectarianism, 1945–1981 (Brunswick East, Vic.: Acorn Press, 2008); Michael Hogan, The Sectarian Strand: Religion in Australian History (Ringwood, Vic.: Penguin Books, 1987). On church-state relations, see, for example, Tom Frame, Church and State: Australia’s Imaginary Wall (Sydney: UNSW Press, 2006), and Hilary Carey and John Gascoigne, ‘Introduction: The Rise and Fall of Christendom’, in Hilary Carey and John Gascoigne (eds.), Church and State in Old and New Worlds (Leiden: Brill, 2011), pp. 1–27. More classic studies include: Jean Woolmington, Religion in Early Australia: The Problem of Church and State (Stanmore, NSW: Cassell, 1976); J.S. Gregory, Church and State (Melbourne: Cassell, 1973). 20 Donald Horne, Ideas for a Nation (Sydney: Pan Books, 1989), p. 81. Cf. Gregory Melleuish, ‘Donald Horne and the Idea of a Public Culture’, Quadrant 36 (June 1992), pp. 46–52. 21 Richard Ely, ‘The Forgotten Nationalism: Australian Civic Protestantism in the Second World War’, Journal of Australian Studies 11, no. 2 (May 1987), pp. 64–5. Cf. Richard Ely, ‘Protestantism in Australian History: An Interpretative Sketch’, Lucas: An Evangelical History Review, no. 5 (1989), pp. 11–20. 22 For an example of protest against the virility of Australians’ historic attachment to Christianity, see two articles by constitutional law professor Helen Irving, ‘Trespassers in the Name of History’, Sydney Morning Herald, 3 June 2004, and ‘Australia’s Foundations Were Definitely and Deliberately Not Christian’, Sydney Morning Herald, 9 June 2004. For recognition in other settings, see Brown, The Death of Christian Britain; Mark A. Noll, ‘“Christian America” and “Christian Canada”’, in Sheridan Gilley and Brian Stanley (eds.), The Cambridge History of Christianity, Volume 8: World Christianities c.1815–c.1914 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), pp. 359–80; Kevin M. Kruse, One Nation Under God: How Corporate America Invented Christian America (New York: Basic Books, 2015). 23 Key works include: Meredith Lake, The Bible in Australia: A Cultural History (Sydney: University of New South Wales Press, 2018); Stuart Piggin and Robert D. Linder, The Fountain of Public Prosperity: Evangelical Christians in Australian History 1740–1914 (Clayton: Monash University Publishing, 2018); Stuart Piggin and Robert D. Linder, Attending to the National Soul: Evangelical Christians in Australian History 1914–2014 (Clayton: Monash University Publishing, 2020); Stephen Chavura, John Gascoigne, and Ian Tregenza, A Secular State? Reason, Religion, and the Australian Polity (Abingdon: Routledge, 2019). For a popular treatment, see Roy Williams, Post-God Nation? How Religion Fell Off the Radar in Australia and What Might Be Done to Get It Back On (Sydney: ABC Books, 2015). 24 Taylor, A Secular Age, p. 514. 25 Gascoigne and Carey, ‘Introduction: The Rise and Fall of Christendom’, p. 3.

Introduction

21

26 Hugh McLeod adopts this descriptor ‘late Christendom’ to distinguish from the more coercive relationship between religion and national cultures of Latin or postWestphalian Christendoms, in The Religious Crisis of the 1960s. Compare this with the case made by Nathan Hatch that in a similar period in the United States, evangelical revivalism disrupted denominational identities and created a more individualistic, market-driven populist tone to American evangelicalism. The Democratization of American Christianity (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989). 27 Piggin and Linder, The Fountain of Public Prosperity, p. 39. 28 Piggin and Linder, The Fountain of Public Prosperity, p. 39. 29 Chavura, Gascoigne, and Tregenza, A Secular State?, p. 207. 30 See, for instance, the After Christendom series produced by the British Anabaptist Network and published by Paternoster between 2004 and 2015. 31 For a helpful overview of the influence of the Bible throughout 1950s Australian culture, see Lake, The Bible in Australia, pp. 283–7. 32 Hilliard, ‘God in the Suburbs’, p. 410; David Hilliard, ‘Church, Family and Sexuality in Australia in the 1950s’, Australian Historical Studies 28, no, 109 (1997), p. 134. 33 ‘Challenge to All, Says Menzies’, Sydney Morning Herald, 12 November 1951, p. 3. 34 ‘Call to the Nation: “Australia in Danger”’, Sydney Morning Herald, 12 November 1951, p. 1. 35 On this composite picture, see David Hilliard, ‘Popular Religion in Australia in the 1950s: A Study of Adelaide and Brisbane’, Journal of Religious History 16, no. 2 (1988), pp. 219–35; Marion Maddox, ‘Howard’s Methodism: How Convenient?!’, Journal of Australian Studies no. 83 (2004), pp. 1–13; Nick Colyer, ‘Sunday’s Soldiers: The Political Struggle of the Protestant Churches in New South Wales to Defend the Christian Sunday, 1930–1988’, unpublished BA Honours Thesis, The University of Sydney, 2005. 36 Paul Lim, ‘Evangelicalism and/as New Constantinianism: Globalization, Secularity, and the Heart of the Gospel’, in Bruce Ellis Benson and Peter Goodwin Heltzel (eds.), Evangelicals and Empire: Christian Alternatives to the Political Status Quo (Grand Rapids, MI: Brazos Press, 2008), pp. 278–90. 37 Manning Clark, A Short History of Australia, revised edition (London: William Heinemann Ltd, 1969), p. 252. 38 Rex Mathias, Mission to the Nation: The Story of Alan Walker’s Evangelistic Crusade (Melbourne: Joint Board of Christian Education, 1985), p. 73. 39 ‘Party Viewpoints: Labour, Vision of Development of a Growing Nation’, Mercury (Hobart), 27 May 1954, p. 5. 40 On the notion of an ‘informal empire’, see Phillip Buckner and R. Douglas Francis, ‘Introduction’, in Buckner and Francis (eds.), Rediscovering the British World (Calgary: University of Calgary Press, 2005), pp. 9–20. Other important works in the vast literature include: Hilary Carey, God’s Empire: Religion and Colonialism in the British World, c. 1801–1908 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011); Kent Fedorowich and Andrew S. Thompson (eds.), Empire, Migration and Identity in the British World (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2013); Duncan Bell, The Idea of Greater Britain: Empire and the Future of World Order, 1860–1900 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007); James Belich, Replenishing the Earth: The Settler Revolution and the Rise of the Anglo-World, 1780s–1920s (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009). 41 Hilary Carey, ‘Introduction’, in Hilary Carey (ed.), Empires of Religion (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), p. 3. 42 Malcolm Prentis, ‘Binding or Loosing in Australasia: Some Trans-Tasman Protestant Connections’, Journal of Religious History 34 (September 2010), pp. 312– 34; A. Hamish Ion, ‘The Empire that Prays Together Stays Together: Imperial Defence and Religion, 1857–1956’, in Greg Kennedy (ed.), Imperial Defence: The Old World Order 1856–1956 (London: Routledge, 2008), pp. 197–217.

22

Introduction

43 Douglas Cole, ‘“The Crimson Thread of Kinship”: Ethnic Ideas in Australia, 1870–1914’, Historical Studies 14 (1971), p. 521. 44 Take, for example, the absence of any substantive reference to religion and decolonisation in the 40 chapters of Robin Winks (ed.), The Oxford History of the British Empire, Volume 5: Historiography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999). Notable exceptions are Alister Chapman, ‘The International Context of Secularization in England: The End of Empire, Immigration, and the Decline of Christian National Identity, 1945–1970’, Journal of British Studies 54 (2015), pp. 163–89, and, to some degree, Christian Champion, The Strange Demise of British Canada: The Liberals and Canadian Nationalism, 1964–68 (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2010), Chapter 4. 45 Linda Colley, Britons: Forging the Nation, 1707–1837 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992); John Wolffe, God and Greater Britain: Religion and National Life in Britain and Ireland, 1843–1945 (London: Routledge, 1994); Hugh McLeod, ‘Protestantism and British National Identity, 1815–1945’, in Peter van der Veer and Hartmut Lehmann (eds.), Nation and Religion: Perspectives on Europe and Asia (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999), pp. 44–70; David Hempton, Religion and Political Culture in Britain and Ireland: From the Glorious Revolution to the Decline of Empire (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996); Matthew Grimley, ‘The Religion of Englishness: Puritanism, Providentialism, and “National Character”, 1918–1945’, Journal of British Studies 46 (2007), pp. 884–906. 46 Key works specifically focussed on evangelicalism as a movement in Australia (rather than within a denomination) include: Piggin and Linder, The Fountain of Public Prosperity; Piggin, Evangelical Christianity in Australia; David Parker, ‘Fundamentalism and Conservative Protestantism in Australia, 1920–1980’, 2 vols., PhD Thesis, University of Queensland, 1982; Robert Linder, The Long Tragedy: Australian Evangelical Christians and the Great War (Adelaide: Open Book, 2000); J. Edwin Orr, Evangelical Awakenings in the South Seas (Minneapolis, MN: Bethany, 1976). See also articles in Lucas: An Evangelical History Review (1989–), the 14 books and 22 working papers produced by the Centre for the Study of Australian Christianity (1991–2000), and Brian Dickey (ed.), Australian Dictionary of Evangelical Biography (Sydney: Evangelical History Association, 1994) (hereafter ‘ADEB’). 47 Andrew Walls, ‘The Evangelical Revival and the Missionary Movement’, in Mark A. Noll, David W. Bebbington, and George A. Rawlyck (eds.), Evangelicalism: Comparative Studies of Popular Protestantism in North America, the British Isles, and Beyond, 1700–1990 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994), p. 311. 48 Stanley, The Global Diffusion of Evangelicalism, pp. 11–2. 49 Stanley, The Global Diffusion of Evangelicalism, p. 12. 50 A.W. Goodwin Hudson, ‘The Dean Writes’, Southern Cross (Sydney), April 1963, p. 9. 51 For such an analysis of interwar American evangelicalism, see Joel Carpenter, Revive Us Again: The Reawakening of American Fundamentalism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997). 52 David Bebbington, Evangelicalism in Modern Britain: A History from the 1730s to the 1980s (London: Unwin Hyman, 1989), pp.  2–3. Cf. Timothy Larsen, ‘The Reception Given Evangelicalism in Modern Britain since Its Publication in 1989’, and other essays, in Michael A.G. Haykin and Kenneth J. Stewart (eds.), The Emergence of Evangelicalism: Exploring Historical Continuities (Nottingham: Inter-Varsity Press, 2008), pp. 21–36. 53 On the transnational nature of Australian evangelicalism, see Stuart Piggin, ‘The American and British Contributions to Evangelicalism in Australia’, in Noll, Bebbington, and Rawlyk (eds.), Evangelicalism, pp.  290–309; Brian Dickey,

Introduction

23

‘Evangelical Anglicans Compared: Australia and Britain’, in George A. Rawlyk and Mark A. Noll (eds.), Amazing Grace: Evangelicalism in Australia, Britain, Canada and the United States (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1994), pp. 215–40. 54 David Hackett Fischer, ‘Response to Yerxa, Kersh, Glenn, and Morone’, Historically Speaking (September–October 2005), p.  25, quoted in Noll, ‘What Happened to Christian Canada?’, p. 19. 55 Quentin Skinner, Visions of Politics, Volume 1: Regarding Method (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), p.  47. Cf. Chapman, Coffey, and Gregory (eds.), Seeing Things Their Way.

1

Citizenship Fred Nile, political activism and the World’s Christian Endeavour Convention, 1962

‘A fundamental struggle’ Fred Nile’s maiden speech was a declaration of war. Elected to the New South Wales Legislative Council in 1981 after a successful ‘election crusade’, the 47-year-old Uniting Church minister later described the speech as ‘a call to arms in the battle against the world, the flesh and the devil’.1 The increasing influence of ‘secular humanists’ on Australian politics signalled a fundamental struggle between absolute values and relative values, between the Judeo-Christian ethic and the humanist ethic, between compassion and greed, and between spiritual values and materialism. That struggle is occurring in every area of our society – our schools, streets, prisons, welfare organisations, the media, universities, and even, dare I say, within political parties. This almost Manichaean clash of worldviews after the lost hegemony of Christendom was, for Nile, a mandate for vigorous Christian political engagement. The soul of the nation was at stake. ‘I believe sincerely in the separation of church and state,’ he went on. ‘But I do not accept the separation of faith and state. No nation can live or survive for very long in a spiritual and moral vacuum.’ Rather than retreat in the face of the ‘permissive society’, he sought to be ‘a crusader against crime and corruption’, making the Parliament, ‘with the help of God, a pulpit and a platform to promote justice and decency for God and the family’.2 In that maiden speech, Nile articulated his conviction that, though a minister of religion, he could best advance the cause of Christ by upholding ‘the Judeo-Christian ethic’ with its ‘absolute’ and ‘spiritual’ values from within the political arena. Heckled in another early speech by, in his recollection, a ‘loud-mouthed’ member of the Australian Labor Party with the taunt, ‘Anyhow, where is your parish?’, Nile replied, ‘Right here, brother! Right here!’3 Few Australian political figures have attracted as much controversy as Fred Nile. He has been criticised by the press, in the Parliament and from the pulpit as ‘obnoxious’ and ‘bigoted’, ‘moralistic’, ‘inciting prejudice’, a

Citizenship

25

‘tedious cleric’.4 On the same day as Nile’s maiden speech but in the lower house, while debating the decriminalisation of homosexuality, the Labor Attorney-General Frank Walker derided Nile as the leader of a band of ‘fanatical fundamentalist friends’, incapable of ‘rational arguments’. In a graphic reference to Nile’s campaigns against pornography as the National Coordinator of the Australian Festival of Light, Walker likened him to ‘a deranged derelict frantically searching through rubbish bins for items which satisfy some peculiar craving for filth’.5 Although he received such a virulent reception in Parliament, Nile had good reason to feel confident in his standing with the people. Almost one in ten New South Wales voters sent him into office in 1981, and sufficient numbers saw him retain and expand his independent foothold in the Legislative Council at every succeeding election, making him, at 2019, its longest-serving member. In the early twenty-first century, Nile’s profile grew even larger. His opposition to Muslim immigration, classroom ethics courses and gay marriage legislation were but a few of the issues on which he courted considerable controversy.6 Yet despite his prominence as the standard-bearer for the so-called Christian Right in Australia for over three decades, little attempt has been made to historicise Nile’s trajectory into public life and explain the reasons for his self-described crusading stance without reverting to clichés.7 Treatments of Nile’s politics and the evangelical political activism he represented have almost invariably cast him in American or British moulds. While he can be compared with the new evangelical political coalitions that emerged in the 1970s and 1980s, such as the Moral Majority in the United States and the Nationwide Festival of Light in Britain, there are particularities of the Australian experience of post-Christendom political engagement which chafe against simple conflations.8 As the conservative backlash against the libertarianism of the 1960s and the politicisation of evangelicalism continue to attract strong historical and popular interest, further attention is needed on the contours of these movements outside the North. So who was Fred Nile? What drove him to enter politics? What shaped the perceived threats to the nation during the long 1960s and called for the crusading posture evangelicals ought to take in response? A clue lies in the word Nile used most frequently in his maiden speech: ‘citizen’.9 Nile saw himself as a Christian citizen. Two months before the speech, the freshly elected clergyman had made this clear. Describing his Call to Australia Citizens’ Movement (which in 1997 became the present-day Christian Democratic Party) as a ‘citizens’ action group’, he added, ‘and I don’t want to be seen as a politician but as a Christian citizen in Parliament who is also an active ordained minister’.10 This chapter examines one of the strongest sources of Nile’s intellectual history in the early days of his so-called ‘fundamental struggle’ against the libertarian impulses of the 1960s: the Christian Endeavour movement. Nile’s schooling in the movement, his leadership of it (particularly at its last great moment, the 1962 World’s Christian Endeavour Convention in Sydney), and his transition into parliamentary politics centred

26

Citizenship

on a particular conception of the nation which was radically challenged by moral liberalisation. That he entered Parliament in the immediate afterglow of the 1970s, and that his worldview was deeply shaped by the evangelical milieu of the late 1950s and early 1960s together with the ‘permissive society’ of the 1970s, makes Nile in some ways a fitting representative of the trajectory of evangelicalism and national public culture across these decades. Charting the declining fortunes of Christian Endeavour and the rise of Fred Nile, this chapter puts in stark relief the moral crises of the 1960s and the reasons for this particular ‘crusading’ response, a response which has had remarkable durability in Australia after Christendom.

Christian Endeavour and the making of Christian citizens Christian Endeavour, or ‘CE’ as it was affectionately called, was the world’s first Church-based, interdenominational evangelical youth training organisation.11 Founded in 1881 in the United States by Francis Clark as the Williston Congregational Church Young People’s Society of Christian Endeavour, CE represented a new approach to youth ministry. Frustrated by failed attempts to motivate young Christians to be ‘more useful in the service of God’, Clark attempted to ‘try something more serious’ than prayer meetings and social gatherings by establishing a society based on commitment, participation and accountability.12 Boys and girls were called to make a pledge of loyal service to Christ and their local church, specifically entailing regular personal Bible reading and prayer, and attendance and active participation at every meeting of the Society. The hope was that this would strengthen their faith – their Christian endeavour – as well as train them for life-long service to God, Church and country. Evangelical conversionism and activism were centre-stage, framed by strong holiness teaching and a group identity reinforced by rituals such as the pledge made by new members and symbols such as the CE lapel badge. The idea seemed to work amongst Clark’s youth, and as he described and disseminated his efforts, the Christian Endeavour model was quickly replicated. New societies sprang up in churches of varying denominations all over the United States, their membership doubling annually, with 253 societies and 14,892 Endeavourers by 1885. In that year, Christian Endeavour societies were formed in Foochow, China, and Jaffna, Ceylon, followed by South Africa, Egypt and Nigeria. By 1892, with over 22,000 societies and 1.25 million members – many from beyond the traditional centres of Christendom – the Southern Presbyterian could claim that ‘[t]here is scarcely a land on the face of the earth without its societies of Christian Endeavor’.13 By 1906, at its peak, the movement reported four million members in 67,000 societies across 80 denominations and 50 countries.14 Though membership statistics throughout the movement’s history seem to have been somewhat exaggerated, it was undeniable that CE quickly became a global,

Citizenship

27

interdenominational evangelical youth movement, one of the largest voluntary associations in the world.15 From the outset, Francis Clark organised local and national conventions to promote the work of CE and show its value in buttressing the nation against the dislocations of modernity. It is, in fact, hard to understand both Christian Endeavour and evangelical identity more broadly without countenancing the central importance of conferences and conventions. At the first All-American Convention in Montreal in 1893, Clark called for ‘a new and keener interest in public affairs’, going beyond the temperance campaigns with which Endeavourers had already been deeply involved. He specifically advocated the formation of ‘good-citizenship committees’ and the inclusion of ‘topics relating to civic righteousness’ in Endeavour conventions.16 Consequently, one day at each subsequent convention was devoted to ‘patriotic demonstrations and to addresses on the Christian citizen and his duties’.17 Though Clark was anxious not to become involved in ‘partisan politics’ which might distract from the spiritual focus of the movement, he was unequivocal about the civic purposes for which Endeavourers were being trained: The problems of the religious life are so intimately connected with good citizenship, the great causes of temperance, of pure living, of charitable work on the remote frontiers; they are so interlaced with questions of national integrity, that it is quite impossible to imagine that young men and women being trained along CE lines should fail to feel their responsibilities as citizens or forget their duties to their native land.18 Good citizenship was an inevitable outflow of good Christianity. Piety and patriotism were natural bedfellows. On one level, ‘Christian citizenship’, according to CE, was merely a synonym for Christian social action in a conservative key. But on another, the use of the word ‘citizenship’ carried weight that ‘social engagement’ or ‘public responsibility’ or ‘evangelical witness’ did not. For where other Christians in other times might use the New Testament motif of dual heavenly and earthly citizenship as one illustration of the Christian’s social vocation, Endeavourers used it as the reigning metaphor. Indeed, Christian Endeavour had such an emphasis on promoting good citizenship that it was criticised by one proto-fundamentalist for forgetting its holiness teaching roots.19 While Christian Endeavour was the first and most successful Church-based youth ministry organisation, and claimed to have coined the term ‘Christian citizenship’, it was not alone in training young Christians to be useful members of both their Church and their nation.20 What Ian Tyrell calls a ‘wider network of mutually supporting organisations’ developed in Britain and the United States between the 1880s and the First World War, attempting to mobilise youth for Christian service to Church and nation. Among them were the Boys’ and Girls’ Brigades (1883 and 1893, respectively), the Boy

28

Citizenship

Scouts (1907) and the Girl Guides (1910).21 All such groups each quickly formed their own associations in Australia. The culture from which these organisations emerged and into which they were enveloped was marked by the high tide of classic nationalism in late-nineteenth-century Englishspeaking countries, when educating for a virile, moral and dedicated citizenry was seen as an essential bulwark against the social fragmentation and anxiety caused by increasing urbanisation and globalisation. In this environment, evangelical activism was most successful when it emphasised the local church, the nation, and the world, fed extensive transnational communication networks sharing news, personalities, spiritual techniques and moral crusades. Christian Endeavour epitomised this holistic vision. The crises of the 1960s were in large part the collapse of those settlements of the late nineteenth century. Christian Endeavour’s first society formed beyond the United States was in Australia, at the Hope Street Church of Christ in Geelong near Melbourne, established in 1883. There were active societies in all Australian states by 1890. By 1905, there were reportedly over 75,000 Australian Endeavourers, one for every 40 Australians.22 Endeavourers came from a range of denominations, but were particularly strong within the Methodist Church, with over 40,000 members by 1907.23 As the movement grew, individual Church-based societies joined together to form district, state and national Christian Endeavour Unions, organising meetings and conventions, publishing training manuals and journals, and mobilising Endeavourers for social reforms. The Australian Union was formed in 1893, and two years later, an Australian, W.J.L. Cross of Summer Hill Congregational Church in Sydney’s inner west, put the concept of a worldwide federation to the Fourteenth International Conference in Boston (which attracted a record 56,425 delegates). The idea was embraced, and Cross was elected first secretary of the new World’s Christian Endeavour Union. Cross envisaged an international network in support of the potential political campaigns of domestic CE unions, such as Indian Endeavourers crusading against the opium trade.24 From the outset, Christian Endeavour was marked by Australian aspirations for an international Christian citizenship movement. From 1896, Conventions of the World’s Christian Endeavour Union were held every four years, on a similar pattern to the Olympic Games which commenced in the same year. Sydney was slated to host the 1914 Convention, but was robbed of the honour by a smallpox epidemic, not to host again until 1962.25 In 1938, Australia’s sesquicentennial, Melbourne played host to the Tenth World’s Christian Endeavour Convention. The mainstream press gave extensive coverage, reporting crowds of over 20,000 hearing visiting missionaries and CE leaders, and praising this manifestation of international unity in Christian fellowship as an aid to world peace. That a Nazi swastika hung in the Melbourne Exhibition Building did not seem to dampen such hopes.26

Citizenship

29

The Australian Endeavourers attending the 1938 World’s Convention had a clear agenda for their Christian citizenship. The 1935–1937 ‘National Programme of Objectives’, a document to be hung on all CE meeting room walls, enjoined Endeavourers to take up the crusade against the traditional evils of alcohol, gambling and Sabbath desecration. But it also called them to investigate the aims of the League of Nations in advancing global peace, to acknowledge the virtues of patriotism ‘with an understanding of its danger if falsely interpreted’, and to apply ‘the mind of Jesus towards war, racial conceit, social and international relationships, the rights of nations, industry, money, business, marriage, law observance, etc.’27 In many ways, an evangelical expression of the broader mood of Christian social thinking prevalent in the 1930s in organisations such as the ‘Faith and Order’ and ‘Life and Work’ movements, CE’s view of Christian citizenship extended beyond the domain of personal morality and Church activities and eschewed a parochial understanding of the nation.28 It was at once both nationalist and internationalist. After the Second World War, CE’s self-conception as a key advocate for national righteousness continued apace. The marriage between Christian youth organisations and the training of good Australian citizens was a central message at the 1955 National Christian Endeavour Convention in Brisbane. Opening the Convention, Vince Gair, the Roman Catholic Labor Premier (and later leader of the Democratic Labor Party) spoke of ‘the bond that must exist between the Church and the State’. ‘It is sometimes said that there is a marked movement away from religion’, he reflected: If this is so, it is a terrible blot on the history of Australia. It makes one doubtful about the future of the nation, for we can only continue to live as people recognise the fundamental principles of religion – love God and love your neighbour.29 The young Fred Nile’s conception of Christian citizenship was especially shaped by his mentor, Congregational minister Leslie Bennett, the National Christian Endeavour president who would later direct the 1962 World’s Convention in Sydney. At the 1955 Convention’s opening, Bennett catalogued ‘Our Perils Today’ by pointing out how few of the world’s 2.4 billion people were really ‘born-again Christians’, and how imperilled Australians were if their own nominalism was not revived into a living faith. ‘We are seeing the decline and fall of our own nation, and we weep not for it!’ he cried. ‘Unless we have a Holy Ghost revival soon we may see the vials of God’s wrath poured out.’ The fault for this failure lay not so much in the ever-present foe of communism and declining moral standards but in ‘the unbelief and back-slidden condition of the church – its utter prayerlessness and its utter passionlessness’.30 Describing Christian Endeavourers as the vital remnant loyal to the Church despite all its failures, Bennett called them to evangelise, to pray and to speak prophetically against the ‘social evils’

30

Citizenship

of gambling, drinking and moral laxity; to promote international peace, universal brotherhood and the assimilation of ‘new Australian’ migrants or visiting Asian students; and to ‘shoulder responsibilities of public trust and to aspire to positions of influence and leadership in public bodies and social movements’.31 In a world of crises, here was a vocation for the Christian citizen: called out from the nation (sanctified), capable of holding their ground in it (muscular), and determined to speak the truth to it (prophetic). Endeavourers were called to stand at the vanguard of the battle for the nation’s soul, and Christian citizenship, as the National Handbook put it, was ‘endless warfare’.32 Bennett’s agenda for Christian citizenship seems to contradict Anglican historian Tom Frame’s argument that in the 1950s, the Church (specifically the Church of England in Australia) ‘retreated rapidly from its national role and became preoccupied with reinforcing expressions of passive citizenship and the desire for personal contentment within nuclear family life and suburban domesticity’.33 While Frame may be right in claiming that a shrinking public square – the result of increased private leisure options and domestic affluence – caused the pronouncements of Church leaders to carry less weight in society, it does not necessarily follow that churches simply reflected and reinforced the dominant culture’s increasingly parochial concerns (this itself an increasingly contested view of 1950s culture).34 Much as Marion Maddox found when scrutinising the presumption that Methodism in the 1950s was synonymous with insular social conservatism, a close look at evangelical organisations like Christian Endeavour reveals that their social conscience was rather more expansive and complex than often assumed.35 Evangelical pietism did not necessarily cancel out social activism, and ‘personal morality and individual obligation’ were not alternatives to ‘social ethics and public duty’; in the case of Christian Endeavour, they were central to fostering it.36 In the words of the National Handbook, the call was out for young crusaders who would ‘face all the major problems of civic life’, in order ‘to enlighten the public and private conscience until existing abuses will no longer be tolerated’.37 This was the evangelical stable from which Fred Nile emerged. At 21 years of age, sitting in the Brisbane Town Hall hearing such a call to public action and raising his eyes to the giant words of the 1955 Convention’s theme emblazoned above the stage – ‘This Decisive Hour’ – Nile later claimed this as the moment of his call into fulltime Christian ministry: ‘This was my decisive hour.’38

The last great moment: the World’s Christian Endeavour Convention, 1962 Seven years later, when the World’s Christian Endeavour Convention came to Sydney, the social landscape in which Nile conceived of Christian citizenship was starting to shift. The 1962 Convention came at something of an interstitial time, showing the cracks in the Christendom consensus before the

Citizenship

31

crises of the 1960s very rapidly brought it undone. Hugh McLeod brackets the years 1958–1962 as ‘the early 1960s’, ‘a period of cautious questioning, of still tentative new beginnings, in which some of the ideas and movements and trends that were to be characteristic of the years following began to be heard and seen’.39 In Europe, America and Australia, these years served as something of a bridge between the search for postwar ‘normality’ and the era of libertarianism that was to come. The period of ‘adjustment’ following the return of thousands of demobilised servicemen to domestic life had come to an end and a new script was needed for the 1960s. The chief audience and actors in that morality drama were to be youth, generational fissures becoming more pronounced. The so-called ‘teenage revolution’ of the 1950s had seen the time between childhood and adulthood shift from being ‘a period of powerlessness’ to an influential if ambiguous social and economic segment of the population.40 Fred Nile recommended that advertising for a Christian Endeavour competition in 1962 use the term ‘teenager’ – evidently an emerging entity in Australia, little over 15 years since its coinage in the United States.41 While teenagers’ rebellion was not widespread in Australia by 1962, their apparent restlessness was. Long-time Cosmopolitan editor Helen Gurley Brown’s ‘devastatingly frank’ book Sex and the Single Girl had been released earlier that year, selling two million copies within three weeks in the United States and becoming a bestseller in Australia.42 Combined with the introduction of the contraceptive pill the previous year (a milestone of more immediate symbolic than actual importance) and the expansion of sex education for young people, a powerful sea-change was occurring in the social mores that defined growing up in Australia.43 So as the World’s Christian Endeavour Convention City Committee, led by Leslie Bennett and including a young Fred Nile as National Superintendent for the Intermediate and Young People Grades (aged 9–16), eyed the 11,000 seats of the Sydney Stadium – ‘the old tin shed’ which played host to boxing matches, roller derbies, Frank Sinatra and The Beatles – and the incoming international speakers put the final touches on their papers, the battle lines were being drawn up for the souls of the new Australia. The Convention’s Finance Director S.W.L. Edmonds, appealing for donations, made the stakes clear: Youth is on the move today: to where? to what? Youth is the prize in today’s battle of ideas and tomorrow’s world will bear the impress of the principles which our children and our adolescents learn today. Hitler captured Germany’s Youth. Mao-Tse-Tung is capturing China’s Youth. Christian Endeavour is seeking to capture children and young people for Christ and the Church.44 This remarkable use of recent history, pitting Christian Endeavour’s mission against that of Hitler and Mao, points to just how deep ran the idea of a

32

Citizenship

contested, polarised world, torn between the forces of good and evil. The governor of New South Wales, Sir Eric Woodward, as patron of the Convention, echoed these sentiments, finding ‘no spiritual force as potent as Christianity to bring peace and happiness to a troubled world’, and for resisting the ‘Godless ideology’ of communism.45 The outcome of such a contest was not merely of importance to the future of the Church, but to the preservation of a just and free nation – a classic civic Protestant appeal. This was a telling example of the centrality of religion to what has been termed the ‘cultural Cold War’, a rhetorical juxtaposition of two worldviews.46 Nile’s dualistic language in his maiden speech almost 20 years after the Convention reflected this same rhetorical construct. Edmonds’s words also hint at the relentless pragmatism of this brand of evangelical activism; while the ends to which tyrants such as Hitler and Mao mobilised their people were deplorable, something valuable could be learnt from their means. And conventions like this provided unique opportunities to galvanise youth into a movement fit to respond to a changing world. Of the 40,000 Australian and three million international Endeavourers active in 1962, the Fourteenth World’s Convention drew over 2,000 delegates, mostly from Australian states. For six days in August 1962, they were joined by up to 9,000 Sydneysiders for nightly rallies calling for conversion and consecration, exhibits in the Sydney Town Hall on the work of CE at home and abroad, discussion groups on the issues confronting CE societies, particularly in engaging with the world, and tours of Sydney and its surroundings. Mirroring the interdenominational character of Christian Endeavour, the Convention was styled as an evangelical ecumenical gathering, and had the endorsement of the leaders of all of Sydney’s major Protestant denominations. Taking as its theme ‘Jesus Christ – The Way’, its goal was to magnify ‘the leadership of Christ in personal living, in evangelism, in Christian education, in Christian citizenship and in Christian brotherhood’.47 Such gatherings, from the annual Keswick-styled conventions in Katoomba near Sydney and Belgrave Heights near Melbourne, to the major evangelistic rallies of the 1950s, to the annual Anglican and Catholic Processions of Witness at Easter, had a critical identity-forming role for evangelicals.48 Young Endeavourers felt themselves part of a global fraternity, as evoked in a poem written by attendees from Queensland: When we are on excursions New friends we hope to make, And blend as Christian Nations The onward march to take.49 The Convention organisers aimed to strengthen this family of ‘Christian Nations’ and the ‘onward march’ of its Christian citizens in three ways. First, age-based discussion groups focused on the responsibilities of young Endeavourers in facing a changing world. While awareness of change was

Citizenship

33

nothing new, the range of issues about which Endeavourers needed to be informed was. The movement’s leaders were concerned about how easy it had become for Christians ‘to feel distinctly separated from issues of world importance’, and of the need to be ‘very prayerfully concerned and fairly well advised on current issues, in that they might then play a very effective part in seeking divine guidance on world happenings’.50 For these young evangelicals to be of service to the community and the world, they needed to know its concerns. Despite such concerns, there seemed no hint of insular ignorance amongst these young discussants. The Convention’s official report noted that Intermediate Endeavourers were ‘especially interested’ in the problems of racial segregation, world hunger, the space race, the European Common Market and illiteracy. The Young People groups added to that the issues of nuclear war, the ‘Australian Aboriginal situation’, the White Australia Policy, Communism, religious rivalries and ‘the young nation’s place on the world scene’.51 These age groups, under Nile’s superintendence, were substantially broadening the remit of citizenly concerns that had been articulated in the Christian Endeavour Platform of Principles, which, alongside the Pledge and Constitution, was a central marker of the movement’s identity. In 1962 CE’s sixth principle, Christian citizenship, was officially interpreted thus: Christian Endeavour stands always for the education of youth in the principles of national and individual righteousness and constantly seeks to eliminate from national life the use of intoxicants, gambling, immorality, and all other forms of social evils.52 To ‘honestly face world issues’, being informed and involved, was ‘our Christian duty’. It called for Endeavourers to enter service ‘in places of authority on [sic] high levels of education and politics’, and for CE to ‘make pronouncements on issues from the Christian standpoint’.53 Yet the efficacy of such formal pronouncements, usually intended to influence legislation, was proving less clear-cut for Endeavourers. Speaking on the subject of the Lord’s Day in the Convention’s group discussion time, Sydney Anglican H.M. Arrowsmith and American Elwood Dunn reflected a voluntarist aversion to legislated piety. ‘People might be forced to attend the service, but they cannot be forced to worship, which is vital’.54 The enforcement of laws preserving the nation’s divine covenant was all but impossible: It is difficult to see how man can be made to observe laws made by his fellow men if he refuses to observe those laws made by God. If he will not keep the first Commandment, we are not surprised that he will not keep the seventh Commandment. Legislation could ‘lead people in the right direction’, but it could not make them obey. That was a matter of the heart. Nevertheless, the consequences

34

Citizenship

for breaking the Sabbath were still serious for the nation: ‘Let it be widely noted’, concluded Arrowsmith and Dunn, that ‘God prospers the nation and the people who honour Him.’55 The civic Protestant compact remained important, but the efficacy of the state’s enforcement of Christian morality in producing true worshippers was being called into question. As Matthew Grimley has argued, such a shift was similarly occurring in Britain, as Church leaders (usually liberal Anglicans) led the ‘secularisation of the criminal law’, eager ‘to unyoke the law from Christianity’.56 While there were differences of motive, new relationships between Christ and the Law were increasingly evident across Western Christendom, and would become key battlegrounds for Nile and the evangelical base he mobilised. Christian Endeavour’s conception of Christian citizenship was also expressed in the promotion of the Convention’s guest speakers. Perhaps to rebut lingering accusations that Endeavourers were effete and pietistic – male Endeavourers having been criticised in 1935 as having ‘weak chins, receding foreheads, sloping shoulders, and no physical attributes’ – the Convention’s organisers highlighted the virility and civic engagement of the Australian and international speakers.57 The Bronze Star won in France by the Convention’s American director, Harold Westerhoff, the courage of German CE President Arno Pagel in wartime Christian youth work, and the civic and business leadership record of Australia’s own George Nelson (the only Australian vicepresident of the World’s CE Union) were brought to the fore.58 Overshadowing them all, however, was the retiring world president, Dr Daniel Poling. The spiritual heir of Endeavour’s founder, Francis Clark, Poling had been president since 1927. At the same time, he led the All-American Conference to Combat Communism. His courage of conscience, with no apparent regard for his own career, was expressed as the mark of true Christian citizenship: ‘Three times . . . Dan Poling, perhaps the world’s most muscular Protestant leader, has followed his conscience on outstanding public issues, although convinced at the time that his stand would ruin his career,’ wrote the Saturday Evening Post. Consequently, ‘today he is one of the greatest forces of Protestant Christianity’, lauded by President Roosevelt as ‘America’s ambassador of goodwill’.59 In such descriptions, Poling, though by then in his late seventies, epitomised the muscular Christianity so prevalent in CE’s formative years, now clothed in the dress of the Cold Warrior. As with the speakers at the Convention, Nile’s commitment to a muscular, militaristic Christian citizenship ran deep. He was converted at the age of 17 at Revesby Congregational Church (one of the minority of evangelical churches within the Congregational denomination, clustered in southern and southwestern Sydney), in large part because of the muscular message he heard from the church’s pastor and lay leaders. They were ‘real men’, of whom there was ‘nothing weak or sissy’.60 The attraction to Jesus for Nile, son of an ex-serviceman and shopkeeper, lay in two images: Jesus the carpenter, identifying with the working class, and Jesus the Lord, ‘calling and sending His disciples to change the world like a commander sending

Citizenship

35

his troops into battle’.61 He sought to follow suit, immediately going ‘into action’ by joining both the Church’s Christian Endeavour society and the army. Turning 18 during the Korean War and eager not to ‘miss out’ on defending ‘Christian civilisation under threat’, he proudly put his name forward – ‘probably the only National Service volunteer’.62 Then followed a 23-year career in the Citizens’ Military Force, a point Nile drew on repeatedly to demonstrate his civic virtue. Beyond the discussion groups and the speaker profiles, the most pronounced expression of Christian citizenship at the Convention was its United Procession of Witness through the streets of Sydney ending in a Great United Open-Air Citizenship Rally in Hyde Park. This march and rally had been a regular feature of CE conventions, intended to show the interdenominational unity, numerical strength and public confidence of the movement. By including members from similar Church-based Christian youth organisations such as the Methodist Order of Knights and the Boys’ and Girls’ Brigades, the Convention organisers aimed to make a more ‘general evangelical witness’ to the city.63 Yet in spite of such hopes, the impact of the Convention’s public witness to the city was underwhelming. Concerns had been raised before the Convention that a march might not make much impact, especially on a weekend. At a Convention information meeting with Church leaders, Anglican Archbishop Hugh Gough noted that on Sunday afternoons, hedonistic Sydneysiders ‘are mostly out at the beaches, and so on’. Convention Director Harold Westerhoff cautioned: ‘Unless you make it a Mardi Gras with a lot of floats, or something of that nature, it becomes a silent witness to a deserted city.’64 As it turned out, few Sydneysiders would have been at the beach (it rained), but no one paid much attention to this ‘general evangelical witness’ either. The 3,000 youth, marching ten abreast behind banners and bands, attracted almost no press coverage.65 When contrasted with the full-page spreads devoted to the 22,000 marchers at the 1938 Tenth World’s Convention in Melbourne, it seems that public demonstrations of that nature had lost their civic significance.66 It is something of an irony that the ‘Mardi Gras’ approach Westerhoff suggested was exactly that against which Nile led protests in the late 1970s and 1980s when those words became prefixed with ‘Gay and Lesbian’. While Nile played a relatively minor role in the Convention and its faltering attempts to bridge the divide between traditional modes of civic engagement and an increasingly affluent, apathetic culture, it was this challenge of understanding and acting in a changing context which signalled Christian Endeavour’s decline and Fred Nile’s rise in the following two decades.

The decline of Christian Endeavour and the rise of Fred Nile The World’s Christian Endeavour Convention of 1962 was the movement’s last great moment in Australia. After that, CE went into a nearly terminal decline. Estimated membership dropped from 45,000 in 1962 to 33,000 in

36

Citizenship

1970.67 While world’s conventions continued to draw thousands of Endeavourers, numbers at the biennial national conventions were more than halved, from 1,300 at Brisbane in 1964 to just 635 at Perth in 1972.68 One of the less obvious reasons for this decline in Christian Endeavour was its central emphasis on denominationalism – in the words of its motto, loyalty to ‘Christ and the Church’. As most Protestant denominations experienced a fall in Sunday school enrolments in the 1960s and 1970s, CE had a reduced base of young people connected to local churches who could be recruited to this more serious form of Christian discipleship, and who in turn would provide future leadership.69 For those families who remained involved in Protestant churches, CE also had to compete with denominational youth programmes and Christian education departments.70 As early as 1962, the Baptist Union’s Board of Christian Education incorporated the CE programme into a separate new Baptist Youth Fellowship. This was a ‘major source of concern’ among CE leadership, who saw it as undercutting CE’s viability and a shift away from denominational ‘cooperation’ to ‘competition’.71 In the case of the Methodist Church – historically the strongest supporter of CE in Australia – at the formation of the Uniting Church in 1977, all existing Endeavour Societies were automatically absorbed into the new Uniting Youth Fellowship. CE was also encumbered by an excessive loyalty to existing formats and methods, and an ageing leadership. National Director Norman Pell’s report a few months after the 1962 Convention expressed deep concern about the future of the movement: In most States, the gains in new CE Grades appear to be slightly greater than the losses, but on the whole there is no marked advance in Christian Endeavour. . . . On every major issue to which we are committed, postponement of decisions and failure to implement same, coupled with an over-exaggerated loyalty to tradition, at the top-levels of Christian Endeavour administration, are not only retarding the advancement of the Movement, but in the end could lead to its downfall. The next twelve months of Christian Endeavour life and activity could be more crucial than we can possibly imagine.72 For some, Nile was the answer. An anonymous Endeavour veteran wrote in the 1966 Christmas edition of the magazine Australian Christian Endeavourer that recent criticisms of CE were not concerned so much with programmes and principles as with personnel, of ‘a lack, in some instances, of forthright evangelical leadership’ for the sake of denominational equality in the top jobs. The writer was thankful that the tide seemed to be turning with the ‘strong lead’ given by Nile since his appointment as the first fulltime National Director in April 1965, a year after his ordination.73 Here was a charismatic, young, muscular leader unwilling to see the movement drift into obscurity.

Citizenship

37

Nile implemented a number of initiatives to help CE be relevant to the emerging concerns of young people. He introduced camps that employed military language and motifs in training Endeavourers for civic demonstrations: ‘raw recruits’ were transformed into a ‘new breed of Anzacs’, a curious image given the languishing of the First World War’s Anzac Legend as a mobilising myth in Australian culture in the 1960s and 1970s, but unsurprising given the central place Nile gave to his own service in the Citizens’ Military Force.74 Nile also revived the movement’s national magazine that had financially collapsed in 1965, making each issue less concerned with CE news and more focused on dealing with ‘a relevant and often controversial theme in a hard-hitting, frank manner’.75 The Australian Christian Endeavourer’s first issue under Nile contained an insert on the war in Vietnam, and issues in the late 1960s and early 1970s covered such topics as drugs, pollution, sex, communism, Zionism and the ‘Jesus Revolution’ sweeping the United States.76 While the magazine may have been ‘more of a forum for the concerns of the editors than a means of addressing the needs of the movement’ for theological rigour and organisational renewal, it nevertheless highlighted citizenship as a central aspect of CE’s mission.77 Nile also played a part in CE’s broadening understanding of the targets upon which Christian citizens in the late 1960s ought to fix their sights. He was usually the primary or secondary mover of National Council resolutions on citizenship at biennial Endeavour conventions, which acknowledged (but did not necessarily offer answers to) a wider range of social problems, including poverty, war, racism and unemployment, alongside the traditional vices of gambling, drinking and Sabbath desecration.78 While the 1962 convention showed the movement grappling with these issues in educating Endeavourers for the sake of evangelism and civic service, Nile was seeking for these issues to become central in the public witness of CE Despite his vigorous leadership, Nile often stood alone in his call to activism; the most common response of CE leaders to these new issues was anxiety and inaction. For example, the National Citizenship Superintendent T.T. Scarlett reported in 1972 that there were ‘extremely few Citizenship Committees in Grades’ and there had been an ‘extremely limited response’ to the annual citizenship essay award. He recommended that his own position be abolished and that local CE societies adopt the citizenship positions of their denomination, because ‘[t]hese days, Citizenship issues can be very divisive issues, even within the Church’. Citing Vietnam, conscription and the prospective tour of the Springbok South African rugby team as examples, Scarlett concluded that Christian Endeavour was not ‘really ready to grapple with all that’s involved’.79 Nile disagreed. Though he conceded a diversity of valid opinions on questions like Church union and temperance, when it came to communism, censorship, demonstrations and pornography, the issues were black and white, and CE ought to argue its own position.80 The case for a renewed crusade for Christian citizenship was galvanised for Nile as he saw moral norms changing abroad and new threats to the

38

Citizenship

health of purportedly Christian nations. He led delegations of Endeavourers to the two World’s Conventions that followed Sydney – Belfast in Northern Ireland in 1966 and Kitchener-Waterloo in Canada in 1970 – and travelled afterwards throughout Britain, Europe and the United States. Relaxed censorship laws had, in his eyes, opened ‘pornographic floodgates’ in Britain, the United States and Denmark, weakening the moral resolve of their people.81 ‘Christians must be constantly alert,’ Nile warned, ‘to avoid the kind of immoral invasion of Australia in the name of so-called progress, civilisation and freedom.’82 Morality and nationalism were intimately linked in Nile’s mind, as might be expected given his deep schooling in CE’s vision of Christian citizenship, whereby individual responsibility and virtue, not universal rights and freedoms, determined the good society. The prospect of a ‘permissive society’ stood in direct opposition to those foundational assumptions of both Christian Endeavour and Fred Nile: loyalty, authority, and duty to preserve the moral standards of the nation. Any steps down the ‘slippery slide’ into libertarianism were dangerous, and ought to be passionately resisted.83 In support of his prophecy that permissiveness threatened the best in Australian identity, Nile quoted television scriptwriter Hugh Stuckey (‘not a square or a prude’) who had moved to the United States to escape Australia’s strict censorship but had found it ‘a decadent society’ in which literature was ‘now just elevated graffiti’. ‘I have never been a flag-waving Australian’, said Stuckey upon his return, ‘but I am now’.84 This threatened ‘immoral invasion’ brought on by a softening of censorship seemed to be under way in Australia in the late 1960s, albeit later and slower than it was in Britain and America. Any number of examples of liberalisation could be offered, from the lifting of bans on novels such as Lady Chatterley’s Lover and The Catcher in the Rye, to the public display of pubic hair and full-frontal nudity in the musicals Hair! and Oh! Calcutta!85 While some restrictions remained (notably through the introduction in 1971 of an ‘R’ category of film classification which prevented those younger than 18 from viewing overly violent or pornographic material), the consumption and discussion of many formerly taboo themes was rather quickly permitted by the authorities – and largely accepted by the public.86 Alongside the relaxation of censorship, there was growing support for the decriminalisation of homosexuality (as had occurred in 1967 in Britain), with the formation of activist gay rights organisations such as the Australian Capital Territory’s Law Reform Society in July 1969 and the Campaign Against Moral Persecution (CAMP) in September 1970.87 At a more banal level, traditional disapproval of unmarried couples cohabiting seemed to be weakening: 28 per cent of women who married between 1973 and 1977 reported having previously lived with their husbands, more than twice as many as those surveyed between 1967 and 1972.88 The ripples of change that were appearing in 1962 had, by the end of the decade, become a moral maelstrom. In Donald Horne’s words, ‘permissiveness had blown up out of a clear sky, like a summer storm’.89

Citizenship

39

Nile did not place blame at the foot of ordinary Australians for the increasing prevalence of profligacy. Rather, he depicted a conspiratorial coalition of vocal minorities bent on unseating Christian morality: ‘a weird “front” embracing “protest” movements, “peace” organisations, money-hungry publishers and misguided councils for civil liberties’.90 In his view, the moral standards of Christian Australia were not so much being abandoned by the many as attacked by the few. Invoking the well-established evangelical trope of the jeremiad, the godly nation remained a reality, though beset by enemies and losing its way.91 The divine promise of blessings and warning of curses held true. Nile’s response to the decline of public piety was thus less about a revival of the masses than about a recapture of the debate. He directed his considerable organisational energies into influencing legislation and public opinion rather than public evangelism. Despite pointing to the United States and Britain as warnings, Nile also seemed to look there for the rhetoric to respond. From the former, he adopted the polarised picture of a battle between ‘the silent majority’ and cultural saboteurs which lay at the heart of (one-time Endeavourer) President Richard Nixon’s appeal to a new conservative constituency: the ‘broad and vital centre’, ‘the forgotten Americans, the non-shouters, the non-demonstrators’, ‘the great silent majority’.92 Though Nile at times lamented the increasing polarisation of society, this he tended to attribute to divisive vocal minorities and churches that failed to work together.93 In his view, the vast ‘silent majority’ of Australians believed in absolute moral standards, but were without the moral leadership they required to make their protest heard. Christians had a responsibility to provide such leadership, not in the manner of a Pharisee but out of ‘loving concern’, even that distinctly Australian quality of ‘mateship’.94 They had the spiritual resources to counter the assaults of the vocal minority, the courage to raise their heads above the parapet and lead the charge, to ‘stand up and be counted’.95 To ‘stand up and be counted’ became the rallying cry of Nile’s citizenship appeals. It was a useful phrase. It expressed the paradoxical conviction of being at once both an embattled Christian minority standing against the prevailing cultural norms, and part of a wide swathe of the population with shared concerns about moral standards.96 In seeking to stand up and be counted for this silent majority, Nile endeavoured to present the Christian citizen as an ‘ordinary’ Australian, concerned for ‘positive’ values like love, purity and the family, and not a ‘wowser’.97 This emphasis on being ‘positive’ also pervaded CE’s attempts to update itself in the 1960s and 1970s. The 1968 ‘Updated CE’ programme described Christian citizenship as ‘a positive out-working of a vital Christ-centred experience, not as a negative censorious way of life, devoid of adventure and personal pleasure’.98 Fellow AFOL leader Lance Shilton echoed such rhetoric, claiming that ‘[d]ecent people are being hoodwinked by subtle propaganda’, and that the ‘fair dinkum Aussie’ was being ‘got at’ by the ‘miserable manipulators’.99

40

Citizenship

In attempting to appeal to a victimised majority, Nile also eschewed sectarianism. Christian Endeavour’s emphasis on interdenominational cooperation and pragmatic activism (where devotion, not doctrine, was paramount) gave Nile a model to draw together a broad conservative coalition of Protestants, Catholics and non-Christians for the specific cause of moral protest. As with the comparably controversial leader of the Moral Majority in the United States, Jerry Falwell, the label ‘fundamentalist’ is thus not entirely appropriate. Nile may have been militant and absolutist but he was not separatist.100 Indeed, both figures were criticised as theological compromisers by avowed fundamentalists such as Carl McIntire for their eagerness to work with socially conservative Roman Catholics.101 Responding to the charge of ‘fundamentalism’ (which he said was ‘used like a swear word’), Nile would ‘just say I’m a Christian. I want to be a fair dinkum Christian.’102 This majoritarian, ‘positive’, ‘ordinary’ image found fullest expression for Nile in the Australian Festival of Light-Community Standards Organisation (AFOL). The Festival launched in Adelaide in October 1973 with a march through the city’s streets and a rally of over 10,000, addressed by Mary Whitehouse, the British campaigner against violent and obscene television.103 Whitehouse (Figure 1.1), with celebrated journalist and recent convert Malcolm Muggeridge, had been instrumental in establishing the British

Figure 1.1 British morality campaigner Mary Whitehouse speaking in the Sydney Town Hall at an Australian Festival of Light Rally, 1984. The first Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras Festival was organised in response to her 1978 visit. Fred Nile, director of the Australian Festival of Light, is seated fifth from the right. The Dean of St Andrew’s Cathedral, Lance Shilton, is third from the right. Source: © Ramon Williams. Used with permission.

Citizenship

41

Nationwide Festival of Light two years earlier, which climaxed in a rally of over 30,000 in Trafalgar Square and a march to Hyde Park for an evangelistic service.104 By 1974, the Australian Festival had established a national presence, holding a rally of 30,000 in Sydney’s Hyde Park (the first time the Catholic and Anglican Archbishops of Sydney had shared a platform), and appointing Fred Nile as national coordinator. The Festival, affirming ‘the rights of all Churches to their own beliefs and forms of worship’, garnered support from members of most major Christian denominations, expressing what David Furse-Roberts has termed a form of ‘conservative ecumenicalism’.105 It was less explicitly evangelical and evangelistic than its British equivalent, and arguably able to generate more lasting support as a result.106 Yet alongside this inclusiveness, it drew firm boundaries. Writing in December 1974, Nile argued that there was ‘no neutral ground in this struggle’ against ‘the exploiters’ – which included humanists, communists, the mafia, ‘the sensualists’ and ‘extreme elements of “Women’s Lib”’ – and that ‘complete involvement’ in community life and ‘democratic processes’ was essential to ‘ensure the development of an even stronger national character’.107 He echoed similar sentiments in Christian Endeavour circles, often calling for Endeavourers to support the Festival as an expression of Christian citizenship.108 For example, on the challenges to traditional marriage posed by the Family Law Bill (which he dubbed the ‘Anti-Family Law Bill’) and the Australian Capital Territory’s proposed decriminalisation of homosexuality, he wrote in June 1975 of the impossibility of moral pluralism and the need for vocal Christian citizenship: Australia is built upon the Judeo-Christian Ethic. No nation can survive in a moral, spiritual, social or legal vacuum. An ordered society can only have ONE code of laws for ALL people. Minorities are free to express their opinion but they must obey the laws if civilisation is to survive. Christians not only have a RIGHT to speak out on these issues as Christian citizens, but they have a solemn obligation! (Romans 13).109 Utilising the problematic, if more politically acceptable, concept of ‘JudeoChristian’ values, and adopting a rather simplistic citation of biblical support, Nile nevertheless made clear his belief in the central link between forthright Christian citizenship and the health of the nation. In 1976, the year Nile resigned as national director of Christian Endeavour, he organised another major AFOL rally in Sydney’s Hyde Park, this time featuring Malcolm Muggeridge. He was accompanied on the podium by a range of denominational and civic leaders. Behind them was a huge Australian flag. The estimated 35,000 who turned out were claimed as further evidence of a substantial ‘silent majority’ versus ‘a very small minority of secular humanists’.110 Chairman of the Festival’s Advisory Committee, the Federal Liberal MP and ‘true-blue Endeavourer’ Milton Morris, described the crowd as the largest peace-time public gathering since the 1930s, contrasting

42

Citizenship

it against the efforts of its opponents: ‘Some of those who make the greatest fuss in the community can’t even get a quorum for their meetings.’111 Christian Endeavour may have declined in numbers, but the Festival was still drawing large crowds. As the Sydney Morning Herald religious affairs writer Alan Gill observed, this was confirmation for Morris, Nile and their colleagues that the Festival, ‘often accused of representing a small, “wowserish” minority, had tried the numbers game – and was clearly delighted that it had worked’.112 The ‘numbers game’ became for Nile and the Festival increasingly about political representation to influence legislation. Civic demonstrations, however large, failed to stem the tide of liberalisation. CE’s emphasis on service – to Christ, Church, sovereign and nation – had normally led, in the words of its 1968 Citizenship Resolution, to a ‘loyal enthusiastic support of all Governments’, presuming a congruence between the laws of the land and the laws of God.113 While Endeavourers might have periodically pointed out the state’s failings – as Ivan Alcorn, the director of the Queensland Methodist Young People’s Department, did at the 1962 World’s Convention Citizenship Rally when he rebuked politicians’ tendency to ‘generate more steam than light’ in economic policy debates – this was usually expressed as loyal opposition.114 However, as the Labor government of Gough Whitlam moved to legalise behaviour which Nile and others viewed as un-Christian (such as ‘easy divorce’), the posture of the Christian citizen had to change. A self-described ‘turning point’ in Nile’s politicisation was a sour meeting with Attorney-General Lionel Murphy, architect of the Family Law Act and the driving force behind liberalisation of social legislation.115 In Nile’s recollection, Murphy’s disregard for the opinion of Christians and Christian legal principles – which Murphy had termed ‘old ecclesiastical garbage’ – ‘forced us to launch a militant form of Christian action and finally a political movement’.116 To arms Nile went. Though he found little encouragement from the Congregational Union to seek public office, there was ‘no fear of politics’ within Christian Endeavour.117 At one stage its national president was Richard Cleaver, a Western Australian Methodist and Liberal parliamentarian, who credited CE with his interest in politics.118 Nile himself had been strongly advocating aspiration to public office amongst Endeavourers, calling for ‘nation-builders’, ‘some Australian Nehemiah’s [sic]’ who would take up ‘vital service in Federal or State Parliaments’.119 Leading by example, his first campaign for parliamentary office was waged in 1974 with a bid for the Federal Senate under the banner of the Family Action Movement, the political arm of the AFOL. Though unsuccessful in securing a seat, in its 1975 campaign, the Movement was the highest-polling minor party, outperforming the far-better-funded Democratic Labor Party.120 After relaunching as the Call to Australia Citizens’ Movement in 1977 (a title based on the 1976 manifesto, ‘New Call to the People of Australia’, itself a renewed version of the original 1951 appeal for national righteousness, the ‘Call to

Citizenship

43

the Nation’), Nile’s nascent political party finally achieved representation in 1981 with 245,000 primary votes (almost 10 per cent) and a seat in the NSW Legislative Council.121 In that same year, Christian Endeavour celebrated its centenary in very muted fashion. The movement that had trained thousands of other young men and women as Christian citizens – proud servants of Church and nation – had become all but invisible in Australian public and Church life.122 It was no longer a fit instrument for evangelical witness after Christendom, yet its energies continued in the remarkably durable career of one of its favourite sons.

Conclusion For Fred Nile, the end of Christendom in Australia called for a new citizens’ crusade to reclaim the moral character of the nation. His trajectory into popular protest and parliamentary politics was both a response to the new conditions of plurality which swept all Western countries in the 1960s and 1970s, and an expression of the deeper inheritance he had received from the Christian Endeavour movement in Australia. With a participatory understanding of citizenship central to its origins and ideals, Christian Endeavour was always eager to engage with national culture and global politics. Indeed, in the 1950s and early 1960s, especially at the 1962 World’s Convention, it tried to expose its young people to a broad range of complex issues. Fred Nile did not emerge from a politically quietist organisation, nor one which only advocated for domestic, suburban issues. The rise of the ‘permissive society’ deeply challenged CE’s ideal of a single, Christian public morality, and in turn posed a major threat to its strong civic Protestant vision of national life. Nile felt this challenge acutely, and responded in a self-consciously militant way. He drew on CE’s pandenominational, pragmatic and activist ethos to gather a broad coalition for moral protest, finding fullest fruition in the Australian Festival of Light and his subsequent parliamentary electoral base. He called on Christians to ‘stand up and be counted’ in exercising their moral obligation to protest against moral degeneration, particularly as it affected the family and young people. But he also appealed to the rights of Australians to freedom of speech and emphasised the role of parliamentary processes and legislation. He styled himself as something of a voice in the wilderness, willing to court controversy and face ridicule on behalf of other ‘ordinary citizens’, representing the ‘silent majority’. Yet he did so very much within ‘the system’. Religiously and politically, Nile’s rhetoric was at once both polarising and inclusive. The Festival of Light eschewed sectarianism and embraced Roman Catholic support. His political campaigns, stressing the importance of the family and the rights of children, appealed to a broad conservative sensibility. The sense of speaking to and for the nation persisted. In 2005, he helped launch the Australian Christian Nation Association ‘to serve our Australian Christian heritage and to resist any attempt by non-Christian religions such

44

Citizenship

as Islam to change the Judeo-Christian foundation of our Christian nation’ – a curious blend of exclusive and inclusive language.123 It explicitly referred to the majority of Australians claiming a Christian affiliation in the Census, and to the continuation of public Christian traditions such as saying the Lord’s Prayer to open parliaments each day. Nile’s Christian Democratic Party attracted strong support from Middle Eastern Christian immigrants, who, he claimed, ‘really respond when I say, “Look, it started as a Christian nation. We’ve got to keep it a Christian nation. You’re reinforcements God’s sent to Australia to keep it a Christian nation”’.124 Nile continued to build broad coalitions, while painting a picture of a polarised struggle between the forces of continuity and collapse, ‘between God’s truth and secular humanism, God’s commandments and the devil’s lies’.125 Many evangelicals, such as the Jesus People featured in Chapter 5, would eschew Nile’s crusading approach to Christian citizenship and moral authoritarian assumptions. Yet in the face of the end of Christendom, Fred Nile’s stance proved remarkably resilient. As with all the evangelicals in this book, he is more complex than he is often made out to be.

Notes 1 For ‘election crusade’: ‘General Loan Account Appropriation Bill, Second Reading’, New South Wales Parliamentary Debates, Legislative Council, 25 November 1981, p. 736 (hereafter ‘Maiden Speech’). For ‘call to arms’: Fred Nile, Fred Nile: An Autobiography (Sydney: Strand Publishing, 2001), p. 189. 2 Nile, Maiden Speech. 3 Nile, Fred Nile, p. 154. 4 For ‘obnoxious’: Robert Aldrich, ‘Life Down Under!’, Gay Community News 9 (November 1981), p. 8; For ‘bigoted’: Monic Down, quoted in John Stapleton, ‘Fred, the Gay Parade Anti-Hero’, Sydney Morning Herald, 20 February 1989, p. 7; For ‘moralistic’: Fiona Patten, quoted in Rick Feneley, ‘Sins of the Flesh? Just Research, Says Nile’, Sydney Morning Herald, 3 September 2010; For ‘inciting prejudice’: Gregor Henderson, President of the Uniting Church of Australia, quoted in ‘MP “Defending Australia” against Muslim School’, ABC News, 21 December 2007, Australian Broadcasting Corporation, , accessed 16 April 2018; For ‘tedious cleric’: Ian Warden, ‘That Tedious Cleric Trundled Out Again’, Canberra Times, 4 August 1978, p. 17. 5 Frank Walker, Crimes (Sexual Offences) Amendment Bill, New South Wales Parliamentary Debates, Legislative Assembly, 25 November 1981, p. 851. Cf. Nile, Fred Nile, p. 156. 6 E.g. Simon Kearney, ‘Nile Wants to Stop Muslim Migrants’, Australian, 12 March 2007, p. 6; Sean Nicholls, ‘Nazi Ideology in Ethics Classes, Says Nile’, Sydney Morning Herald, 6 August 2011, p.  3; Heath Aston and Dan Harrison, ‘Nile Calls for Gay Marriage Referendum’, Canberra Times, 30 April 2013, p. 6. 7 For inadequate treatments see, for example, Marion Maddox, God under Howard: The Rise of the Religious Right in Australian Politics (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 2005), Amanda Lohrey, ‘Voting for Jesus: Christianity and Politics’, Quarterly Essay, no. 22 (2006), pp. 1–79. A rare exception is Maxwell Edwards, ‘Moral Reform Organisations in Australia: A Political Response to the Sexual

Citizenship

8

9 10 11

12

13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20

21 22

45

Revolution’, PhD Thesis, The University of Melbourne, 1997, which provides a detailed picture of Nile’s involvement in the Australian Festival of Light, situating it within the broader rise of Australian moral reform movements as a response to late modernity. However, the thesis does not deal at all with Nile’s involvement in the Christian Endeavour movement, which I argue is foundational to his approach to Christian citizenship. For examples of the few nuanced comparative studies, see Jonathan Malloy, ‘Political Opportunity Structures, Evangelical Christians and Morality Politics in Canada, Australia and New Zealand’, Australian Journal of Political Science 52 (June 2017), pp. 402–18; Willie Gin, ‘Jesus Q. Politician: Religious Rhetoric in the United States, Australia and Canada’, Politics and Religion 5 (2012), pp. 317–42. Nile used the word ‘citizen’ 19 times in his speech. ‘Moral’, ‘family’, ‘Christian’ and ‘nation’ were next, with 18, 15, 14 and 13 mentions, respectively. John Malley, ‘Parliament Will Be a Pulpit for Fred Nile’, Sydney Morning Herald, 20 September 1981, p. 2. For overviews, see Brian Hull, ‘Enduring Endeavor: How Francis E. Clark Utilized Written Communication, Global Travel, and Organization to Re-Shape the Global Protestant Church’s Ministry to Young People through the Christian Endeavor Society’, PhD Thesis, Asbury Theological Seminary, 2014; Christopher Coble, ‘Where Have All the Children Gone? The Christian Endeavour Movement and the Training of Protestant Youth, 1881–1918’, ThD thesis, Harvard Divinity School, 2001; Mark Senter, When God Shows Up: A History of Protestant Youth Ministry in America (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2010), pp. 154–70. On the movement in Australia, the only substantive work is Patrick Godman, ‘“Mission Accomplished?”: The Rise and Decline of the Christian Endeavour Movement, 1878–1988’, MA thesis, The University of Queensland, 1989. ‘More useful’: Model Constitution, The Christian Endeavour Society: What It Is! How It Works! (Melbourne: National Christian Endeavour Union of Australia and New Zealand, 1936), p. 11; ‘try something serious’: Henry Bush and Walter J.E. Kerrison (eds.), First Fifty Years: The Story of Christian Endeavour under the Southern Cross (Sydney: National Christian Endeavour Union of Australia and New Zealand with the Epworth Printing and Publishing House, 1938), p. 21. Southern Presbyterian (1892), quoted in Senter, When God Shows Up, p. 159. Senter, When God Shows Up, p. 167. Ian Tyrell, Reforming the World: The Creation of America’s Moral Empire (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010), p. 80. Francis Clark, Memories of Many Men in Many Lands: An Autobiography (Boston and Chicago: United Society of Christian Endeavour, 1922), pp. 132–3. E.H. Watson, ‘Christian Citizenship’, in R.S.C. Dingle (ed.), This Decisive Hour: The Official Report of the 26th National Christian Convention, Brisbane, September 1955 (np, 1955), p. 72. Quoted in Shirley Richardson, ‘ACE’, Roll Call: The Voice of Christian Endeavour in NSW, August 1958, pp. 10–1. James F. Brooks, The Truth or Testimony for Christ 21 (October 1895), pp. 522–624, cited in Larry Eskridge, ‘God’s Forever Family: The Jesus People Movement in America’, PhD Thesis, The University of Stirling, 2005, p. 32. On this claim of coining the term ‘Christian citizenship’, see Richard Cleaver (ed.), For Christ and the Church: The Official Manual of the National Christian Endeavour Union of Australia, second edition (Melbourne: National Christian Endeavour Publications Board, 1967), p. 12. Tyrell, Reforming the World, p. 81. Godwin, ‘“Mission Accomplished?”’, p. 10.

46

Citizenship

23 Robert Evans, ‘The Contribution of the Christian Endeavour Movement to Australian Revivals and Evangelism, 1883–1914’, Church Heritage 13 (September 2004), p. 164. 24 ‘Return of Rev. W.J.L. Cross’, Sydney Morning Herald, 20 August 1895, p. 5. 25 Bush and Kerrison, First Fifty Years, pp. 84–5. 26 ‘Convention Ended, CEU Ideals’, Argus (Melbourne), 9 August 1938, p.  2; ‘Great Assemblage of Endeavourers’, Argus, 4 August 1938, p. 2. 27 National Christian Endeavour Union of Australia and New Zealand, ‘Programme of Objectives for Christian Endeavour Societies and Unions’, November 1935, in Australian Christian Endeavour Union Further Records, ca. 1880–1996, Mitchell Library, Sydney, MLMSS 8089 (hereafter ACEUFR1), Box 2, Folder: ’14th World’s [Christian Endeavour] Convention Sydney 1962’. 28 Michael Thompson, For God and Globe: Christian Internationalism in the United States between the Great War and the Cold War (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2015). 29 Quoted in Dingle (ed.), This Decisive Hour, p. 9. 30 Bennett, ‘The Official Opening’, in Dingle (ed.), This Decisive Hour, pp. 10–1. 31 Bennett, ‘The Official Opening’ and ‘Citizenship Rally: CE and Social Responsibility’, in Dingle (ed.), This Decisive Hour, pp. 16, 70 respectively. 32 Christian Endeavour: The National Handbook, fifth edition (Melbourne: National Christian Endeavour Union of Australia, 1955), pp. 65–6. 33 Tom Frame, ‘Local Differences, Social and National Identity 1930–1966’, in Bruce Kaye (ed.), Anglicanism in Australia: A History (Carlton South, Vic.: Melbourne University Press, 2002), p. 123. 34 On revised views of the 1950s as a period of protracted concern, even amongst the middle class, about global crises – be they the prospect of another world war (this time nuclear), decolonisation or economic depression – and national issues such as employment, education, infrastructure and cultural identity, see John Murphy, Imagining the Fifties: Private Sentiment and Political Culture in Menzies’ Australia (Sydney: Pluto Press and University of New South Wales Press, 2000). 35 Maddox, ‘Howard’s Methodism: How Convenient?!’, pp. 1–13. 36 Frame, ‘Local Differences, Social and National Identity’, pp. 115, 122–3. 37 National Handbook, p. 65. 38 Nile, Fred Nile, p. 54. 39 McLeod, The Religious Crisis of the 1960s, p. 60. 40 Gerster and Bassett, Seizures of Youth: The Sixties and Australia, p. 47. 41 Minutes of 14th World’s Christian Endeavour Convention, Sydney, 1962, Convention City Committee held in the Board Room, Bible House, Sydney, on 30 January, 1962, at 6 p.m., Records of the NSW Christian Endeavour Union, Mitchell Library, Sydney, MLMSS 6753 (hereafter NSWCEU), Box 8, ‘Convention City Committee minutes, 1960–1963’. Cf. Jon Savage, Teenage: The Creation of Youth Culture (London: Pimlico, 2008), p. xiii. 42 ‘The World’s Most Controversial Woman’, Australian Women’s Weekly, 6 November 1963, p. 55. 43 ‘New in Australia: Sex Education Record for Release’, Methodist, 4 August 1962, p. 14. Frank Bongiorno, ‘January 1961: The Release of the Pill: Contraceptive Technology and the “Sexual Revolution”’, in Martin Crotty and David Andrew Roberts (eds.), Turning Points in Australian History (Sydney: UNSW Press, 2008), pp. 157–70. 44 Letter to undisclosed recipients, 20 July 1962, MLMSS 8092 Box 9, ‘14th World Convention City Committee, Sydney, circulars, notices, reports, agendas, 1960–1962’.

Citizenship

47

45 ‘Convention Message’, June 1962, ACEUFR2, Box 9, ‘14th World Convention City Committee, Sydney, correspondence, 23 June 1960–14 Jan. 1963’. 46 Andrew Preston, ‘Introduction: The Religious Cold War’, in Philip E. Muehlenbeck (ed.), Religion and the Cold War: A Global Perspective (Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 2012), p. xii. 47 World’s Christian Endeavor Union, ‘Fourteenth World’s Christian Endeavor Convention Official Call’, in ACEUFR2, Box 9, Folder: ’14th World Convention City Committee, Sydney, circulars, notices, reports, agendas, 1960–1962’. 48 Stuart Braga, A Century Preaching Christ: Katoomba Christian Convention, 1903–2003 (Sydney: Katoomba Christian Convention, 2003). Cf. Uta A. Balbier, ‘The World Congress on Evangelism 1966 in Berlin: US Evangelicalism, Cultural Dominance, and Global Challenges’, Journal of American Studies 51 (2017), pp. 1171–96. 49 Untitled ms., MLMSS 8089, Box 2, ‘14th World’s Convention, Sydney 1962’. 50 Percival Chesterton to Norman Pell, 18 July 1962, in ACEUFR1, Box 4, Folder: ‘National CE Director 1960–1963, being correspondence of P. A. R. Chesterton, National Secretary, mainly with Rev. H. N. Pell, National Director’, with enclosures, 1958–1962. 51 Warwick Olson (ed.), 14th World’s Christian Endeavour Convention, Sydney, Australia, August 1962, Official Report (Sydney: Ambassador Press, c. 1962), pp. 52–3. 52 14th World’s Christian Endeavour Convention, Sydney, Australia, August 1962, Official Handbook and Program, p. 34, in ACEUFR2, Box 15, Folder: ‘14th World’s Christian Endeavour Convention, Sydney, August 1962’. 53 Olson, Official Report, p. 53. 54 Olson, Official Report, p. 11. 55 Olson, Official Report, p. 11. 56 Matthew Grimley, ‘Law, Morality and Secularisation: The Church of England and the Wolfenden Report, 1954–1967’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History 60 (October 2009), p. 727. 57 ‘Members Not “Weak Chinned”: Christian Endeavor Chief Replies to Critics’, Labor Daily, 17 September 1935, p. 8. 58 ‘Biographical Sketch of Harold E. Westerhoff’, n.d., and ‘Impressive Line-Up of Speakers’, News Bulletin, no. 1 (April 1962), both in ACEUFR2, Box 9, Folder: ‘14th World Convention City Committee, Sydney, circulars, notices, reports, agendas, 1960–1962’. 59 ‘Non-Stop Preacher’, Saturday Evening Post, n.d., quoted in ‘Daniel A. Poling’, News Bulletin, no. 1 (April 1962), both in ACEUFR2, Box 9, Folder: ‘14th World Convention City Committee, Sydney, circulars, notices, reports, agendas, 1960–1962’. 60 Nile, Fred Nile, pp. 36–7, 41. 61 Nile, Fred Nile, p. 39. 62 Nile, Fred Nile, pp. 46–8. 63 Alan Broome, Convention City Committee Secretary, ‘Memo to Executive Officers’, 20 May 1962, in ACEUFR2, Box 9, Folder: ‘14th World Convention City Committee, Sydney, circulars, notices, reports, agendas, 1960–1962’. 64 Minutes of Luncheon with Advisory Panel, Sydney City Mission Auditorium, 27 February 1962, in ACEUFR2, Box 9, Folder: ‘14th World Convention City Committee, Sydney, circulars, notices, reports, agendas, 1960–1962’. 65 The Sydney Morning Herald only gave a small mention in its usual ‘From the Pulpit’ section on 20 August 1962. 66 ‘Christian Endeavour Convention Ends’, Argus, 9 August 1938, p. 9; ‘Convention Ended, CEU Ideals’, Argus, 9 August 1938, p. 2.

48

Citizenship

67 Minutes of the 33rd National Council of the Australian Christian Endeavour Union, Melbourne, January 1970, n.p., ACEUFR1, Box 8. 68 Peter A. Pitts, ‘National Secretary’s Report’, Minutes of the 34th National Council of the Australian Christian Endeavour Union, Perth, January 1972, p. 43, in ACEUFR1, Box 8. 69 Presbyterian, Methodist and Congregational churches saw Sunday School enrolments fall from 274,315 in 1963 to 144,909 in 1974. Methodist Christian Endeavour societies were more than halved in Victoria, Queensland, Western Australia and New South Wales, dropping from 8709 members in 1963 to 3622 in 1974. Stewart, The Church’s Ministry with Children Report. 70 The 1968 CE ‘National Secretary’s Report’ from Peter Pitts noted the declining number of Endeavourers at biennial national conventions and pointed to the increasing number of seminars and camps conducted by denominational, church-based and missionary organisations. Minutes of the 32nd National Council of the Australian Christian Endeavour Union, Adelaide, January 1968, p. 43, in ACEUFR1, Box 8. 71 H. Norman Pell to The Editor, Australian Baptist, 25 June 1962, MLMSS 8089 Box 10, ‘Cuttings and Extracts’ ‘World Convention, 14th, Sydney 1962’ ‘Convention Committees, Standing, Reports, etc Various’, 1960–1965. 72 ‘Report by the National Director’, Minutes of the National Standing Committee Meeting, Sydney, 8–10 February 1963, in MLMSS 8089 Box 9, ‘Copies of minutes of meetings of 27th National Council, Jan. 1958, and 29th National Council, Jan. 1962; and agenda and reports of 30th National Council, Jan. 1964’. 73 ‘Christian Endeavour Makes Progress in Australia’, Australian Christian Endeavourer 6 (December 1966), p. 2. 74 ‘The “Glorious” Anzac Camp’, Australian Christian Endeavourer, July 1970, p. 14. 75 Fred Nile, ‘Australian Christian Endeavourer Magazine Report, 1970–1971’, Minutes of the 34th National Council of the Australian Christian Endeavour Union, Perth, January 1972, in ACEUFR1, Box 8. 76 Nile, ‘Australian Christian Endeavourer Magazine Report, 1970–1971’. 77 Godman, ‘Mission Accomplished?’, p. 81. 78 E.g. ‘We admit there are no easy answers to the growing anti-social problems such as racial discrimination, poverty, war, drugs including alcohol and gambling.’ ‘Citizenship Resolution’, Minutes of the 33rd National Council of the Australian Christian Endeavour Union, Melbourne, January 1970, p. 25, in ACEUFR1, Box 8. 79 ‘Report from National Citizenship Superintendent’, Minutes of the 34th National Council of the Christian Endeavour Union of Australia, Perth, January 1972, in ACEUFR1, Box 8. 80 On church union, see Fred Nile, ‘Editorial: Unity or Union’, Australian Christian Endeavourer, May 1972, p. 2. On temperance, though he was a lifelong teetotaler, he was happy to ‘not take a strong stand’ on it with the Festival of Light’s platform. Nile (1976), quoted in Gavin Souter, ‘Moral Vigilantes: “Exciting the Few But Offending Many”’, Sydney Morning Herald, 14 August 1976, p. 10. 81 ‘Editorial: Ban Censorship’, Australian Christian Endeavourer, August 1969, p. 2. 82 Fred Nile, ‘San Francisco’, Australian Christian Endeavourer, October 1970, p. 17. 83 ‘Ban Censorship’, p. 2. 84 ‘Ban Censorship’, p.  2. The original quotation appeared in Pauline Clayton, ‘Keep Violence Off Our TV: Writer’s Plea’, T.V. Times, 23 July 1969, pp. 1, 3. 85 Edwards, ‘Moral Reform Organisations in Australia’, pp. 15–21. 86 Nicole Moore, The Censor’s Library (St Lucia, Qld: University of Queensland Press, 2012).

Citizenship

49

87 Graham Willett, Living Out Loud: A History of Gay and Lesbian Activism in Australia (St Leonard’s, NSW: Allen and Unwin, 2000). 88 Frank Bongiorno, The Sex Lives of Australians: A History (Collingwood, Vic.: Black Inc., 2012), p. 237. 89 Donald Horne, Time of Hope: Australia 1966–72 (London and Sydney: Angus & Robertson, 1980), p. 24. 90 Nile, Fred Nile, p. 170. 91 On the jeremiad, see Andrew Murphy, Prodigal Nation: Moral Decline and Divine Punishment from New England to 9/11 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008). 92 Daniel Williams, ‘Richard Nixon’s Religious Right: Catholics, Evangelicals and the Creation of an Antisecular Alliance’, in Gifford and Williams (eds.), The Right Side of the Sixties, pp. 141–58. 93 ‘Editorial: “Peace on Earth . . . Goodwill to All Men?”’, Australian Christian Endeavourer, December 1970, p. 2. 94 ‘Editorial: Ban Censorship’, Australian Christian Endeavourer, August 1969, p. 2. 95 ‘Editorial: Keep Christ in Christmas’, Australian Christian Endeavourer, December 1975, p. 2. 96 David Hilliard and John Warhurst, ‘Festival of Light’, Current Affairs Bulletin 50, no. (February 1974), p. 16. On its use in Britain, see Amy Whipple, ‘Speaking for Whom? The 1971 Festival of Light and the Search for the “Silent Majority”’, Contemporary British History 24 (July 2010), pp. 319–39. 97 Bill Mellor, ‘Anti-Porn Crusader Was Once Runner for SP Bookmaker’, Sydney Morning Herald, 12 November 1978, p. 50. 98 Richard Cleaver, Australian Christian Endeavour Union National President’s Charter 1968–1970: ‘Fitness Australia’ Programme (Australian Christian Endeavour Union, 1968), p. 4. 99 Lance Shilton, Speaking Out: A Life in Urban Mission (Sydney: Centre for the Study of Australian Christianity, 1997), p. 103; ‘Chance to “Stand up and Be Counted”’, Canberra Times, 8 April 1974, p. 3. 100 On Falwell, see Frances FitzGerald, The Evangelicals: The Struggle to Shape America (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2017), chapter 10; Susan Harding, The Book of Jerry Falwell: Fundamentalist Language and Politics (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000). 101 Alan Gill, ‘Fred and Jerry Have Much in Common’, Sydney Morning Herald, 26 May 1982, p. 12. 102 Nile, Interview with the author, 12 December 2012. 103 On Whitehouse, see Ben Thompson (ed.), Ban This Filth!: Mary Whitehouse and the Battle to Keep Britain Innocent (London: Faber and Faber, 2013). 104 John Capon, . . . And There Was Light: The Story of the Nationwide Festival of Light (London: Lutterworth, 1972); Andrew Atherstone, ‘Christian Family, Christian Nation: Raymond Johnston and the Nationwide Festival of Light in Defence of the Family’, in John Doran, Charlotte Methuen, and Alexandra Walsham (eds.), Religion and the Household (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2014), pp. 456–68; Matthew Grimley, ‘Anglican Evangelicals and Anti-Permissiveness: The Nationwide Festival of Light 1971–1983’, in Andrew Atherstone and John Maiden (eds.), Evangelicalism and the Church of England in the Twentieth Century: Reform, Resistance and Renewal (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2014), pp. 183–205. 105 David Furse-Roberts, ‘Keepers of the Flame: A History of the Australian Festival of Light 1974–1981’, Lucas: An Evangelical History Review ns. 2, no. 2 (Spring 2010), p. 52. For endorsements of the Festival, see, for example, News Bulletin of the Australian Festival of Light, December 1974, p. 2.

50

Citizenship

106 Furse-Roberts, ‘Keepers of the Flame’, p. 50; Whipple, ‘Speaking for Whom?’ 107 Fred Nile and Kenneth Harrison, ‘Christmas Greetings’, News Bulletin of the Australian Festival of Light, December 1974, pp. 1, 8. 108 ‘Farewell to Endeavourers’, Australian Christian Endeavourer, February 1976, p. 21. 109 Fred Nile, ‘Editorial: The Family at Risk’, Australian Christian Endeavourer, June 1975, p. 2. Emphasis original. 110 Lance Shilton, quoted in Alan Gill, ‘It Was a Day for the Family’, Sydney Morning Herald, 11 October 1976, p. 1. 111 Milton Morris, quoted in Gill, ‘It Was a Day for the Family’. On Morris’s roots in Christian Endeavour, and the quote ‘true blue Endeavourer’, see the letter from his Maitland minister Eric Walsham to Arthur Broome, 2 April 1962, in MLMSS 8092, Box 9, ‘14th World Convention City Committee, Sydney, correspondence, 23 June 1960–14 Jan. 1963’. 112 Gill, ‘It Was a Day for the Family’. 113 Minutes of the 32nd National Council of the Australian Christian Endeavour Union, Adelaide, January 1968, pp. 23–4, in MLMSS 8089, Box 8. 114 Ivan Alcorn, ‘Citizenship Rally Address’, Official Report of the 14th World’s Christian Endeavour Convention, Sydney, 1962, p. 31. 115 Nile, Fred Nile, pp. 144–5. No explicit mention is made of this meeting in Jenny Hocking’s Lionel Murphy: A Political Biography (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), though references is made to extensive consultation with church leaders about the Family Law Bill (pp. 215–8). 116 Nile, Fred Nile, pp. 144–5. ‘old ecclesiastical garbage’: Lionel Murphy, ‘Press Statement’, 1 April 1973, quoted in Hocking, Lionel Murphy, p. 218. 117 The Congregational wariness towards politics was, according to Nile, ‘pretty widespread: politics was very bad stuff, corrupt, and you shouldn’t get involved in it.’ Nile, Interview with the author, 12 December 2012. 118 Richard Cleaver, interviewed by John Ferrell, Parliament of Australia Oral History Project, 1992, online recording hosted by the National Library of Australia, , accessed 24 April 2018. 119 ‘Editorial: Wanted, Nation Builders!’, Australian Christian Endeavourer, October 1975, p. 2. 120 ‘F.A.M. Senate Campaign: Outstanding Success!’, F.A.M. News Bulletin, 30 January 1976, p. 1, in Papers of the New South Wales Council of Churches, Mitchell Library, Sydney, MLMSS 8103, Box 15, ‘Family Action Movement & the Australian Family Association’. 121 ‘Call to the Nation: “Australia in Danger”’, Sydney Morning Herald, 12 November 1951, p. 1. On Archbishop of Canterbury’s ‘Call to the Nation’, see Baden Hickman, ‘Lord Coggan of Canterbury’, Guardian (UK), 19 May 2000. 122 The most complete membership statistics for 1985 indicate that the national movement had only 8,915 members. In 1972, the total had been 32,215. In Queensland, which provides the best statistical record, numbers had fallen from 6,361 in 1973 to 2,474 – this itself an ‘optimistic estimate’. By 1988, the total was just 1240. Godman, ‘Mission Accomplished?’, appendices 8 and 9. 123 ACNA brochure, quoted in Frame, Losing My Religion, p. 278. Cf. Similar language on the Australian Christian Nation Association website, , accessed 17 April 2018. 124 Nile, Interview with the author, 12 December 2012. 125 Nile, Fred Nile, p. 226.

2

Relevance Hans Mol, secularisation and the Religion in Australia Survey, 1966

The refrain of ‘relevance’ ‘Relevance’ was all the rage in 1960s Australia. Along with ‘radicalisation’, ‘recycling’ and ‘resident action’, it featured in Donald Horne’s list of the terms that typified the times.1 As long-standing social institutions countered competition for public loyalty from new forms of entertainment and education, many such institutions explicitly sought to become more ‘relevant’ to their changing cultural context, even as it became harder to define just what that culture was and where it might be going. Needless to say, churches, ever only a generation from extinction, were increasingly concerned with the quest for cultural relevance after signs emerged that the ‘modest religious boom’ of the 1950s was fading out. Reflecting on the 1960s in his 1979 study of Australian clergy, sociologist Norman Blaikie affirmed that it was ‘an era in which the catch-cry was “relevance”; much discussion and effort was devoted to the task of trying to devise new approaches and techniques, new methods of communication and to “up-date” traditional beliefs and practices’.2 The language of ‘mission’ and ‘strategy’ abounded in the discussions of clergy and laity across the theological spectrum, the military language evoking images of a contested future in which, for good or ill, business could not continue as usual. Despite such hand-wringing, the question of what exactly constituted the object, purpose and possibility of this much-coveted relevance was rarely asked. Except, that is, by the likes of Hans Mol. ‘In religious literature “social relevance” is the “in”-word’, wrote the evangelical sociologist of religion in 1969, opening his response to the secularisation debate, Christianity in Chains: A Sociologist’s Interpretation of the Churches’ Dilemma in a Secular World. ‘Rather than join the rally cry,’ Mol went on, ‘I will here attempt to have a good, hard look at it.’3 Ever a questioner, the overriding concern of Mol’s scholarship was to understand the way religion and identity interacted in changing cultural contexts without presuming a one-dimensional view of the role of faith and the churches in national life. As the instigator of the landmark ‘Religion in Australia Survey’ in 1966, he was the first to ask the nation what its postwar religious identity actually was, rather than speculate

52

Relevance

or pontificate on what it ought to be. Unlike many of his contemporaries, he came to the task as an analyst, not a prophet. Yet if he was not a prophet, he was certainly a priest. As an academic and a Presbyterian clergyman, he sought to translate the nation’s answers to the churches, and in turn help them formulate an intellectually robust posture for engaging with Australia after Christendom. And as a sociologist of religion, whose career traversed Holland, the United States, New Zealand, Australia and Canada, he came to develop and apply a universal theory of identity and the sacred still shaping research today.4 If scholarship is often a form of autobiography, Mol’s own experiences illuminate his intellectual concerns and provide a rich window into the transnational nature of evangelical engagement with the end of Christendom. Born in Holland, imprisoned by the Gestapo in Germany, educated in Sydney and New York, and researching and teaching sociology in Australia, New Zealand and Canada, Hans Mol lived as much as he studied the complexity of relevance and identity in a pluralised, migratory world. This chapter asks two questions of him. First, how did he approach the end of Christendom as an evangelical sociologist of religion, and second, what does his work tell us about the place of religion in a post-Christendom national public culture? It proceeds in three parts. First, an account of Mol’s journeys – physical, intellectual and spiritual – leading him to seek to understand religion in Australia. Second, a close look at the origins and impact of the Survey and subsequent book by that name. And third, a consideration of Mol’s broader project of exploring the nature of religious – specifically evangelical – identity and relevance.

Mol’s intellectual formation on three continents, 1922–1963 Johannis Jacob, or ‘Hans’, Mol was born in a small Dutch farmhouse on Valentine’s Day 1922.5 Situated in the low-lying province of Zeeland, the Mols’ farm had for generations been threatened by the sea from which it had been reclaimed. Thanks to the construction of Rotterdam’s Europoort Harbour, today it belongs once more to the sea, a metaphor for the impermanence, threat and resilience which coursed through Mol’s life. Moving with his family to a small rented farm in the centre of the Netherlands, he grew up in a household of cultural Christianity (he was baptised and sent to Sunday school) overlaid with liberal secularism. Perhaps the routine of being quizzed on each Sunday’s biblical lesson by parents who actually ‘expected much more from radical political action than from praying’ engendered in Mol a curiosity about the paradoxes of cultural religiosity and personal disbelief.6 Always having the right answer when he returned to the Sunday school teacher’s weekly revision questions, and ‘rather marginal’ on account of his inability to speak the local dialect, Mol was dubbed by his peers ‘blikken dominee’ – the ‘tinpot preacher’.7 A child of the Depression in all its harshness, taught by his ambitious mother that ‘education was the only way out of a miserable existence’, he made the most of his schooling at the

Relevance

53

rigorous and elite Gymnasium in Tiel, emerging with fluency in Latin, Greek, Dutch, French, German and English.8 Again, he was an outsider, the child of modest farmers amongst the sons and daughters of wealthy professionals. In 1941, Mol began his undergraduate studies in economics at Amsterdam, determined to understand (and avoid) the financial hardships that had beset his parents. Refusing to sign a statement of loyalty to the occupying German forces, he was deported to work in a sugar factory near Magdeburg, in central Germany. Three days before Christmas 1943, caught with an illegal radio used for sharing BBC war broadcasts with French and Russian prisoners, he was arrested by the Gestapo. There followed a series of prisons and labour camps, in which he experienced varying degrees of deprivation and dehumanisation. As with Victor Frankl, the Jewish psychologist, Holocaust survivor and author of Man’s Search for Meaning, Mol had come to see in the prisons that evil was not only the purview of Nazism, and freedom not only the fruit of the liberal intellect. Rather, good and evil were inevitably mixed amongst all types and conditions of humanity.9 He experienced ‘profound disillusionment with intellectuality per se’, and the ‘false ideal’ of rational individualism. ‘To need redemption is to be more human than to deny it’, he wrote years later.10 It was in the prison chapel services, hearing the Bible readings about the suffering servant of Isaiah and the refugee Christ-child in Luke, between the Lutheran pastor’s ‘bubbly foam of national sentiment and the farce of Nazified Christianity’, that Mol found meaning in marginality: Over against the sermon, the readings seemed to preach that salvation was not with the establishment (Nazi or otherwise), but with the poor of heart who had put their burden on him. This was the unexpected consolation in an otherwise inconsolable, self-destroying world!11 Locating one’s value in a transcendent story beyond temporal circumstances, with an eschatological hope not dependent on political salvation, came to be the key to survival for Mol, both within the prisons and in the fractured world beyond. This transcendent hope was best expressed not in the antiNazi Norwegian Lutheran pastor who came to rally resistance within the prison, but in the ‘old simple guard’ who regularly visited Mol ‘with a well thumbed Bible inspiring me with stories from the Book of Revelation pointing to Jesus ruling a world of golden streets with trees laden with delicious apples’. It was this character, though ‘despised by all the other SS guards for what they regarded as his naïve, outdated, evangelical convictions’, who seemed to hold to a faith not contingent on political triumph or national identity, but one large enough to sustain hope regardless of circumstances, one fit for the marginal, ‘the poor of heart’.12 Mol was liberated by Canadian troops on Easter Monday of 1945. He returned to his studies in Amsterdam, but without enthusiasm, and took up a middle-management role in a sugar factory, from which he soon resigned

54

Relevance

because of the manager’s increasing authoritarianism. In December 1948, he sailed for Australia on the first Dutch emigrant ship, the Volendam. He had read books on the Antipodes while recovering in a prison hospital, viewing them as utopias of freedom, ‘so far away from what had become crystallised in my mind as a good imitation of hell – Nazism, war torn Europe, and the acute nearness of death’.13 It was, he recalled, a place where ‘other rebels in the past had not been inhospitably received’.14 The Australian enthusiasm for Northern European immigrants made the exodus all the more attractive.15 En route to Sydney, Mol read the few books on Australia that he had purchased in Holland, including Hartley Grattan’s edited volume Australia. Featuring contributions by Frederick Eggleston on foreign policy, Brian Fitzpatrick on labour, Vance and Nettie Palmer on literature, A.P. Elkin on culture, H.C. Coombs on postwar reconstruction and 22 other chapters by academics, journalists and public servants, it was a ‘who’s who’ of Australian intellectual life in the late 1940s.16 Of note is the chapter on religion by Ernest Burgmann, the outspoken nationalist Anglican Bishop of Canberra and Goulburn. Burgmann depicted a nation that had its confidence in secular culture shaken by the Depression and two world wars, with ‘little active hostility to religion’ and an expectation that the churches would ‘expose evils and injustices’, ‘give moral and spiritual direction’, ‘contribute to the enrichment of national culture’ and ‘cleanse the currents of political life’.17 However, Burgmann lamented the widespread ignorance or ‘vague memories’ of Christian doctrine, and the ‘new paganism which constitutes the greatest challenge to the church’.18 With this rudimentary knowledge, Mol offered to help his Dutch companions settle into Australian life, principally by connecting them to churches. Coming initially in small numbers, most of his compatriots from the Dutch Reformed Church decided not to recreate their own ethnic denomination, but to join with the Presbyterian Church of Australia, which shared a similar Calvinist pedigree and seemed enthusiastic about welcoming them.19 Between 1948 and 1952, over 38,000 Dutch emigrants arrived in Australia, an estimated 25 per cent of them Calvinists.20 Religion was an important element of assimilation. Mol enrolled in the United Theological Faculty and lived at St Andrew’s College within the University of Sydney, excelling in his studies while concurrently working for the Presbyterian Church as a chaplain to Dutch migrants. In helping his countrymen understand their new nation, he came to reflect on the social function of the churches. ‘Today many people all over the world have been to church,’ he said in a radio broadcast in 1953, while working at the massive Bonegilla Migrant Reception Centre in rural Victoria. Why have they been there? Did they want to be considered as good citizens? Did they go because they were afraid of Hell in [the] after-life? Was church going just a habit, a family tradition or a result of former

Relevance

55

education? Or did they go because they wanted to escape from this harsh world? He went on to offer his perspective on the social utility of the churches: I have heard it said that the church, more than anything else, is the conscience of the nation. And as such it is an important and indispensable institution. It fulfils the role of a policeman. . . . But still I think that the church has an even more important task than being the conscience of the nation. And a minister is more than just the watchdog of morals. The church is the place where people come together because they are convinced that life is only lived to the full, if it is related to its spiritual foundation, God, who in Jesus Christ, is the Head of the Church, a personal saviour and not only a judge.21 Only recently arrived in Australia, Mol was already articulating the questions which would undergird his scholarship and respond to the broader anxieties about relevance that evangelicals countenanced in navigating the new uncertainties of the 1960s. How did different religious commitments help or hinder people to cope with change in the world around them? Mol’s questions took him to Union Theological Seminary in New York in 1954 to study under the celebrated theologians and critics of liberal idealism, Reinhold Niebuhr and Paul Tillich. His work with migrants had made him an admirer of Niebuhr’s claim that Protestantism flourished in periods of change when it held to deep theological convictions.22 Taking his Bachelor of Divinity and Master of Christian Ethics, he went on to Columbia University to undertake a PhD under the supervision of Robert Merton, arguably the most influential sociologist of the 1960s and the man who coined the phrases ‘role model’ and ‘self-fulfilling prophecies’.23 Mol’s dissertation explored the role of theological commitments in the naturalisation of Dutch Reformed and German Lutheran immigrants to the American middle colonies in the eighteenth century. Questioning the apparent large divergence between the success of evangelical-pietistic and orthodox-conservative congregations in adjusting to their new setting, he found that theology (and not age, time of arrival, expectations, geographic dispersion or ‘cultural distance’) was the only significant determinant of the naturalisation of these immigrants.24 Those churches which held to more transcendent evangelical beliefs and affective commitment were more free of the habits of the ‘old world’ and thus more able to forge new economic and social identities. Evangelicalism made for citizens who were more, not less, adaptive to change. After eight years in America, Mol and his wife Ruth returned to Australia via a two-year stint teaching sociology at the University of Canterbury in Christchurch, New Zealand. While at Canterbury, Mol conducted research on the settlement of Dutch migrants and race relations within churches. The latter was commissioned by the National Council of Churches in New

56

Relevance

Zealand, perennially concerned with racial integration. Mol had found from his study that evangelical churches, while less vocal about integration than the mainline liberal churches, actually proved more adept at practising unity with diversity.25 This finding gave credence to a common refrain by evangelicals when accused of being unconcerned with pressing political and social affairs: they were more successful in responding to change by quietly getting on with the traditional business of preaching, pastoring and praying than by making social issues their primary concern. In August 1962, Mol was invited to take up a research fellowship in the nascent Department of Anthropology and Sociology within the new Research School of Social Sciences at the Australian National University (ANU)’s Institute for Advanced Studies. Sociology itself was in its infancy in Australia, the first professor of sociology only appointed in 1959, and Mol took up the pioneering opportunities at Canberra’s equally young ANU with relish. Arriving in mid-1963, much had changed since he left for the United States almost a decade before. Mol again sought to understand this land of opportunity not as an armchair observer but as an evangelical activist, buoyed by the emergence of the ‘honest self-criticism’ so redolent of the works of Australian intellectuals in the 1960s.

The Religion in Australia Survey ‘What is the state of religion in Australian society?’26 Such was the question at the heart of the project which defined Mol’s time at the ANU, and arguably his empirical work of most lasting significance: the Religion in Australia Survey of 1966, the first national, in-depth study of the faith of Australians. Of course, previous attempts had been made at profiling Australians’ religiosity. Australia’s commonwealth and state governments and colonial administrators, unlike those of the United States and the United Kingdom, had long included some form of voluntary religious question in their various official censuses, giving a largely unbroken picture of religious affiliation since 1828.27 Periodic opinion polls asked smaller samplings more detailed questions, such as how recently and frequently people attended church.28 Naturally, churches also collected statistical data from their parishes and congregations, but with an emphasis on their perception of and participation in the institutional churches, rather than analysis of the way religion shapes other aspects of social life (for example, how churchgoers and non-churchgoers view Asian immigration).29 Despite being in some respects the envy of British and American historians bereft of comparable sustained statistics, the limitations of these extant records are obvious: they were either detailed but narrowly representative (polls on churchgoing and morality, for example), or widely representative but producing narrow and shallow results (chiefly, the Census, which only asked about self-described denominational affiliation).30 From this data, a number of academic studies had emerged on topics such as the religious habits of university students and

Relevance

57

the relationship between denominations, ethnocentrism and authoritarianism, with articles by established or emerging intellectual leaders such as Frank Knöpfelmacher and Ken Inglis.31 Nevertheless, nobody had empirically detailed and sociologically interpreted religion on a broad, national scale. To explore the religious attitudes, practices and beliefs of Australians, and to question how religion interacted with other markers of identity such as gender and class, required a new study that could claim both breadth and depth. This was the ‘open field’ Mol spotted.32 He noted that in the growing tide of books on Australian national culture, many writers extrapolated from their own (often secular) upbringing and associations, and relied on ‘a smattering of easily available statistics’, rather than new research and analysis. At just the time when Australians were taking more interest in their origins and identity, they were left with works recycling ‘established clichés, in a style best characterised as “wellwritten dogma”, which happened to exclude religion’.33 The methodological tools of survey design and data dissection were fairly recent developments in the mid-1960s, Mol applying the lessons he had learnt at Columbia from the pioneers of this demotic research method, Charles Glock and Robert Merton. ‘With modern research techniques it is not necessary to guess or to imagine the outline of national patterns of religion,’ he confidently stated. ‘They can be accurately described.’34 Access to new computer technology also proved essential in analysing the results. Mol’s justification for conducting the Survey went beyond its originality. He saw it as a demonstration of the ‘scientific’ validity of the sociology of religion, a sub-discipline he believed had been unduly marginalised in Australia and abroad. Mol predicted a shift in research and teaching from ‘divinity’ studied in denominational seminaries to a new focus on ‘religious studies’ in public universities, and saw his Survey as an invaluable foundation for further study.35 This prediction, made in both an early piece on the Survey in 1967 and again in its final published form in 1971, was, in the words of one reviewer, rather ‘an act of faith that religious studies would come to be regarded as a properly academic discipline, with its own approach to data’, reflecting ‘a certain altruism’ towards future students and the institutional Church.36 It was not unfounded, however: global publications on the sociology of religion or socio-ecclesiastical research had risen from 265 per year in the period 1962–1964 to 370 per year in 1965–1966, an increase of 40 per cent.37 Other sociologists of religion, such as David Martin in the United Kingdom, had found audiences within and beyond the academy, suggesting that just like any other aspect of human experience, religion could and should be studied sociologically.38 Beyond the academy, churches and parachurch organisations were enthusiastic about sociological portraits of national life. ‘[T]here is present in religious circles all over the world’, Mol claimed, ‘a remarkable soul-searching which often goes unrecognised by outsiders who formed their usual negative opinions about Christianity in earlier days’.39 Mol’s own experience as a

58

Relevance

pastor-scholar testified to this: he was regularly invited to speak or write on the sociology of Australian society for Christian audiences of various persuasions, from the largely liberal Australian Council of Churches to the strongly evangelical Inter-Varsity Fellowship.40 In these addresses, he tested both his observations and recommendations on the social relevance of the churches in a changing culture, such ideas forming the basis of Mol’s later volume, Christianity in Chains. Beyond the field of sociology, other Christian intellectuals were expressing a desire to integrate faith and scholarship as an aid to social relevance. Associations such as Australian Frontier (formed in 1962 by the Australian Council of Churches, under the chairmanship of James Darling, long-time headmaster of Geelong Grammar School and chairman of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation) sought to gather Christian intellectuals for consultations and publications on social issues, including migrant assimilation and prison rehabilitation.41 A number of academic journals were also formed in the late 1950s and early 1960s to seed this Christian intellectual renaissance. Many of their protagonists were convinced evangelicals. For example, historian Edwin Judge, an emerging global authority on the social patterns of early Christianity and a Sydney Anglican evangelical, played a central role in the formation of the Journal of Christian Education (1958) and the Journal of Religious History (1960), both beginning at the University of Sydney. The Journal of Christian Education’s founding editor, Anna Hogg, was the first woman to be appointed as the head of the department of teacher education at Sydney Teachers College, holding that position from 1948–1973. For the Journal of Christian Education, Mol made four contributions in 1964–1965.42 The Journal of Religious History, concerned with the broader remit of religious rather than ecclesiastical history, professed the conviction that ‘religious history is a proper and absorbing study and one illuminating for human history as a whole’.43 Judge expressed the same belief in establishing a journal for the Inter-Varsity Graduates’ Fellowship, Interchange: Papers on Biblical and Current Questions. The range of papers submitted for its inaugural edition in 1967 evinced ‘the variety of issues which may be enlivened by this particular conjunction of ideas: from the most urgent social crises, such as capital punishment, to the ultimate scientific and philosophical questions of the nature of the universe’. Such papers emerged from ‘a steadily increasing number of regular working parties’ drawn from a wide array of professions: ‘research scientists, social workers, biblical researchers, doctors, lawyers, technologists, agriculturalists and architects’.44 Evidently evangelicals, alongside other Christians, were increasingly concerned with exploring and articulating the relevance of faith to practical and conceptual questions. They were beginning to catch up to more liberal expressions of Christian social inquiry, such as the Student Christian Movement’s journal Crux. Mol’s Religion in Australia Survey formed part of that wider picture. Given the ‘virgin territory’ into which Mol ventured, the Survey was explicitly exploratory.45 It sought to open up veins of inquiry into which

Relevance

59

later scholars could profitably drill. Consequently, it asked a broad range of questions which could then be collated against Census returns to deduce correlations and patterns, such as those between religious schooling and adult religious adherence.46 For such patterns to be sufficiently representative of the nation, the Survey needed a large and carefully selected sample. Mol settled on 111 clusters of approximately 12 randomly chosen dwellings in suburbs or rural centres and their surrounds in New South Wales, Victoria and Tasmania. This sample, totalling 1,187 houses comprising 2,607 adults (over 20 years of age) and 1,594 children and adolescents, closely reflected the age and denominational breakdown of the 1966 Census. Statistically this total respondent figure of 4,201 represented 0.067 per cent of the populations of the three states, whose combined population was 68 per cent of the national total. Within the selected clusters, a pre-tested questionnaire was administered by teams of telephone interviewers, who achieved the very high response rate of 88 per cent. The first half of the questionnaire, a ‘family schedule’, focused on background and habits. It asked 34 general questions about particulars of each member of the family – their age, gender, occupation, level of education, church attendance, and so on – as well as more detailed questions about such things as their habits of viewing or listening to religious television and radio, the religiosity of their parents, or their involvement in other non-church community organisations. The second half of the questionnaire, an ‘individual schedule’ only for adults, concentrated on attitudes to various religious and social statements. These 12 questions covered roughly four areas: the Church’s role and its future, morality, religious belief and experience, and politics and prejudices. The questions in this last category were particularly revealing of mid1960s Australian anxieties. Respondents were asked to rank the level of friendliness or uneasiness they would feel upon meeting a stranger and only knowing one thing about them, such as their religion (Roman Catholic, Jew or atheist), morality (alcoholic or teetotaller), political preference (communist) or nationality (English, Dutch, Italian, Japanese). The options provided by Mol indicate, to some extent, the most common aspects of social divergence – real or perceived – in postwar Australian society. For example, that he gave no option of meeting a Protestant, and that he chose Japan as the only Asian nationality, suggests one could still assume that a ‘normal’ Australian was Protestant, British and white, with historically inflected anxieties about particular ‘others’. Between the winter of 1966, when the Survey was conducted, and its publication as Religion in Australia in early 1971, Mol analysed the vast amount of data collected and the 10,000 cross-listed tables it generated. Predictably, the final product’s findings were similarly expansive. Religion in Australia had 44 chapters, each asking and answering a simple, interesting question: ‘Do religious people love their country more and the gambler less?’, ‘Is Sydney godless and Melbourne god-fearing?’, ‘How Catholic is

60

Relevance

the Australian Labor Party?’ and, perhaps most centrally, ‘Do Australians believe in God? – even if they do not attend church or pray?’ As he had done in his doctoral study of migrant religiosity in colonial America, Mol interspersed his findings with historical essays in order to identify and challenge long-held assumptions, and he regularly related his conclusions to those of sociologists abroad, particularly in the United States. Mol’s central and most-cited deduction from the Survey was that while most Australians still thought fairly well of the Church’s traditional role as ‘the conscience of the nation’, and still believed in a personal God, the actual content of their faith and its role in the formation of their identity was ambiguous, to say the least. ‘As in Britain the goodwill towards religion is counter-balanced by a massive woolliness of thinking about it,’ he concluded. ‘Australia seems to be a Christian nation in search of a religion; or a heathen nation in flight from one. Most Australians, like Englishmen, are obviously heathen, but wish they were not.’47 Mol had plenty of indicators to support the first part of this conclusion, that Australia still seemed to be a ‘Christian nation in search of a religion’: 87 per cent of respondents claimed to believe in God, though Mol found a variance within that broad group, ranging from the ‘orthodox believer’ who went to church regularly, prayed daily and had no doubts that God exists (17 per cent) to the ‘vacillating secularist’ who did not regularly attend church or pray daily, and believed with doubts (20 per cent).48 In terms of belonging, church attendance figures had not declined markedly from the late 1940s; around 30 per cent of people still claimed to be in church each Sunday, a proportion surprisingly higher than that recorded in 1901.49 The social role of the churches was still important in both the thoughts and practices of Australians. Respondents to the adult attitudes section of the Survey were asked which of these propositions most clearly described their opinion of the Church: a) The Church is appointed by God. It is the home and refuge of all mankind. b) The Church is the one sure foundation of civilised life. Every member of society should be inducted in it and support it. c) On the whole the Church stands for the best in human life, in spite of shortcomings found in all human institutions. d) The usefulness of the Church is doubtful. It may do as much harm as good. e) The Church is not important today – it doesn’t count. f) The Church is a stronghold of much that may be unwholesome and dangerous to human welfare.50 Of the responses Mol recorded, 22 per cent affirmed the first proposition, 38 per cent the third, and only 7 per cent thought the usefulness of the Church doubtful, maybe doing ‘as much harm as good’.51 Those who viewed the

Relevance

61

Church as clearly unimportant or dangerous were in the very small minority. Age was not a significant variable in any of the aforementioned responses, and little evidence surfaced of an emerging generation gap. While younger people (ages 20–24) tended to express more doubts about their faith in a personal God, they were just as regular in church attendance as older generations, with only a 2 per cent variation across all age groups (between 32 and 34 per cent expressing doubts). Belying assumptions of widespread youth disaffection with the churches by the mid-1960s, they were also in agreement with older generations in viewing the Church as ‘the home and refuge of all mankind’.52 While Mol had reason to claim that Australia was ‘a Christian nation in search of a religion’, Mol had equal or greater evidence to support his alternative conclusion, that Australia was ‘a heathen nation in flight from one’. Biblical knowledge was woeful. Nine out of ten Australians had a Bible at home (a higher proportion than owned a dictionary or an atlas), yet only 15 per cent of respondents correctly identified that the Acts of the Apostles do not give an account of Jesus’ life on earth.53 Similar levels of biblical illiteracy had been found in the United States, two-thirds of Americans being unsure of who delivered the Sermon on the Mount.54 Consent to orthodox beliefs was also surprisingly low and evidently confused. For instance, though two-thirds of all respondents claimed to believe in heaven, the majority of Protestants did not believe in life after death, hell or the devil.55 Beyond a lack of rudimentary Christian knowledge and beliefs, perhaps the most telling indicator of the churches’ lost influence was in the area of morality. Of the 87 per cent of respondents who claimed to believe in God, excluding those categorised as ‘orthodox believers’, a substantial majority had no problem affirming the statement that ‘it does not matter what one believes as long as one leads a moral life’.56 And even the ‘orthodox believers’ were equivocal – almost half agreed with this relativist outlook.57 The content of that ‘moral life’ was also less clearly ‘Christian’ than it may have been in the past. For example, amongst deists, agnostics and atheists aged between 20 and 40, only 28 per cent of women and 14 per cent of men disapproved of premarital sexual activity. While this might not seem surprising for such respondents, even amongst the 113 men who did ‘believe in God (with occasional doubts)’, the majority still condoned premarital sex.58 These early signs of fading commitment to a Christianised culture and its norms of Christian belief and behaviour was not so much due to the emergence of a rival vision of national identity but rather the erosion of Australians’ attachment to collectivist sources of identity in general, be they the Church or the nation.59 To put it another way, in a world of increasing complexity and alienation, Australians were looking to individual rather than social sources of meaning. ‘The self-adjusting forces of the economy, or the common goals of material prosperity rather than the “nation” or “religion” appear to provide this need’, concluded Mol.60 In every category of respondents, a majority felt that to ‘get ahead’ was more important than ‘to

62

Relevance

be satisfied with what one has’.61 As Donald Horne and many others before and after argued, Australians’ greatest faith seemed to be in economic prosperity, with meaning derived from the hedonism such abundance enabled.62 Personal and familial financial security and hedonistic consumerism were the new gods – or at least old gods worshipped with a new zeal. Australians’ preference for pleasure over piety had intensified in the two decades following the Second World War. A few indicators suffice to paint a picture of increased affluence and access to entertainment. Between 1953 and 1962, car ownership had risen from one in five people to one in three, with wages rising and costs falling such that the average worker could buy the average car in almost half the time.63 Television licences rose from 74,000 in mid-1957 to 1.2 million by 1961 (though still only in one out of three households).64 Just five years later, in 1966, almost nine out of ten households owned a set.65 The ‘consumer revolution’, with its logic of individualism, militated against public-spirited service and organisational loyalty, not just in the churches but in other civic organisations such as the Freemasons, Rotary Clubs and political parties.66 Not only were such movements towards individualism and consumerism to undermine the civic Protestant assumptions of Christendom – they were also radically altering the social ecology which had encouraged other expressions of civic identity and activity. Religion in Australia was well received. For any shortcomings – such as Mol’s penchant for theoretical jargon in a book intended to appeal to a popular as well as academic readership, and his tendency to overstate his hypotheses about why certain statistical disparities occurred – it was lauded as a rich resource for further exploration of religion in Australia. Nothing of its scale or depth was attempted again until the ‘Australian Values Study Survey’ in 1983. However, some later commentators noted the irony of Mol’s timing: rather than encapsulating the nature of the changes of the 1960s, he provided a detailed snapshot of the long-standing status quo of Christendom just before its sudden erosion.67 ‘Around 1967,’ observed historian Hugh McLeod, ‘the statistics of religious practice took a dramatic downward plunge. Nearly every country in the Western world saw a major decline, and the same broad trends were seen both in the Protestant churches and in the Roman Catholic Church.’68 Even if Australia experienced something of a time lag compared to the rest of the Western world (it was not until the period 1971–1976 that all Australian Protestant denominations showed a decline in absolute numbers of Census affiliations), before long the findings of 1966 became largely unreflective of Australians’ religious beliefs and behaviours.69 In a 1976 poll, over a quarter of those aged 16–29 said that they did not believe in God, a huge increase from the 3 per cent in Mol’s Survey ten years earlier.70 Weekly church attendance figures dropped from 30 per cent in 1966 to 25 per cent in 1970, and 21 per cent by 1972.71 There are echoes of David Martin’s sigh at the way his A Sociology of English Religion ‘aged rather rapidly’ because it dealt with material only up to 1964–1965, just before the ‘watershed of the late 1960s’.72

Relevance

63

Nevertheless, the Survey was still a rich source of insight into religious outlooks in Australia in the 1960s, pointing to the degree of consensus around Christendom sentiments as late as 1966. Beyond its actual findings, Religion in Australia was a ‘pioneering’ step in the reclamation of religion as a subject for serious study. After limited research in the 1970s, the linguistic turn in the academy opened up new avenues for religious research in the 1980s. The growing conscientiousness of progressive Christians, catalysed by the Jesus Movement, created enthusiasm for the social sciences in the development of a more contextualised Australian Christian mission. The Church Growth Movement emerging in the mid-1970s from Fuller Seminary in the United States interested a wider range of Church leaders in sociological theory and statistics. The establishment of the Zadok Institute for Christianity and Culture in 1977, the Christian Research Association in 1985 (which conducted the first ‘Joint Church Census’ the following year), and the ‘National Church Life Survey’ in 1991 (which grew to become the largest and longest-running survey of its kind in the world) represented the growth of the sociological study of Christianity in Australia since Mol’s foundational foray.73 The Survey’s value to the observer, then or now, was, according to fellow Australian sociologist of religion Harold Fallding, as ‘a compendium, a reference book rather than a sustained, interpretive argument’. ‘Even though there is an interpretive conclusion’, he went on, ‘it is intended to be sketchy.’74 But Mol never intended the Survey’s impact to cease at the level of description. His vision for evangelical scholarship, and sociology in particular, would not allow it. With its empirical findings as a platform, the pastor-scholar sought to theorise and prescribe. To his argument about the role churches should pursue in the life of the nation we now turn.

Christianity in chains? ‘How relevant is Christianity in the second half of the twentieth century? What is the future of the Christian religion? In which ways are the churches bound to the situation in which they find themselves? What should their strategy be?’ With these questions, Mol began his 1969 companion volume to Religion in Australia, entitled Christianity in Chains: A Sociologist’s Interpretation of the Churches’ Dilemma in a Secular World. He had been commissioned by Thomas Nelson to provide an Australian response to the questions that had arisen since the publication of Bishop John Robinson’s controversial paperback Honest to God in 1963.75 The title of Mol’s response might imply at least three things: that the world at large was ‘secular’, that Christian institutions were redundant, and that sociologists knew the solutions. On each point, Mol challenged the current orthodoxies. The axiomatic belief in a world become secular, or rapidly secularising, was a fairly new idea in the mid-1960s. Of course, the concept of secularisation was not particularly novel; in 1918, Max Weber, one of the fathers of modern sociology, had articulated in detail the influence of rationalisation

64

Relevance

and modernisation in bringing about entzauberung der welt, the ‘disenchantment of the world’.76 Yet, as Sam Brewitt-Taylor points out in the British case, in the early 1960s, public figures began talking about a ‘secular society’ with a confidence and consensus which had not existed in the two decades before.77 Most surprising is that this discursive shift happened primarily because Christians themselves did the talking. It was the faithful, or at least the frocked, who were the loudest prophets of doom for the institutional Church. The two most influential popular books of the 1960s ‘religious crisis’, Honest to God in England and Pierre Berton’s The Comfortable Pew in Canada, were respectively written and commissioned by Anglican bishops.78 Such popular books did not so much precipitate a theological revisionism as popularise that which had already been well underway since the 1940s. That the Archbishop of Canterbury, Michael Ramsey, could write of a ‘secular society’ in the Times in the following year evinced the extent to which the perception of secularity had been cemented.79 Rhetoric preceding reality also seems to have been the case in Australia. The parting description of its citizens as ‘attractive, godless pagans’ by prominent evangelical Anglican Canon Stuart Barton Babbage, on his departure in 1963 for a teaching post in the United States, was widely and repeatedly quoted.80 If Church finances and theological college enrolments are used as an indicator of Australian religious participation, any downturn did not become evident until at least 1964.81 Consequently, as in Britain, so in Australia, it seems that these descriptions of a crisis in the churches and the onslaught of secularisation may have preceded, and even catalysed, the reality itself.82 Mol’s doctoral supervisor Robert Merton’s ‘self-fulfilling prophecy’ seems an apt descriptor. In this light, what Mol meant by a ‘secular world’ was of great importance. The putative causes and consequences of this perceived new ‘secular society’ were fairly clear in the major works of the period. Humanity had conquered so many unknowns through the development of science, and rationality had become so dominant a mantra, that the educated person could no longer believe in the supernatural claims of Christianity. Shorn of a sovereign and personal God, ‘modern man’ was left with no legitimate reason for absolute moral values. It was one’s context that determined the rectitude of one’s conduct. ‘Love’ trumped ‘law’, according to prophets of the ‘new morality’ with its ‘situation ethics’.83 Such an alienation from traditional anchors of identity, combined with the ‘anomie’ of urbanisation and mechanisation, signalled to some Christian observers that God’s work of redemption was happening in ‘the world’ as opposed to ‘the Church’ (by which they meant the generalised institutional Church rather than the particular local church). Australian Methodist theologian Colin Williams, who had moved to the United States in 1960, published two influential study books in 1963 and 1964, What in the World? and Where in the World?, advancing the view that because God was at work in ‘the world’, the Church should obey his lead by fully taking part in contemporary struggles for justice, peace and

Relevance

65

freedom. Rather than call people ‘out from the world’ with an emphasis on conversion, it should become the ‘servant Church’, practising ‘Christian presence’.84 As David Hilliard suggests, ‘it was only a short step to the idea that the church fulfilled God’s purpose only when it met the needs of humanity, through service and social activism; otherwise, in its present form it was “irrelevant” and should be scrapped’.85 Such emphases naturally grated against the Reformed evangelical outlook Mol embodied, which insisted on the depravity of humanity, the fickle promises of progress and rationality, and the need to be ‘born again’. As in other domains such as public policy, sociology was increasingly seen as the answer to the Church’s dilemmas. Previously marginal, a sociologist of religion, such as Bryan Wilson in Britain, or a sociologically literate religion journalist such as Pierre Berton in Canada and Graham Williams in Australia, could now command wide audiences. A large number of clergy or ordinands in Australia and Britain abandoned their pastoral vocation to take up social work, thinking they could do more good than in the ministry as the churches became more marginal.86 Though Mol’s training in theology and sociological theory, and his empirical research, ideally placed him to make comprehensive claims about religion in Australia – to provide a ‘policy for the future’ or a ‘blueprint for strategy’ – he was well aware of the shortcomings of ‘a sociologist’s interpretation’. Their tools could often only provide ‘rather unsatisfactory’ answers, ‘more likely to be based on calculated guesses than on fool-proof sociological generalisations’.87 On this confidence in sociology’s prescriptions, as well as the reality of secularisation and the redundancy of traditional Christian institutions and beliefs, Mol, as ever, cut against the grain. In Christianity in Chains, as well as a number of similar pieces, Mol attempted to challenge the new orthodoxies of secularisation. First, he questioned the nature of the ‘secular world’. Though observers like Cox and Robinson had rightly pointed to the fragmented and alienating nature of urbanised Western society, they tended to treat it as a more or less unitary reality. Mol recognised the illusion of this assumption. ‘In the extensive literature of Church-society analysts (usually pseudo-sociological) the secular world is generally portrayed as a monolithic given,’ he wrote. Well, we should know better. Modern existence is characterised by an infinite variety of beliefs and commitments, and there seems to be always room for more. There is even a premium on outlandishness, whether it is religious or not. My point is that society is anything but woven of one cloth.88 Therefore, the possibility of the churches providing an integrative vision of all of society, though admirable, was dated and naïve. Plurality, not uniformity, was the reality; competition, not Christendom, the condition.89 To presume otherwise was to render the churches perennially reactive, shackled not to old dogmas but to new ones.

66

Relevance

There was some irony to calls for the Church to become more oriented towards the world. Even as they announced the funeral of Christendom and the liberation of Christianity from its institutional forms, the prophets of secularisation maintained a Christendom mindset – to borrow from Charles Taylor, a sort of ecumenical ‘neo-Durkheimian’ mentality – which sought for the churches to be at the centre of national public culture, serving, unifying and ennobling it.90 Mol called this the ‘Protestant Integrationist’ approach.91 But of course, to make such an appeal to universality, the particularist claims of credal doctrine, such as the sinfulness of humanity and the need for conversion, had to be traded for more pragmatic depictions of social and personal problems. The philosophy that seemed most amenable to this quest for comprehensiveness was that of naturalistic scepticism. It, too, came under Mol’s criticism, for at heart, its inherent preference for doubt over belief and objectivity over emotion made it ‘singularly ill-equipped to provide a uniform world view’.92 He took to task Sir Mark Oliphant, the celebrated ANU nuclear physicist (who in 1971 became the governor of South Australia), for claiming that a scientific ethos and ‘knowledge of nature’ could fulfil the unifying function once held by Christianity. Faith in the integrative sufficiency of scientific rationality was, Mol charged, ‘still consuming the cultural capital of the past’.93 As it turned out, even before Mol was writing in 1969, the dominance of secular rationality was coming undone at the hands of the emerging counter-culture, which in many ways followed its Romantic forebears’ rejection of the cool logic of Enlightenment rationality in favour of self-expression, emotion and ambiguity. As we shall see later, some evangelicals were quick to spot the connection between the gospel and this non-utilitarian Romantic spirit. If the ‘secular world’ was a diffuse and unstable entity, and its rationalist ethos incapable of providing national meaning and cohesion, then it followed that the churches could be stronger competitors for individual loyalty than many of their detractors assumed. After all, Mol had found in his Survey that most Australians still believed in God, expected the Church to provide moral guidance and engaged with it for significant rites of passage such as baptisms, marriages and funerals. Why then, did there seem to be a malaise, a frustration palpable enough to generate such an audience for the books of revisionists like Robinson and Cox, calling for the Church to change or die? The ‘suburban captivity of the churches’, to borrow the title of one such book, was not the problem, for if individual and group meaning was the goal, surely the local church, embedded in its setting, was an invaluable tool.94 Besides, contended Mol, all movements need some form of institutional organisation, ‘even a religious movement which breaks with existing structures in order to serve the secular better’.95 The new house churches emerging and imploding from the late 1960s were a case in point.96 Nor was the problem an inability to meet the perceived needs of congregants and the wider community. People came to churches to meet a range of needs, and the variety and complexity of social problems facing Australians during

Relevance

67

the late 1960s, from Aboriginal land rights to juvenile delinquency, could not all be addressed, let alone understood, by even the most competent of ministers. Those who advocated a wholesale reorientation of the churches’ structures and energies were, in Mol’s opinion, persistently ambiguous on the details. In ways broadly similar to the advocates of the ‘new nationalism’ writing at the same time, proponents of this new reformation ‘want change, but the concrete direction of the change is lost in rather loose verbiage’.97 Rather, Mol argued that the real dilemma of the churches in a putatively secular world was two-fold: first, an inability to recognise their minority position as competitors for loyalty in a complex society; and second, the failure to shape the worldviews of churchgoers first, before considering the wider society. Supernatural religion in a society which was ‘both courteous and condescending’ towards those who held such beliefs inevitably created conflict.98 The standard response was a superficiality and detachment, whereby ‘the individual more often than not adds his role as a churchgoer or a Catholic or an Anglican to his many other roles. His religion is a compartmentalised rather than a deep unifying concern.’ To avoid conflict with the dominant naturalistic worldview shaping Monday to Saturday, the churchgoer simply cordoned off their affirmation of ‘belief in Jesus Christ as God and Saviour’ made on Sunday. It was this Janus-like reality of ‘actual secular and merely professed religious belief’ that lay ‘at the core of the problem’.99 This was another way of phrasing Mol’s conclusion from Religion in Australia, that ‘most Australians . . . are obviously heathen but wish they were not’.100 Protestant clergy, he claimed, were so anxious ‘to maintain a modicum of influence’ that they avoided the unpleasantness of confronting this partitioning of the self, thereby blessing their congregants’ deferral to a naturalistic, secular view of life.101 Despite the stronger institutional loyalty afforded the Catholic Church by its own parish and secondary schools, the Irish memory of marginalisation, and the significant identity marker of weekly Mass attendance, the gap between belonging and behaving was just as wide as amongst Protestants.102 Mol’s findings in the Survey that more than half of Catholics did not disapprove of fellow Catholics who used contraceptives was a case in point.103 Impotence, more than irrelevance, lay at the heart of the churches’ dilemma. The ‘lack of cohesion of the average local Protestant congregation and its failure to be a Christian organism rather than a Christian organisation’ was, according to Mol, ‘why it is that so often they can only follow rather than guide’.104 There was no point trying to shape the nation if the churches were unable and unwilling to shape their own members, if ‘this supposed faith of the Christians is not visible and actual enough to make the secular world define the ecclesiastical situation differently’ from merely a bulwark of morality and civilisation.105 To use the etymological meaning of ‘religion’, attempts ‘to bind’ society were doomed if congregations could not bind themselves together in doctrinal, moral and organisational loyalty. Where the Catholics and Protestant Integrationists failed in this task, the

68

Relevance

‘Protestant Remnant’ approach alone seemed capable of building a tight group identity. A shared sense of embattlement and a strong transcendental eschatology helped to fortify belief and regulate behaviour in the group. Of course, such a sectarian remnant could easily become introspective, escapist and socially ineffectual, charges often levelled at evangelical ‘hot-gospellers’ by ‘Integrationist’ liberals.106 But despite its weaknesses, to Mol, this minority approach was the key both to moral and organisational vitality within the churches and to authentic engagement with the problems of society. Holding historic and other-worldly beliefs about heaven and hell, sin and salvation, judgement and grace, however unpopular, provided a framework whereby believers could relativise the changing expectations of their surrounding culture. Employing Talcott Parsons’s term, they had an ‘Archimedean Point’ anchoring their identity and transcending the challenges of their circumstances.107 Mol had found this to be the case in his studies of Dutch immigrants in New Zealand, where those belonging to the orthodox Calvinistic Gereformeerde Kerk were much more likely to continue to attend and conform to the teaching of their transplanted Church, compared to those belonging to the more liberal former state Church, the Hervormde Kerk. Moreover, it was historically these more other-worldly religious groups that most effectively integrated differences of race, class and culture.108 Paradoxically, a strong identity allowed for greater inclusivity. Mol’s doctoral thesis on Dutch and German migrants to colonial America, and his study of racial integration in New Zealand Protestant churches, had affirmed this conclusion.109 Mol’s conclusion about the relevance of Christian churches in a postChristendom society was fairly simple. They ought to be themselves. Rather than seek to be relevant on the terms of the dominant secular culture – ever shifting, confused and contradictory – they ought to embrace the reality of their minority status and adopt ‘an independent stance’.110 Winsomeness in this ‘age of authenticity’ could be found not by choosing either a commitment to historic and other-worldly theology (i.e. evangelical orthodoxy) or engagement with contemporary and this-worldly needs (i.e. social justice), but by pursuing both at once.111 Of course, churches should still make use of the privileged position they were residually afforded in the public square by speaking out on moral standards, while not conforming to a secular interpretation of reality. Moreover, given that ‘secular society’ was far less coherent than often assumed, the churches had a real opportunity to compete for the loyalty of the people. And if most Australians lived superficial, detached lives full of hedonistic diversions, those with a compelling narrative that both affirmed humanity’s worth and exposed its sin, a vision for the common good, and the visible signs that conversion had actually changed their lives for the better, could well prove influential. If they competed with those minorities voicing dissent in the arts and radical political movements, the churches could well have ‘a disproportionate effect on the long-term direction of Australian society’.112 They just had to remember that, in ways

Relevance

69

not too dissimilar to the first Christians, they were a minority once more. And that, according to Mol, was all right.

Marginality and mobility Hans Mol was no stranger to the minority ethic. His life of migration and marginality made it inescapable. While writing Religion in Australia and Christianity in Chains at the ANU, he again came to feel something of an outsider. ‘In Australia,’ wrote his wife Ruth to her parents, ‘he had begun to lose confidence in himself and the worth of his work, and no man with any self-respect can stay in a place which continually undermines him and shows him they do not appreciate his qualifications’.113 Being a sociologist of religion did not commend him to his colleagues. In Mol’s recollection, his boss, Mick Borrie, had been ‘less than enthusiastic’ about Christianity in Chains, which represented ‘views alien to many at the ANU where atheists are heavily over-represented’.114 These expressions of exclusion on the basis of belief should be viewed with some scepticism; of the handful of sociologists in Borrie’s department between 1963 and 1969, at least two were active Christians: Mol himself and Jerzy Zubrzycki, a Polish-born Catholic. And if his work was so sidelined, it is hard to explain why in 1967 he succeeded W.E. Stanner to the significant post of president of the Canberra Sociological Society, the forerunner of the Sociological Association of Australia and New Zealand.115 Indeed, there is a sense in which Mol’s belief in his outsider status was another example of Merton’s ‘self-fulfilling prophecy’. Mol’s activism also set him apart. He complained to American sociologist Leonard Broom about the elitism of Australian university culture, where ‘sociology is judged by the contribution it can or cannot make to the game which the cerebral play rather than by the contribution it can or cannot make to a society understanding itself’.116 Mol had certainly set about trying to do the latter, but perhaps his dual identity as an evangelical and a sociologist also rendered him an outsider in the Christian circles to which he contributed. He was involved with both the theologically liberal Student Christian Movement, where evangelicalism’s biblicism and conversionism was suspect, and the Evangelical Unions, whose members ‘thought about religion as something that was quite separate from academic studies’. While Mol recalled being welcomed in both settings, one wonders if he never felt fully at home in either.117 When, in early 1970, he was passed over for the chair of Sociology at the ANU, Mol decided to move on. He took up a professorship in the sociology of religion at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario. As another Commonwealth country, Mol’s third, Canada was, in his wife Ruth’s words, ‘mid-way between Australia and the US in all sorts of ways’.118 As with the unfortunate timing of the Religion in Australia Survey, a snapshot of a society about to change, so too was it a ‘melancholy irony’ that ‘the person best qualified to take up the leads uncovered by this survey [was] unlikely

70

Relevance

to do so’.119 Nevertheless, Mol continued to write on Australian religion, to develop scholarly networks and resources for sociologists of religion, and articulate his theory of identity and the sacred. This functional approach to religion, whereby its ability to integrate and create stability (as outlined by Durkheim) was held in dialectic tension with its ability to differentiate and encourage change (as advanced by Weber), was laid out in Mol’s self-described ‘magnum opus’ Identity and the Sacred.120 Addressing the leading thinkers in historical and contemporary sociology and philosophy, and traversing a wide terrain of times and places, Mol intended his ambitious theory to be comprehensive and universal.121 Published in 1976 – which Time magazine dubbed the ‘Year of the Evangelical’ after the election of ‘born again’ President Jimmy Carter – Mol could state with even more confidence that the ‘age-old themes [of evangelical orthodoxy] seem to be extremely tenacious, however often generations of rationalists have attempted to bury them contemptuously and prematurely’.122 Though it attracted modest support from sociologists at the time, in the longer term, Mol’s theory ‘has not proved widely influential’.123 The same judgement could be made of the bulk of Mol’s work, excepting the Religion in Australia Survey. Perhaps this was due to his dense writing style, which was often noted by reviewers. One friend to whom Mol sent his draft of Christianity in Chains had this to say upon reading it: I am a reasonably intelligent layman, a reviewer of general literature for the Melbourne Age and personally the author of 32 published books. By expressing myself in words, I have, as a self-employed person, supported my wife and family for nearly twenty years, but with words you have brought me to my knees. I feel that the average intelligent Christian, layman or clergyman, will not be able to understand you.124 Mol’s Dutch upbringing may have given him more languages than his peers, but it probably also saw him fall short of the ‘pellucid prose’ of his mentor Robert Merton, the ‘brilliance of Peter Berger or the impassioned force of Jacques Ellul’.125 Perhaps his boldness to assert a universal theory of identity also lessened the influence of his later work; the scepticism he showed toward the ‘Protestant Integrationists’ and their desire for ‘society to be woven of one cloth’ could have been applied to his own theory and its claims to comprehensiveness. Nevertheless, Mol’s argument for a minority ethic seemed to be validated in the decades that followed Christianity in Chains. The establishment of parent-controlled Christian schools by Dutch Reformed Australians is a case in point. From the formation of Calvin Christian School in 1962 in Kingston, Tasmania, this Protestant movement to educate the children of Christian families within an explicitly Christian framework (owing much to the political vision of the early-twentieth-century Dutch Calvinist Prime Minister Abraham Kuyper) has become widely attractive to non-Dutch,

Relevance

71

non-Christian Australian parents – even if not necessarily for explicitly religious reasons. By 2018 over 120,000 students were enrolled in over 300 Christian parent-controlled schools, while the massive growth of the wider non-Catholic, low-fee, non-government school sector was due largely to these schools’ emphasis on values education.126 The Reformed Churches, with their strong cohesion around conservative evangelical doctrines, exerted influence far out of proportion to their small numbers, as Mol envisaged. After the formation of the Uniting Church and the split within Australian Presbyterianism, some in Mol’s own denomination also embraced the decoupling of their denomination from its ethnically Scottish heritage and its shift towards a voluntarist, minority and multicultural character, and were conscious of the part he had played. ‘We are mourning the loss of being Christendom,’ reflected Presbyterian minister David Thurston at the end of the century, ‘but we have to realise that now we have lost our standing, we can actually be what we are supposed to be. God has given us an opportunity to be his at last, and it’s a great opportunity.’127

Conclusion If the religious crisis of the 1960s was in large part the fracturing of a longheld consensus about the relationship between God, the nation and the churches, we should not be surprised to find an outsider providing novel interpretations of the changes underway. Those with a deep commitment to the continuation of Christendom verities, or those for whom a secularised society signalled liberation, were less likely to make the detached observations of one looking on from the outside. Hans Mol approached the end of Christian Australia as an ostensible outsider. His experience of mobility and marginality, from the ‘tinpot preacher’ of his boyhood in Holland to his departure from an Australian academe that looked down on his faith and work, helped to give him a certain independence. Being, in his own words, ‘a stubborn Dutchman’, undoubtedly strengthened his desire to question and challenge: ‘you don’t mind being controversial, you don’t mind going against the stream, and you don’t fit in if you don’t think you should’.128 Mol questioned the state of religion in mid-1960s Australia in his landmark Survey. He found that most people still privileged Christian moral standards and thought the Church to be an important strand in the fabric of nationhood, even though their actual beliefs were ambiguous or un-Christian. A snapshot of society about to change substantially, the Survey nevertheless served as an important path-breaker for future serious study of the faith of Australians and a resource for Christians attempting to understand their society. It also challenged the emerging orthodoxies of inevitable secularisation and the correlated need for a more ‘relevant’ form of public Christian witness that abandoned many of the distinctive doctrines of the faith. In Christianity in Chains, Mol applied these empirical findings in arguing for Christians to embrace their theological distinctiveness and not capitulate to the spirit of

72

Relevance

the age and its utilitarian understanding of religion’s relevance. The Church’s relevance to the nation lay in being more than ‘the conscience of the nation’ or the ‘watchdog of morals’.129 It was not so much what Mol found in the Survey that had lasting significance, but the fact that he had conducted it in the first place. His firstclass training in theology and sociology, often under those like Niebuhr with whom Mol’s evangelicalism did not always align, gave him the ability to question untested assumptions – from inside as well as outside the churches. His ability to speak with confidence into academic, ecclesial and wider public conversations meant that even if his findings and arguments were not dramatically influential, they could not be dismissed. As he put it late in life, his work helped ensure that religion was afforded its legitimate place in the academy and that ‘nobody ever looked down on sociology of religion as something not “with it”’.130 Together with an emerging coterie of vocal and nuanced Australian intellectuals such as Edwin Judge, he demonstrated that ‘you can be an evangelical Christian and also a good academic’.131 This concern for personal integration and scholarly vocation, the confident articulation of an evangelical intellectual voice in a largely secular setting, was perhaps one of the most subtle but significant results of the collapse of Christendom verities. Activism and intellect, the immanent and the transcendent, were not antithetical, Mol argued. Maintaining this outlook, and being content to do so as an outsider, was the substance of real relevance.

Notes 1 Horne, Time of Hope: Australia 1966–72, inside cover. 2 Norman Blaikie, The Plight of the Australian Clergy: To Convert, Care or Challenge? (St Lucia, Qld: University of Queensland Press, 1979), p. 11. 3 Mol, Christianity in Chains, p. 1. 4 For a comprehensive overview of Mol’s impact, see Douglas J. Davies and Adam J. Powell (eds.), Sacred Selves, Sacred Settings: Reflecting Hans Mol (Abingdon: Routledge, 2015). On his theories, see also Adam J. Powell, Hans Mol and the Sociology of Religion (Abingdon: Routledge, 2017). 5 General biographical details, where not cited explicitly, are drawn primarily from Mol’s autobiography, Tinpot Preacher (Queanbeyan, ACT: Talpa Publishing, 2003). 6 Mol, Tinpot Preacher, p. 16; Hans Mol, Identity and the Sacred: A Sketch for a New Social-Scientific Theory of Religion (Oxford: Blackwell, 1976), p. xii. 7 Mol, Tinpot Preacher, p. 16. 8 Mol, Tinpot Preacher, p. 12. 9 Viktor Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning, trans. Ilse Lasch (Boston: Beacon Press, 2006). 10 Hans Mol, How God Hoodwinked Hitler (Sutherland, NSW: Albatross Books, 1987), pp. 114–8. 11 Mol, How God Hoodwinked Hitler, p. 132. 12 Hans Mol, ‘Calvin Sermon 39: The Harmony of Faith’, Calvin for the 3rd Millennium (Canberra: Australian National University E-Press, 2008), pp. 255–9. 13 Mol, How God Hoodwinked Hitler, pp. 108–9. 14 Mol, Identity and the Sacred, p. xiv.

Relevance

73

15 On programmes to encourage European migrants to Australia, see Ann-Mari Jordens, ‘Post-War Non-British Migration’, in James Jupp (ed.), The Australian People: An Encyclopedia of the Nation, Its People and Their Origins, second edition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), pp. 65–70. 16 C. Hartley Grattan (ed.), Australia (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1947). 17 E.H. Burgmann, ‘Religion’, in Grattan (ed.), Australia, pp. 335–6. 18 Burgmann, ‘Religion’, pp. 333–4. 19 Edward Duyker, The Dutch in Australia (Melbourne: AE Press, 1987), pp. 114–5. 20 Statistics calculated from Table 2 in P. Wim Blauw, ‘Explanations of Post-War Dutch Emigration to Australia’, in Nonja Peters (ed.), The Dutch Down Under: 1606–2006 (Nedlands, WA: University of Western Australia Press, 2006), pp. 171, 174. Note that only 9 per cent of the Dutch population were similarly classified as Calvinists in this same period. 21 Hans Mol, ‘Epilogue’, radio broadcast on 2AY Albury, 21 June 1953, in PHM, Box 6, Folder: ‘Talks, prayers, occasional addresses, order of marriage’. 22 Hans Mol, ‘Dutch Reformed Migrants’, N.S.W. Presbyterian, 9 September 1949, pp. 6, 13. 23 On Merton, see Craig Calhoun, ‘Introduction: On Merton’s Legacy and Contemporary Sociology’, in Calhoun (ed.), Robert K. Merton: Sociology of Science and Sociology as Science (New York: Columbia University Press, 2010). 24 Mol’s thesis was published as The Breaking of Traditions: Theological Convictions in Colonial America (Berkeley: Glendessary Press, 1968). 25 Hans Mol, Religion and Race in New Zealand: A Critical Review of the Policies and Practices of the Churches in New Zealand Relevant to Racial Integration (Christchurch: National Council of Churches, 1966). 26 Mol, Religion in Australia, p. ix. 27 Terence Hull, ‘The Strange History and Problematic Future of the Australian Census’, Journal of Population Research 24 (2007), pp. 1–22. On attempts to place a question on religion in the US Census, see Kevin Schultz, ‘Religion as Identity in Postwar America: The Last Serious Attempt to Put a Question on Religion in the United States Census’, Journal of American History 93 (2006), pp.  359–84. On the decennial British census, which from 1861 until 2001 asked no question about religion, see Frame, Losing My Religion, pp. 87–8. 28 E.g. ‘Gallup Poll Finds: What Keeps People Away from Church?’, Daily News (Perth), 2 November 1949, p. 4. 29 E.g. W.G. Wileman, Report on the Decline in Church-Going (Newcastle: Church of England in Australia and Tasmania, Diocese of Newcastle, 1951). 30 On the problems of religious statistics in Australia, see Dorothy Harris, ‘Counting Christians’, in Dorothy Harris, Douglas Hynd, and David Millikan (eds.), The Shape of Belief: Christianity in Australia Today (Homebush West, NSW: Lancer Books with the Zadok Centre, 1982), pp. 229–33. 31 A.J.H. Smart, ‘Some Religious Beliefs and Attitudes of Students at the Armidale Teachers’ College and at the University of New England’, Journal of Christian Education 7 (June 1964), pp. 44–52; Frank Knöpfelmacher and Douglas Armstrong, ‘The Relation between Authoritarianism, Ethnocentrism and Religious Denomination among Australian Adolescents’, American Catholic Sociological Review 24 (Summer 1963), pp. 99–114; Inglis, ‘Churchgoing in Australia’. 32 Hans Mol, Interview with the author, 8 December 2012. 33 Mol, Religion in Australia, p. x. 34 Mol, Religion in Australia, p. xv. 35 Mol, Religion in Australia, p. xii. 36 Hans Mol, ‘A Collation of Data about Religion in Australia’, Social Compass 14, no. 2 (January 1967) p. 131; John Nurser, ‘Fact-Finding about Areas of Religion’, The Canberra Times, 24 April 1971, p. 12.

74

Relevance

37 Karel Dobbelaere, ‘Trend Report of the State of the Sociology of Religion: 1965–1966’, Social Compass 15, no. 4 (January 1968), p. 332. 38 Mol cited Martin’s A Sociology of English Religion (London: SCM Press, 1967) in Religion in Australia, p. xv. 39 Mol, Religion in Australia, p. xi. 40 For example, he addressed the Canberra Council of Churches on ‘Pride and Prejudice in Denominational Divisions’, later published with the same title in an Australian Council of Churches volume, Southall (ed.), The Challenge, pp. 221–7. In 1965, Mol delivered the Inter-Varsity Fellowship Queensland Annual Public Lecture at the University of Queensland, later published as ‘The Social Relevance of the Australian Churches’, Social Compass 13 (January 1966), pp. 139–50. 41 Frank Engel, 21 Years of Australian Frontier: An Extraordinary Organisation for Extraordinary Times, 1962–1983 (Carlton, Vic.: Australian Frontier, 1988). 42 Hans Mol, ‘Religion and Education in Sociological Perspective’, Journal of Christian Education 7 (1964), pp.  22–9; ‘Sociological Determination and the Christian Faith’, Journal of Christian Education 7 (1964), pp. 30–3; ‘The Church as a Community’, Journal of Christian Education 8 (1965), pp.  31–44; ‘The Social Relevance of the Australian Churches’, Journal of Christian Education 8 (1965), pp. 155–67. 43 Bruce Mansfield, ‘Foreword’, Journal of Religious History 1 (1960), p. 1. 44 Edwin Judge, ‘Editorial: Interchange of What?’, Interchange 1 (April 1967), p. 2. 45 Mol, Religion in Australia, p. xi. 46 On his methodology, from which information in the following paragraphs is drawn, see Religion in Australia, ‘Methodological Appendix’, pp. 307–22. 47 Mol, Religion in Australia, p. 302. 48 Mol was able to group 87 per cent of all respondents into six main categories: ‘orthodox believers’ (the 17 per cent who went to church regularly, prayed daily and believed in God’s existence without doubt); ‘private believers’ (the 8 per cent who were irregular churchgoers but prayed daily and had no doubts in God’s existence); ‘public believers’ (the 10 per cent who were had no doubts and were regular churchgoers but did not pray daily); ‘believing secularists’ (the 16 per cent who had no doubts about God’s existence but neither prayed daily nor went to church regularly); ‘vacillating secularists’ (the 20 per cent who neither prayed daily nor went to church regularly, but believed in God with doubts, or periodically); and ‘consistent secularists’ (the 16 per cent who engaged in no regular religious activity and were either deistic, agnostic or atheist). Religion in Australia, pp. 44–5. 49 Mol, Religion in Australia, p. 322. 50 Mol, Religion in Australia, p. 322. 51 Mol, Religion in Australia, calculated from Table 5.1, p. 36. 52 Mol, Religion in Australia, Table 5.1, pp. 36–7. 53 The figure on Bible possession is from a 1960 Gallup Poll, cited in Mol, Religion in Australia, p. 21; Table 4.2, p. 29. The poll also found that 39 per cent of adults possessing a Bible had not read it in the past year. 54 Charles Glock and Rodney Stark, American Piety: The Nature of Religious Commitment, volume 1 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1968), p. 142. 55 Mol, Religion in Australia, Table 6.1, p. 42. 56 Religion in Australia, pp. 44–5. 57 Mol, Religion in Australia, Table 8.2, p. 52. 58 Mol, Religion in Australia, Table 9.1, p. 59. 59 Brown, The Death of Christian Britain, p. 12. 60 Mol, Religion in Australia, p. 301. 61 Mol, Religion in Australia, Table 8.1, p. 52.

Relevance

75

62 Horne, The Lucky Country, p. 42. 63 Graeme Davison, Car Wars: How the Car Won Our Heart and Conquered Our Cities (Crows Nest, NSW: Allen & Unwin, 2004), p. 15. 64 Murphy, Imagining the Fifties, p. 201. 65 Bureau of Transport and Communications Economics, ‘Statistical Summary of the Communications, Entertainment and Information Industries’, 1994, online at Australian Bureau of Statistics, updated 10 April 2007, , accessed 26 May 2018. 66 Andrew Leigh, Disconnected (Sydney: UNSW Press, 2010). 67 For example, Jackson, Australians and the Christian God, p. 186. 68 McLeod, The Religious Crisis of the 1960s, p. 188. 69 On this decline between the 1971 and 1976 Censuses, see Gary Bouma, ‘Australian Religiosity: Some Trends Since 1966’, in Alan Black and Peter Glasner (eds.), Practice and Belief: Studies in the Sociology of Australian Religion (Sydney: George Allen & Unwin, 1983), pp. 16–7. 70 McNair-Anderson Gallup Poll 1976, cited in Wilson, Can God Survive in Australia?, Table 2, p. 16; Mol, Religion in Australia, Table 5.1, p. 36. 71 Morgan Gallup Polls cited in Wilson, Can God Survive in Australia?, Table 3, p. 17. 72 David Martin, foreword to Grace Davie, Religion in Britain Since 1945: Believing without Belonging (Oxford: Blackwell, 1994), p. x. 73 Frame, Losing My Religion, p. 85. 74 Review by Harold Fallding, Contemporary Sociology 3 (March 1974), p. 169. 75 The best summary of the debate sparked by Honest to God is Keith Clements, Lovers of Discord: Twentieth-Century Theological Controversies in England (London: SPCK, 1988), Chapter 7. For another Australian perspective, see Leon Morris, The Abolition of Religion: A Study in Religionless Christianity (London: Inter-Varsity Press, 1964). 76 Steven Grosby, ‘Max Weber, Religion, and the Disenchantment of the World’, Society 50 (June 2013), pp. 301–10. 77 Sam Brewitt-Taylor, Christian Radicalism in the Church of England and the Invention of the British Sixties, 1957–1970: The Hope of a World Transformed (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018). 78 Pierre Berton, The Comfortable Pew: A Critical Look at the Church in the New Age (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1966). On the book’s origins and impact, see Nancy Christie, ‘“Belief Crucified Upon a Rooftop Antenna”: Pierre Berton, The Comfortable Pew, and Dechristianization’, in Christie and Gauvreau (eds.), The Sixties and Beyond, pp. 321–50. 79 Sam Brewitt-Taylor, ‘The Invention of a “Secular Society”? Christianity and the Sudden Appearance of Secularization Discourses in the British National Media, 1961–4’, Twentieth Century British History 24 (June 2013), pp. 343, 346. See also Michael Ramsey, Sacred and Secular: A Study in the Otherworldly and This-Worldly Aspects of Christianity (London: Longmans, 1965). 80 For example, ‘Sport “a Religion to Many”’, Daily Telegraph, 8 May 1963, p. 33; ‘Australian Paganism’, Australian Church Record, 30 January 1964, p. 1. 81 Hilliard, ‘The Religious Crisis of the 1960s’, pp. 219–20. For example, enrolments at Australia’s largest theological college, Moore Theological College, though quite probably given a boost by the 1959 Billy Graham crusade, dropped from the peak of 31 in 1963 to 17 in 1964, below the original 1959 figure. The five years between 1959 and 1963 saw a total of 115 enrolments (or 23 per annum), whereas the following five years saw a total of just 66, with an average of 13 per year. Calculated from numbers cited by Marcus Loane in his ‘Presidential Address to Synod’, 13 October 1969, in Year Book of the Diocese of Sydney, 1969 (Sydney: Anglican Information Office, 1970), pp. 246–7.

76

Relevance

82 Brewitt-Taylor, ‘The Invention of a “Secular Society”?’, pp. 348–50; Alister Chapman, ‘Secularisation and the Ministry of John R. W. Stott at All Souls, Langham Place, 1950–1970’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History 56 (August 2005), p. 513. 83 Joseph Fletcher, Situation Ethics: The New Morality (London: SCM Press, 1967); Harvey Cox (ed.), The Situation Ethics Debate (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1968). 84 Colin Williams, Where in the World?: Changing Forms of the Church’s Witness (New York: National Council of the Churches of Christ in the USA, 1963), and What in the World? (New York: National Council of the Churches of Christ in the USA, 1964). 85 Hilliard, ‘The Religious Crisis of the 1960s’, p. 213. Emphasis original. 86 Hilliard, ‘The Religious Crisis of the 1960s’, pp. 221–2; McLeod, The Religious Crisis of the 1960s, pp. 89–90. 87 Mol, Christianity in Chains, p. 98. 88 Mol, Christianity in Chains, p. 12. 89 Mol expanded on this argument in ‘Religion and Competition’, Sociological Analysis 33 (July 1972), pp. 67–73. 90 Taylor, A Secular Age, pp. 455–62. 91 Mol, Christianity in Chains, pp. 36–7. 92 Mol, Christianity in Chains, p. 31. 93 Mol, Christianity in Chains, p. 32. 94 Gibson Winter, The Suburban Captivity of the Churches: An Analysis of Protestant Responsibility in the Expanding Metropolis (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1961); Mol, Christianity in Chains, p. 23. 95 Mol, Christianity in Chains, p. 11. 96 Mol, Christianity in Chains, p. 23. Cf. Andrew Walker, Restoring the Kingdom: The Radical Christianity of the House Church Movement (Guildford: Eagle, 1998). 97 Mol, Christianity in Chains, p. 9. 98 Mol, Christianity in Chains, p. 38. 99 Mol, Christianity in Chains, pp. 34–5. 100 Mol, Religion in Australia, p. 302. 101 Mol, Christianity in Chains, p. 35. 102 Hans Mol, ‘The Social Relevance of the Australian Churches’, Social Compass 13 (January 1966), pp. 139–50; Hans Mol, ‘The Dead Wood’, Age, 8 September 1967, p. 4. 103 Mol, Religion in Australia, p. 254. Cf. Hans Mol, ‘Australian Catholics and the Pill’, Age, 2 August 1968, p. 2. 104 Mol, Christianity in Chains, pp. 106, 8. 105 Mol, Christianity in Chains, p. 89. 106 Mol, Christianity in Chains, p. 25. 107 ‘Archimedes is reputed to have said: “Give me a place to stand and I will move the world”. The Confucian ethic failed to move the world precisely because its worldliness denied it a place to stand outside the world. The Protestant ethic, on the other hand, had such a place to stand, its transcendental God and its conception of salvation.’ Talcott Parsons, The Structure of Social Action (1949), quoted in Mol, Christianity in Chains, p. 58. 108 Mol, Christianity in Chains, p. 29. 109 Mol, The Breaking of Traditions; Mol, Religion and Race in New Zealand. 110 Mol, Christianity in Chains, p. v. 111 On this ‘age of authenticity’, see Taylor, A Secular Age, chapter 13. 112 Mol, Christianity in Chains, p. 104; Mol, ‘A Christian Strategy’, p. 83. 113 Ruth Mol to her parents, 4 March 1970, in PHM, Box 11, Folder: ‘1969–1976’. 114 Mol, Tinpot Preacher, p. 117.

Relevance 115 116 117 118 119 120 121

122 123 124 125 126

127 128 129 130 131

77

Mol, Tinpot Preacher, p. 110. Mol to Broom, 17 November 1969, in PHM, Box 11. Mol, interview with the author, 8 December 2012, transcript, p. 16. Ruth Mol to her parents, 4 March 1970. Nurser, ‘Fact-Finding about Areas of Religion’, p. 12. Mol, Identity and the Sacred, especially Chapter 1. For a concise version of his critique of major thinkers on identity, from Plato to Troeltsch, from Durkheim to Bellah, see Hans Mol, ‘Introduction’, in Hans Mol (ed.), Identity and Religion: International, Cross-Cultural Approaches (London: Sage Publications, 1978), pp. 1–17. Mol, Identity and the Sacred, p. 265. Linda Woodhead, ‘Implicit Understandings of Religion in Sociological Study and in the Work of Hugh McLeod’, in Brown and Snape (eds.), Secularisation in the Christian World, p. 30. Ivan Southall to Mol, 30 November 1965, in PHM, Box 4, Folder 2: ‘Publishers and Journal Editors’. Calhoun, ‘Introduction: On Merton’s Legacy and Contemporary Sociology’, p. 1; Review by Helen Archibald, Review of Religious Research 15 (October 1973), p. 58. The ‘Other’ (i.e. non-Government, non-Anglican, non-Catholic) education sector grew by 79.7 per cent between 1986 and 2000, from 140,941 students to 253,266. Anglican schools grew by 45.5 per cent (32,617 students), Catholic by 10.4 per cent (60,608) and Government by just 1.8 per cent (40,487). Statistics from Table 2.2, in Charles Justins, ‘Christian Parent Controlled Schools in Australia: A Study of the Relationship between Foundational Values and Prevailing Practices’, EdD Thesis, Australian Catholic University, 2002, p. 53. Current figures for Christian parent-controlled schools from Mark Spencer, Executive Officer Policy, Governance and Staff Relations, Christian Schools Australia Limited, email correspondence with the author, 4 June 2018. Quoted in Mark Hutchinson, Iron in Our Blood: A History of the Presbyterian Church in NSW, 1788–2001 (Sydney: Ferguson Publications, 2001), p. 401. Mol, interview with the author, 8 December 2012, transcript, p. 26. Mol, ‘Epilogue’. Mol, interview with the author, 8 December 2012, transcript, p. 21. Mol, interview with the author, 8 December 2012, transcript, p. 25.

3

America Billy Graham, Americanisation and the 1968–1969 crusades

American imports? It is often argued that after the decline of British imperial sentiment and security in the 1950s and 1960s, Australia unwittingly transferred its allegiance to the United States; in the words of one historian, moving ‘from British sycophant to American lickspittle’.1 Such purported transitions in the strategic, economic and cultural realms have, according to some, been mirrored in the spiritual and ecclesiastical. No less than the former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd decried the ‘Americanisation of political Christianity’ even as he claimed a Christian identity for himself and his policies.2 The unmasking of an American-influenced ‘religious right’ in Australian politics, notably in the period of Rudd’s predecessor John Howard, has become a minor genre, particularly in light of the salience of debates about moral issues such as same-sex marriage, abortion and euthanasia.3 So, too, has a sense of an unwelcome American influence shaped critiques of the explosion of Pentecostalism in Australia, most notably in ‘megachurches’ such as Hillsong and C3. In the wake of empire, Australian religion, like Australian culture, has, it would seem, been ‘Americanised’. According to this logic, there could be few more telling examples of a deferential turn to all things American than the repeated embrace of Billy Graham. The famed evangelist’s three Australian crusades, in 1959, 1968– 1969 and 1979, represented, according to one historian, nothing more than ‘the importation of American revivalism . . . with its anti-intellectual or quasi-intellectual trends’.4 But are such interpretations accurate? In the face of falling attendance and waning cultural influence, did Australian evangelicals simply look across the Pacific for ill-suited American imports? And was this another example of the thwarting of an authentic Australian Christian identity on the part of crude and pragmatic evangelicals? This chapter seeks to explore such questions through the lens of the ‘second coming’ of Billy Graham for a two-part Australia and New Zealand crusade in April 1968 and March 1969.5 This crusade has often been dismissed as a failed attempt to recreate the glories of 1959, missing the mark with Australians (and particularly young Australians) in the late 1960s

America

79

chiefly because of Graham’s American identity. Cultural historian Judith Smart argued: Students were not then as receptive to somebody like Billy Graham as they had been before. They saw him as the enemy, as a defender, an apologist for US imperialism. US imperialism was the new enemy. And Billy Graham could no longer be seen as somebody who would save Australians and save society from the evils of Americanisation. In fact he was seen as being complicit (in) it.6 Rather than take such assessments at face value and conclude that Graham’s return visit was a marker of the failure of Australian evangelicals to come up with a compelling response to the secular turn of the 1960s, this chapter presents the first analysis of this significant religious and cultural event. It underscores the importance of religious experience generally overlooked in studies of Americanisation and Australia.7 It also provides a voice largely missing from the copious literature on Graham. Whereas his global stature and influence has been extensively explored, this has almost invariably taken an American perspective, and his reception by evangelicals in other parts of the world remains largely unstudied.8 Examining Billy Graham’s return amid the tumult of the late 1960s affords a much richer perspective on the relationship between the local and the global for evangelicals grappling with the collapse of Christendom.

High hopes: ‘Christendom’s number one public figure’ in ‘the most evangelical city in the world’ In the months before Billy Graham arrived for his 1959 Southern Cross crusade, Irish-Australian evangelical Howard Guinness produced a tract entitled I Object . . . to Billy Graham. The well-known rector of St Michael’s Vaucluse, in Sydney’s eastern suburbs, raised and rebutted common objections to Graham’s ministry: commercialism, emotionalism, biblicism and so on. Leading the list of criticisms was one not theological or methodological, but cultural: ‘I object to my religion being imported from America’. In his defence of Graham’s national identity, Guinness pointed out that ‘America exports quality goods as well as cheap goods’, and ‘superficial, flashy, emotional, high power religion’ could be ‘found anywhere’. Having been invited to preach before the Queen in 1954, ‘Billy’, Australians could rest assured, was ‘a quality export’.9 That Guinness saw fit to begin with this charge of imported American religion reveals how central Billy Graham’s American identity was to his anticipated reception in Australia during his first visit, in 1959. After all, just months earlier, another American evangelist, Oral Roberts, had cut short his Melbourne crusade, with its reportedly largest tent in the world, when

80 America confronted with ‘scenes of violence and larrikinism’ and ‘a hostile press’.10 Accordingly, Graham came prepared. Preceded by an endorsement letter from then-Vice-President Richard Nixon, and reading a telegram from President Dwight D. Eisenhower at the final Sydney meeting, in Stuart Piggin’s words, his visit ‘did look like the religious equivalent of ANZUS’ – the Australia, New Zealand, United States Security Treaty, signed in 1951. ‘It is difficult to avoid the conclusion,’ Piggin went on, ‘that Billy was received so uncritically by the Australian press and people because he was a known anti-Communist, a well-connected ally in the Cold War.’11 Graham’s opening remarks at the first Melbourne crusade meeting also stressed the strong bonds that existed between Australians and Americans. Australia was a land of ‘great athletes’, ‘great soldiers’, ‘great churches and great preachers’ and ‘a nation more like the United States than any other country in the world’. The ‘pioneer’ heritage the two nations shared, their comradeship in the Pacific War, and Australia’s impressive growth since, meant that, in Graham’s exaggerated estimate, ‘we Americans follow very carefully the progress that you are making’.12 Sir Edmund Herring, lieutenant governor of Victoria, echoed such comments, wanting Graham to know that Australians ‘get on well with his countrymen, that we understand them and that they understand us’.13 In Brisbane, Graham repeated his effusive claims of kinship. ‘I doubt if there is a country in the world more friendly to the United States than Australia. Almost everything American is sought after and liked. Americans are greeted with open arms everywhere.’14 He was not wrong. The eager embrace of Graham by press and public evinced the emergence of a mass culture with its particularly American concept of the individual ‘star’.15 As Graham managed to convince his critics that his stardom differed from the brash Hollywood stereotype, and that his religious messages and methods were more sober than those of revivalists who had gone before, non-believing and nominally Christian Australians responded to his call to ‘get up out of your seat and come forward’ – over 130,000 of them making a ‘decision for Christ’.16 The theological colleges and missionary societies were brimming with new recruits, the vast majority of Protestant churches worked together in an unprecedented display of unity, for a few years the tides of vice and immorality seemed to be pushed back and, as several later reflected, never was it easier to strike up a conversation about religion on the streets. Biographer William Martin concluded that: ‘To a degree that exceeded even Harringay [Graham’s 1954 crusade in London], Billy Graham became a national figure. Observers doubted any visitor to Australia ever received as much space in the press; certainly, no religious event had been treated so favorably.’17 The Graham crusade of 1959 was not merely a religious affair confined within the walls of the Church; it was a significant cultural event. Big Billy was ‘the talk of the town’.18 Naturally, Australian evangelicals were eager for a second visit and fresh triumphs. The mood of the mid-1960s still seemed favourable to Graham’s approach, and internationally, his stocks were high. By the time of the April

America

81

1968 Sydney crusade, he had preached to an aggregate audience of over 37 million, managing to cross cultural divides (seeing success in India and Japan) and the increasingly discussed ‘generation gap’, winning converts among young people in the United States, Britain and elsewhere.19 He had experienced his closest presidential relationship thus far, taken into the confidence of Lyndon Johnson in ways he had not been with Harry Truman, Dwight Eisenhower or John Kennedy.20 The Cold War anti-communist rhetoric which had helped him win Australian acceptance in 1959 still held water in the mid-1960s, albeit with Chinese territorial expansion and the ‘domino theory’ taking precedence over ‘the bomb’ as the prevailing menace. Perhaps most significantly, Graham had stepped into his role as the leading statesman of global evangelicalism, brought to the fore in his role convening the landmark World Congress on Evangelism in Berlin in 1966. In calling for a new Graham crusade in Australia in the 1960s, Archbishop of Sydney Marcus Loane asked if any could say ‘that Billy Graham has not been called in this generation as John Wesley or D.L. Moody were called in theirs’.21 Loane deduced two particular benefits of a second crusade, both of which emphasised the role of evangelicalism within national life. First, Graham represented the global resurgence of evangelicalism as an intellectually respectable and culturally influential force, challenging those who had equated evangelicals with fundamentalists ‘in order to imply that they represent something effervescent, obscurantist, anti-intellectual, and hostile to true learning’. Second, with the world standing ‘on the verge of possible disaster’, Graham’s preaching and ‘a genuine resurgence of Evangelical life and witness’ could ‘do for this century what the Evangelical Revival of 200 years ago did for England’, when, according to the so-called ‘Halévy thesis’, it was said to have staved off the spreading anarchy of the French Revolution.22 In Loane’s depiction, Graham’s global identity had transcended his American nationality. He was, in the words of the official 1968–1969 crusade report, ‘Christendom’s number one public figure’.23 Loane also believed that a second large crusade was the right approach to reaching Australians. ‘Mass evangelism in a non-Christian country would be futile’, he said, implying that Australia still fitted that Christendom descriptor.24 Most other evangelical leaders shared Loane’s belief in the need for another crusade. ‘Our greatest need is a deepening spirit of evangelism and a holy, determined boldness,’ reflected the Australian delegates to the Berlin Congress in 1966. ‘To achieve this we need revival. . . . Whatever strategy is used it will need to be big – very big. It will need to be planned prayerfully, carefully and with great urgency.’25 Despite evangelicals’ great desire for Billy Graham to return to Australia for another ‘big’ crusade, there was some doubt as to whether he would come at all. Graham’s health was a major worry: in late 1967 he suffered a ninth bout of pneumonia and was hospitalised, his doctors urging him to cancel his planned crusades for the following year. He had not conducted a crusade for six months, and was advised not to proceed to Australia. In the

82 America end, Graham decided to press on and visit Brisbane and Sydney as planned in April 1968, and return in March 1969 to preach in Auckland, Dunedin and Melbourne, with a number of associate evangelists visiting other major cities and regional centres. A more significant threat to the crusades than Graham’s personal fitness was the worsening political turmoil in America. In Lyndon Johnson’s single term of elected office, the nation had experienced a significant shift from consensus to crisis. Of his landslide victory in the 1964 presidential election, Johnson said that ‘these are the most hopeful times since Christ was born in Bethlehem’.26 But just five days after he signed the Civil Rights Act on 6 August 1965, rioting broke out in the mostly black Los Angeles section of Watts, and was beamed live by television into American homes for four consecutive nights. This was, in the words of one historian, ‘War, breaking out in the streets of the United States of America, as if out of nowhere.’27 Unrest boiled over on elite, largely white university campuses, which were also increasingly reported to be hotbeds of sexual liberalism and substance abuse.28 It was not long before Johnson’s ‘Great Society’ seemed a pipe dream. Growing fear, violence and ‘immorality’ at home was coupled with increasing frustration and uncertainty abroad. The American media’s reporting of the Tet Offensive of January 1968 dashed whatever hopes remained for a straightforward victory in Vietnam. Just days before Graham arrived in Sydney, his colleague Carl Henry asked in the March 1968 issue of Christianity Today, ‘Has America passed her peak?’ He noted that many commentators were claiming it had ‘begun to decline as the moral and political leader of the world’, and that the ‘national consensus’ on that very role was ‘fast evaporating’. Unless Americans – ‘Christians and non-Christians alike’ – would ‘repent of their sins’, ‘personal and social’, ‘turn to God, and live in accordance with his commandments’, Henry prophesied, in Gibbonean idiom, their ongoing decline would ‘inevitably lead to the fall of the American nation’.29 As Andrew Preston has observed, this was part of a broader evangelical existential response which sought to reaffirm the traditional staples of ‘Christian Americanism’ within a new and fluid context.30 In 1967, Graham wrote to Australian crusade organisers and civic supporters, including the Methodist Premier of Queensland, Frank Nicklin, about the threat of such crises to his planned campaign: One of the great problems and difficulties I am confronted with at the moment is the fact that we are facing a very critical social, moral and spiritual situation here in the United States. Most of my advisors feel that I should cancel all foreign crusades for the next two years and stay in America. We are giving a great deal of thought, prayer and discussion to this situation.31 If things looked grim before Graham decided to journey to Australia, they deteriorated markedly once he arrived. Successive shocks punctuated the four weeks of April 1968 that Graham spent in Australia. He arrived to

America

83

news of his close friend President Lyndon Johnson’s two-fold surprise announcement not to stand for re-election and to pursue peace negotiations with North Vietnam. While on a Brisbane golf course, Graham heard of the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. on 4 April 1968. The widespread rioting which followed confirmed his earlier warning that ‘the tares of indulgence have overgrown the wheat of moral restraint. Judgement is on the way.’32 If there really was an American civil religion, as sociologist Robert Bellah had suggested in a seminal 1967 article, its ostensible high priest was calling the nation to sackcloth and ashes.33 By the time Graham returned to visit Melbourne and New Zealand in March 1969, Robert Kennedy had also been murdered. Graham’s reception in Australia was intimately bound up in perceptions of America in crisis. Mirroring Loane’s enthusiasm about Graham as the representative of a resurgent public evangelicalism and an antidote to ‘possible disaster’, Australian politicians and commentators held both hopeful and fearful prospects for their own nation’s role in the world of the late 1960s. The retirement of Prime Minister Robert Menzies in January 1966 seemed to augur a new era of Australian foreign policy. Over the next two years, Australian political leaders moved to abandon the pound sterling, initiate closer trade links with Asia and court an even closer relationship with the United States. The brief but triumphant tour of Lyndon Johnson in October 1966 – Australians’ first taste of a presidential visit – and his surprise decision to return in December the following year to mourn the disappearance and presumed drowning of Prime Minister Harold Holt, seemed to suggest that Australia’s stature on the world stage was no longer as a derivative colony of Great Britain (even though Johnson in 1967 described Australians as ‘just about the finest race Britain has sired’).34 The emergence of the ‘fire-from-the-hip’ John Gorton as Holt’s successor, who designated Britain a ‘foreign country’ and advocated an ‘Australia first’ policy on trade and defence, inspired intellectuals like Donald Horne to discern a spirit of ‘new nationalism’.35 But for all the talk of new confidence, old anxieties about Australia’s strategic vulnerability in an unfamiliar Asian environment dominated the memoranda of government and the musings of journalists.36 Shocks from abroad, rather than initiatives from at home, set the tone. Britain announced in July 1967 that its forces would soon be withdrawn from Southeast Asia. Two years later, in Guam, America’s unwillingness to commit ground forces to future Asian conflicts was proclaimed – the so-called Nixon Doctrine. Australians, as never before, found themselves cast adrift by great and powerful friends. Billy Graham was well aware of this. In one of his Hour of Decision broadcasts recorded during his 1968 Australian tour, and then played on over 300 radio stations in the United States, he told Americans that: Australians are deeply concerned, and many of them are afraid, that the United States is facing such turmoil at home that she will turn isolationist and leave unfulfilled her commitments in South-East Asia. . . . Australia

84 America has a foreign problem, as Red China poses an ultimate threat to the peace and security of this nation. Thus what happens to the United States is of tremendous importance to the Australians.37 As American conservative Protestants such as Graham were themselves transcending their former support for American isolationism and developing a humanitarian interventionist internationalism (usually the purview of liberals), Graham was also eager to encourage Australian evangelicals in their mission to Southeast Asia.38 He exhorted Sydneysiders to turn out in large numbers to his final 1968 meeting, in part to make ‘a great witness to all of Australia and Asia’.39 The Sydney crusade’s Assistant Director, Fred Nile, argued that, given some American cities had waited up to 15 years for a crusade, it was Australia’s ‘unique’ geography that brought Graham back within a decade: The main reason that Billy Graham has come back to Sydney is that he considers we have a strategic role, from a Christian point of view, in South-East Asia. . . . His concern is that thousands of young people should be sent into the world as ‘ambassadors for Christ’, particularly to South-East Asia.40 In an even balder statement, Dan Piatt, the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association (BGEA)’s assigned coordinator of the Australian crusades, claimed that Australia and New Zealand’s missionary responsibility was ‘the one reason’ for Graham’s return, adding that the 1965 coup in Indonesia ‘confirmed this in our minds’.41 In his foreword to the crusade report, Crusading Down Under, Graham began by stressing the shared concerns of Americans, Australians and New Zealanders for Southeast Asia, ‘not only political and economic, but also social and spiritual’. He concluded with a call for young Christians to ‘have a vision for an Asian world nearby that needs to know Christ and needs to find peace’.42 Given that Graham’s organisation was financing a major evangelism congress in Singapore in November 1968, it is understandable that he had such concerns. But at a deeper level, it reflects the way political and spiritual goals, intensified by the Cold War, were intimately interwoven in Graham’s worldview.43 When speaking to their own countrymen, Graham’s Australian hosts also pointed to the strategic context in which the crusades took place. As the April 1968 crusade commenced, the Sydney Anglican magazine Southern Cross ran an editorial entitled ‘We’re backing God’. It began with reference to Australia’s relationship with its allies: Some are backing Britain in the hope that she will rise again to economic health and international influence. Others are backing LBJ in his Asian policy: others back away, looking for a prophet – Bobby or Richard. In Sydney this month this magazine is backing the Spirit of God.44

America

85

God, and the Graham crusade, were held up not as the compartmentalised affairs of some discrete religious sphere, but as relevant answers to the geopolitical uncertainties facing the nation. Evangelicals believed they were talking to the times. Strategic anxiety was matched with cultural unease. After losing the old verities of empire, would Australians have sufficient spiritual resources to assert their own ‘distinctive’ national identity, or would they become, in the words of Geoffrey Serle in 1967, ‘just slightly different sorts of Americans,’ members of a hybrid nation: ‘Austerica’?45 The early 1960s had represented a new peak in American cultural influence on Australia with the expansion of television, comic books and other modes of popular culture (high culture remaining predominantly British).46 Indeed, in the literary journal Meanjin’s debate in which Serle’s prediction featured – a seven-part series on national identity in 1966–1967 called ‘Godzone’ – another contributor, Geoffrey Blainey, pointed out that even cries of Americanisation drew on the American cultural form of ‘western gunplay . . . an attractive game to those who see black in one barrel and white in the other’.47 Thus as the forces of strategic anxiety and cultural ambition coalesced, Australians tended with the same breath to appeal for American security assurances and bemoan American cultural influence. Such was the political climate to which Graham returned nine years after his first visit. The charge of cultural imperialism at the hands of the American evangelist may yet ring true.

Graham’s view of Australians: mainstream, moral and muscular Billy Graham touched down in Australia on April Fool’s Day, 1968. As he flew over Sydney, he thought to himself: ‘it seemed that we were returning home’. At the press conference that afternoon, he wooed the gathered reporters by saying that ‘of all the places in the world, I’d rather live in Australia next to the United States’. ‘And if things get worse in the United States,’ he added, ‘I might be coming here anyway.’48 This was more than mere Southern charm or just another instance of his tendency to give hyperbolic praise. Australia generally, and Sydney specifically, were of great significance to Billy Graham and his mission. In 1966, John Pollock, Graham’s first authorised biographer, wrote to the Australian BGEA office proposing to write a ‘frankly evangelistic’ book – One Man, One Nation – on the continuing impact of the 1959 crusade, showing ‘vivid evidence that Christ transforms lives, that Christianity really does “work” today’. Pollock was determined for it to have ‘the sense of the nation-wide and continuing influence of the 1959 Crusade  .  .  . so that the reader not only feels: “This could and should happen to me” but: “This could and should happen to my nation” (England, USA, Germany, etc.).’49 To borrow the title of a ‘Christian Western’ produced in 1960 by the BGEA and featuring the future Aboriginal music star Jimmy Little, the ‘shadow of the boomerang’ lay long

86 America across the narrative of Graham’s ministry.50 He was anxious to see if converts lasted and if reports were true that ‘Australia had changed’ and turned cold towards his message.51 The importance of Australia to Graham, beyond the memory of the crowds and conversions of 1959 and the opportunities for Asian mission, lay in three other factors. First, it was a land where evangelicalism was comparatively mainstream. The numerical impact of the 1959 crusade – to that date seeing the most enquirers of any of his crusades – was accentuated by the strong support Graham had received from a significant section of the Anglican Church, a striking contrast to his continued cool reception by many British Anglicans.52 According to one Christianity Today article written by Sydney Anglican Alan Nichols, the eventual author of the official crusade report, the dominance of evangelical Anglicanism in Sydney would ‘wholly alter the usual supporting framework of [a] Graham crusade’. It was a city in which ‘evangelicals are clearly in the ascendancy in public and church life. They do not have to fight to survive. They are not a despised minority.’53 Repeated success in ‘the most evangelical city in the world’ would thus surely be a boon to the evangelist.54 One contemporary recalled the special affection between Marcus Loane and Billy Graham as the primary reason for the evangelist’s three visits: ‘He had to be careful he didn’t come just because he wanted to come’.55 Needless to say, Graham used the relationship strategically, exhorting Loane in 1967 to write a review of the 1959 crusade’s impact on the renewal of Anglican churches. Loane recalled how Graham ‘did more than ask’; he ‘[p]ersevered until it was impossible to say no’.56 Beyond Sydney, that the more theologically liberal Archbishop of Melbourne, Frank Woods, and the Anglo-Catholic Primate and Archbishop of Brisbane, Philip Strong, also lent their support to Graham’s return visit only added to the feeling of acceptance by the establishment.57 When considering Graham’s emergence from the sectarian fundamentalism of his earlier years at Bob Jones University, and his deep desire for cultural respectability, the importance of Sydney Anglican evangelical patronage, and wider acceptance by Anglican leaders, ought not be underestimated.58 Second, Graham viewed Australia as a comparatively moral nation, something of a faithful remnant of Christendom. He had left London for good after his 1966 crusade, reportedly saying that Britons ‘preferred bingo, gambling in betting shops, and immorality to hearing the word of God’, and telling a gathering of British Members of Parliament that in the eyes of ‘many, both here and abroad’ Britain was ‘in danger of moving away from [its] moorings’.59 ‘I will devote myself to America and possibly Australia,’ he said.60 One cynical commentator jibed in the Australian: Sin has at last beaten Billy Graham in England, and he is turning to the less-tainted pastures of the U.S. and Australia. What will he think of the mini-skirts, the empty churches, the immorality and gambling in Australia, where some clergy, perhaps less honestly than Britain, deny their faith without admitting it?61

America

87

Rather than repeat his critiques of the British, he praised Australians for still having high rates of churchgoing and being receptive to the gospel message, a point his associated evangelists affirmed.62 On Graham’s departure from Melbourne at the end of his 1969 visit, he took the trouble of writing to the Herald: ‘While many people here in Melbourne lament what they consider to be a moral and spiritual decline in recent years, yet in comparison to most cities this size that I have visited, Melbourne is a moral paradise.’63 Third, Australians were ‘muscular’, appealing to Graham’s Southern image of a wholesome farmer-cum-family man.64 Marshall Frady, in his insightful if condescending biography Billy Graham: A Parable of American Righteousness, observed that Australia ‘turned out to be something like the special country of his own spirit: an open sunny land of hale, tanned neighborly, uncomplicated folk . . . in Australia, they took to him with a great heartiness, and he to them’.65 As he had done in 1959, Graham again drew parallels in 1968 between the two nations’ pioneer origins. ‘Australia is still a man’s world, with great new frontiers to conquer’; many parts of the country still resembled ‘the old American West’ and challenged ‘the pioneer spirit of men’. Though he conceded that Sydney seemed ‘the mini-skirt capital of the world’, he added: ‘you don’t see as many boys with long hair as you do in Canadian or British cities’.66 Concluding his Melbourne crusade in 1969, Graham mused that, ‘If I were a young man starting out – say 18–25 – I think I would move to Australia. It’s a young man’s dream country.’67 Though Graham’s observations were rather superficial and inaccurate, they did reflect his innate social conservatism, an attitude more widespread in the 1960s than often assumed.68 Given the time lag which often existed in the transmission of cultural mores from the United States and Europe to Australia, perhaps Graham was pleased to see the last of the early 1960s’ attitude of exuberant opportunity, a posture which had since passed into disillusionment among many of Britain’s and America’s youth. If part of Graham’s sustained popularity in the United States was his embodiment of the ‘best selves’ of moral, middle-class-aspirant Americans – a point that biographers William Martin and Grant Wacker have made – similar things could be said of Australia, those with conservative impulses seeing in him familiarity, authority, and opportunity in a world of retreating certainties.69 In these hopes for the 1968–1969 crusade – from Australians like Loane and from Americans like Graham – local and global identities were stressed. Graham offered Australians both a proven evangelistic approach and the sense of being a valued part of a resurgent and respectable global evangelical movement, in ways not dissimilar to the political significance of Johnson’s visit two years before. Australia held out promise to Graham of the continuing success of his ministry and acceptance by quasi-establishment Anglicanism, and the affirmation of some of his hopes for the continuation of conservative mores. The benefits flowed in both directions. As much as he anticipated and enjoyed returning to Australia, and for the first time brought his wife Ruth, Graham stressed that he was on pressing spiritual business. His decision not to cut short his 1968 tour and return

88 America home to attempt to bring peace to the unrest following King’s murder only further intensified the urgency of his message. ‘I should honor this commitment. I am a preacher of the Gospel, not an agent of the United States government’, he said at a civic luncheon in Sydney’s Trocadero Ballroom.70 In so doing, Graham was at once both eschewing his political identity as America’s high priest, and tacitly affirming it so as to accentuate the significance of his mission to Australia. If even America’s lurch towards ‘a race war’ could not deter him from preaching in Australia, his message must be of serious weight.

Australians’ views of Graham: revivalism, hypocrisy, and Vietnam Just how convincing was Graham’s claim to be a humble preacher of the universal gospel, and ‘not an agent of the United States government’? How was Graham received in Australia, as an American evangelical? In terms of the press’s reception, Graham was good copy. Unlike in Britain in 1966, where his London crusade received ‘little more than obligatory coverage’, Australian newspapers and television programmes gave extensive and generally positive treatment.71 Graham was effusive: ‘I don’t think we could have asked for better or more accurate or more sympathetic coverage’.72 Certainly most journalists were enamoured with the evangelist’s ‘matinee idol’ looks, charm and reputation as a friend of presidents and monarchs.73 ‘At 49,’ wrote one, ‘the hair is still plentiful and blond, the eyes still penetrate and the suntan would do credit to a surfie.’74 Several made particular mention of his eyes, variously ‘blue’, ‘steel-blue’ or ‘celestial blue’.75 When subjected to questions about his methods and politics at his first Australian press conference, ‘thrown at him like stones from a sling’, Graham’s ‘calm, assured manner’ under pressure made him appear all the more statesman-like. ‘Billy Graham has matured’, said one of his associates.76 When he preached, the ‘boy evangelist’ of 1959 was gone; ‘now he’s every inch the mature preacher, more mellow perhaps, but more impelling, too’.77 Though the novelty of 1959 had gone, to paraphrase cultural historian Judith Smart’s article on his first crusade, the evangelist was still a star, one who ‘looked like a Hollywood idol’ but ‘doesn’t speak like one’.78 As one journalist observed in an article entitled ‘Preacher with a star’s charm’, the ‘hostility he used to meet has dropped to a mere whisper, and then only from ministers who dislike his methods.’79 The battle for Graham’s integrity seemed to have been won. As in Britain two years before, his critics almost always prefaced their objection with assurances that they had no doubt of Graham’s probity and sincerity. Even Honi Soit, the University of Sydney Student Representative Council’s oft-irreverent newspaper, in its ‘Special Easter Heresy Issue’, dismissed the evangelist as irrelevant, though not insincere.80 Most criticism of Graham was similar to that which he faced in 1959, and indeed, in most of his crusades: emotionalism, self-promotion, superficial

America

89

theology and so on. Yet there were three particular critiques that addressed Graham’s nationality, and reflected the changed political climate within both America and Australia since 1959. First, Graham could be seen as a symbol of ‘American big business’ and crass, flashy revivalism. The military-like organisation of the crusades, their huge costs and the winsome charm of Graham and his associates caused some to see sinister material ambitions. ‘There is only one reason for the return of the Soho Kid’, mocked D.R. Huxley in March 1968: ‘he is the managing director of an American big business and can only survive by adopting the principle of built-in obsolescence.’81 A young Phillip Adams, then the television writer for the Australian, and later to become one of the nation’s most vocal atheists, also portrayed Graham as the peddler of American products: Listening to that amplified voice rising to a crescendo, I half expect him to divvy a hot dog amongst the multitudes. Or to baptize his converts in Coke. For, in Graham, Christianity is freed from its unfortunate Middle Eastern associations and restated in modern American terms.82 Following his cynical review, the self-styled ‘card-carrying atheist’ Adams gave a glowing appraisal of English journalist and recent convert Malcolm Muggeridge’s Life of Jesus documentary: ‘If Billy Graham’s crucifix is made out of two Hershey bars, Malcolm Muggeridge’s seems the real thing.’83 Perhaps Huxley’s and Adams’s criticisms say more about a common association of Britain with high culture and America with popular culture, than they do about the actual commercial posture of Graham and his organisation. Naturally, Graham disavowed the crass showmanship of previous American evangelists and their perceived marriage of commercialism and Christ. Speaking to one Australian interviewer about the ‘new evangelicals’ attitude to postwar evangelism: We had in America at that time the Elmer Gantry image of evangelism – emotionalism, all kinds of gimmicks and techniques, that evangelists had used at the turn of the century, a great deal of emphasis on money. We decided that we were going to change all of that and try to create a new image for evangelism and rescue an old biblical word that had fallen on evil days. At least in America, to some extent I feel we have succeeded.84 Graham’s associate evangelist and brother-in-law Leighton Ford, who preached in Perth and Adelaide in 1968, made the same point: ‘There’s nothing of Elmer Gantry about our crusades. There are no peanuts, no balloons, and people don’t run around pounding each other on the back.’85 Of another of Graham’s associates, Lane Adams, who preached a year later in Canberra, one supporter noted how it ‘takes people time to decide that he is not a wild American outrider or an Elmer Gantry, that he is talking sense

90 America and can be trusted.’86 That the satirical character Elmer Gantry, from Sinclair Lewis’s bestselling 1927 novel of the same name (made into an Academy Award-winning film in 1960 starring Burt Lancaster), was thrice held up as the antithesis of Graham’s ministry suggests how large the caricature of American revivalists loomed. While this frequent reference to the stereotype may be read as evidence of a guilty imperialist conscience, even then it would indicate the self-awareness of Graham and his supporters. Indeed, they almost seemed more anxious about crude and dishonest revivalism than the Australians they met. As Elesha Coffman notes, in the new era of television and heightened suspicion of authority figures, Graham’s challenge was to be ‘a George Whitefield in an Elmer Gantry world’.87 Australian evangelicals were also drawing distinctions between the old revivalism and the new evangelism, even within the Graham team. Warwick Olson, director of the Sydney Anglican Diocese’s Information Office and press officer for the Sydney crusade, ‘had reservations’ about the approach of Graham’s associate Grady Wilson, who led the 1968 Bundaberg crusade. Wilson ‘was the kind of American that Billy wasn’t. Bombastic and what have you. He wasn’t anywhere near the same preacher as Billy or Ralph [Bell, another associate evangelist]’.88 Alan Nichols, with whom Olson coauthored the official report Crusading Down Under, reflected on broader shifts in Australian attitudes to American evangelicals into the 1970s. ‘The label [evangelicalism] was changing; it was becoming more American. And I and many others . . . didn’t like that. . . . The English evangelical, yes. The American evangelical, no. They were fundamentalists, they were Southern Baptists, they were ignorant!’ Despite being an American Southern Baptist himself, Billy Graham was an exception: ‘we started distinguishing between different Americans, I think’.89 The second type of criticism levelled at Graham as an American centred on his nation’s alleged moral hypocrisy. What right had a country plagued by immorality and division at home, and waging a morally dubious war abroad, to call other nations to repentance? The assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. and subsequent race riots, concurrent with Graham’s April 1968 tour, accentuated Australian perceptions of the United States in turmoil. One man wished Americans, who ‘have spent more dollars in their brand of evangelism and defence of idealism during this century than any other nation in history, mostly beyond their own shores,’ had heeded the words of Australia’s Prime Minister John Gorton, advocate of the ‘new nationalism’, who ‘suggested that we clean up our own dunghill first’. If they had, ‘far more gold would be in their treasury and citizens would not be hiding under their beds, scared to go out on their lawful occasions’.90 A similar point was made by Arthur Nevill of Essendon in Melbourne, prompting a flurry of letters. ‘If God can save people, as Billy Graham asserts that He can,’ wrote Nevill, ‘then why is a Christian country like America reputed to be the wickedest country in the world? In spite of the fact that there are more churches in America than in any other country, the crime rate

America

91

is increasing and the gaols are growing bigger and bigger.’91 Responding to Nevill’s initial letter, Jean Garner of Surrey Hills chided its ‘ostrich-type’ parochialism.92 J.E. Brooks of Doncaster noted that while America ‘could do with a good clean-up’, Graham ought to be given ‘some credit for his unselfishness in trying to help other countries too’. ‘If he kept his message for his own country only,’ wrote Brooks, ‘it would be selfish, which is unchristian. Christ said, “Go teach all nations”, so, after all, he is only obeying HIM.’93 Gary Smitham of East Keilor was saddened at Nevill’s attacks on ‘a great country and a dedicated servant of God’, which prevented him from seeing ‘the vast amount of good done by America’. Immorality was not confined to the United States. ‘I disagree that Australia is even comparatively “better” than any other country,’ Smitham concluded. ‘Like others we are “nominally Christian” but how many can say that Christ is Number One in their life?’94 While charges of American hypocrisy had some truth to them, they seemed to reflect more about Australian parochialism than American paternalism. Some evangelical leaders emphasised this point. Adelaide Anglican Lance Shilton, answering the question ‘Why do we need Billy Graham?’, argued that Christ commanded people to take the gospel from everywhere to everywhere, and Billy Graham was simply obeying in the same way Australian missionaries in Africa were. After all, no Church in any country could ‘honestly claim that what is being done already is good enough’. ‘Outside help,’ Shilton concluded, ‘is always very welcome’.95 Rather than defending America, Graham lambasted his homeland. ‘What we see in the U.S. right now is the judgment of Almighty God,’ he said in his first crusade meeting, in Brisbane. ‘Our leaders don’t know what to do. God is looking on us. If God does not bring his judgment on the U.S. God will have to apologise to Sodom and Gomorrah – because he destroyed them because they were devils.’96 ‘Americans are living like devils’ he thundered to the 35,000-strong audience, ‘and so is a large part of Australia.’97 King’s assassination evinced ‘a critical moment when American democracy is at stake,’ and, he added, ‘this is going to affect you all here – in Australia as well as America’. According to one reporter present, Graham ‘had the people with him’ as he made the political personal: ‘This is your hour with God tonight. You may never have another.’98 This was the model of almost all Graham’s sermons: global crises, national crises, personal crises and a call to repentance. The latest story of American chaos and immorality (Australians, he observed were ‘dominated by American news’), only served to intensify his calls for Australian repentance. Graham also pointed out Australia’s own moral flaws, often interpreting these back to his American audience through his Hour of Decision broadcasts. Australia, too, ‘has a race problem with its Aborigines, which is causing a great deal of concern’, and shared America’s obsession with ‘violence, sadism and sex’ in its entertainment news.99 Speaking to Australians directly, or to Americans via broadcast, his warnings to the nation were always couched within a wider narrative of Western moral declension that found

92 America its epicentre in America. If this was Americanisation, it was of a kind rather different from the usual portrayal. Rather than pushing American wares on Australians, ‘God’s super salesman’ pointed to its woes.100 He was calling his countrymen to repent of the deleterious effects of Americanisation: the spread of a ‘sick society’ and the abandonment of America’s manifest destiny as the world’s moral leader.101 With intense civic Protestant language of divine duty and imminent judgement, he stressed the interconnected nature of modern politics and culture, and proclaimed his answer to the universal spiritual problem of sin from which, he argued, all crises sprang. This jeremiad had a deep history in the United States, on both sides of politics, but also had resonances with Australian audiences, conflating personal and national moral confusion with fears about global cataclysm.102 In an age in which news, ideas and fashions spread around the world with unprecedented speed, the prospects of both contamination and catastrophe were plausible for late 1960s Australians, especially those with some memory of the Second World War and the early Cold War, and perhaps some guilt over failing to pass on the knowledge and habits of Christianity to their increasingly errant children. After all, it was this war generation, and not their ‘boomer’ heirs, that had the greatest agency in the breakdown of Western Christendom in the 1960s.103 The third common denunciation of Graham as an American concerned the most salient example of this alleged hypocrisy: the Vietnam War. Along with his persistent support of Richard Nixon well after the Watergate scandal became public, Vietnam was the political issue that caused most trouble for Graham. His vacillation – ‘initially hawkish, later waffling, later neutral’ – did not help.104 Such ambiguity characterised his response to repeated questions from Australians. Graham stressed it was both too complex for him to pronounce upon, and a political issue, lying ‘a bit outside my realm’. Noting that ‘equally devout Christians’ took opposite positions on the war’s morality, he protested, ‘I don’t intend to add my ignorance to the problems that already exist’.105 Nevertheless, Christian and non-Christian Australians expected him to take a stand against the Vietnam War. In late 1967, before Graham arrived, one South Australian Christian respectfully noted that, ‘like it or not, Billy Graham has been drawn into the moral implications of the war, and that by his neutrality, criticism and oblique references has pronounced the Government’s actions morally right’. He called on fellow Christians to write letters ‘with love but without self-righteousness’ to the Sydney crusade chairman Alex Gilchrist in the hope that ‘Graham might yet be won’.106 Others were more direct. Another South Australian said in April 1968 that Graham’s ‘fence-sitting’ caused ‘disgust and horror’, and did great harm to Christianity. ‘If he wonders what is wrong with Christianity today, he himself has just answered it.’107 The common logic of these criticisms was: first, that Vietnam had become essentially and emblematically a moral and not just a political issue,

America

93

transcending the particularities of the actual war; second, that Christians should speak out prophetically on such moral issues; and third, that Graham had a special responsibility to do so, given his status. In following such logic, critics of Graham affirmed a residual belief in the moral leadership expected of Christians, even if their evangelistic message of repentance and faith was thought irrelevant or arrogant. This expectation applied particularly to Graham – ‘surely a man of your stature should have something to say?’ – but also to Australian Church leaders.108 ‘The same failure to accept the responsibilities of moral leadership when related to Vietnam issues has been a notable feature of Australian churches and their leaders, with a few individual exceptions,’ wrote R.K. Hornabrook in the Age.109 One exception for Hornabrook was Sydney’s influential Methodist pacifist Alan Walker, who tempered his support for the crusades by pointing to Graham’s ‘disappointing reasoning on such issues as race, the Vietnam war and nuclear weapons’.110 Hornabrook concluded: ‘Fence-sitting may be a convenient way of avoiding criticism, but its practitioners command little respect.’111 Several times, Graham’s silence on Vietnam was contrasted with Martin Luther King Jr.’s active opposition to it.112 ‘While Dr Graham was gaining members for the Church,’ wrote Helen Hill in September 1967, ‘Dr King could give some leadership and inspiration to those Christians who are swiftly losing faith in the Church as a force for social progress.’113 With Hill’s letter, the Australian ran a large picture of King, subtitled, ‘A visit to Australia to speak on practical Christianity?’ Writing after his assassination, the Australian Council of Churches, which was decidedly cool towards the crusades, called King ‘one of those rare human beings who in his own lifetime is numbered among the saints’.114 As with their understanding of Graham as a different type of American revivalist from the Elmer Gantry of the past or the Grady Wilson of the present, some Australians distinguished between different types of American prophets.115 Their anti-American criticism of Graham’s authoritarianism drew on a pro-American belief in King’s activism. Either way, they looked to American Christian leaders to speak out. That it was usually liberals – politically as well as theologically – who made such demands tempers somewhat the claim that it was conservative evangelicals who looked to America for leadership, and liberals who were independently minded. On the whole, Vietnam did not prove to be a major point of difficulty for Graham in his 1968 tour. Perhaps the news of Johnson’s refusal to seek a second term and King’s assassination had distracted focus from the war. One columnist in the Australian wondered at Australians’ general indifference towards Vietnam, compared with ‘American trauma’ over it. ‘Between elections Vietnam has had only nuisance value’, he wrote. ‘Occasionally it has thrown up nasty little moral problems. But only a minority has been persistently tortured by doubt, and most certainly no crisis of conscience or confidence has been anywhere within miles of the Cabinet room.’116 By the time of Graham’s Melbourne crusade, in March 1969, the opposition

94 America was more pronounced, though still not on par with the demonstrations he witnessed in the United States and Britain.117 At the opening evening meeting in the Myer Music Bowl, a dozen students held up placards which read ‘Graham: Your silence on Vietnam condemns you’ and ‘Tell Nixon: God is alive and disgusted at Vietnam carnage’.118 They were booed by the crowd, and quickly ushered out by the police. Graham merely used the brief disruption to point out the hunger in young people for ‘a cause to march for, a flag to stand under’.119 A week later, students from the Monash Labor Club and two other groups noisily distributed anti-Graham leaflets in the Myer Music Bowl at one of the evening meetings, attacking his politics and evangelistic techniques. Forty were arrested.120 Another leaflet, circulating at Box Hill High School, criticised religious education as ‘sanctimonious hogwash’, equated Graham with Hitler, and called the discounted rail fares for crusade attendees ‘subsidised “genocide” in Vietnam’.121 Excepting perhaps this last and wildest salvo, almost all the critiques of Graham by Melbournian protesters appealed to some continued Christian moral framework. While it is hard to tell the extent to which Christian students were engaged in these protests, Vietnam certainly came to be a political issue about which both right and left often appealed to Christian principles. Yet it was not, in Australia in 1969, the issue it had become in the United States, once again reflecting the need for a more nuanced timeline of the 1960s to encompass the Antipodean experience.

Evaluating the crusade Bearing in mind the criticisms of Graham as an American evangelist coming amidst crises of national direction in the late 1960s, to what extent did his crusade fulfil the aspirations of Australian evangelicals for a revival of Christendom’s fortunes in Australia? In terms of sheer numbers, the 1968–1969 Australian crusades represented some of the largest attendance and enquirer figures of any crusade to that date of comparably short length – three meetings in Brisbane and nine in Sydney in 1968, ten in Melbourne in 1969. Of the 44,000 who ‘went forward’ (over 4,000 more than in London in 1966), the majority were under the age of 25, a fact Graham and his Australian hosts repeatedly mentioned as a rejoinder to criticisms that the evangelist’s day had passed, or that attendees were mainly nostalgic, churchgoing ‘’59ers’.122 That over 70 per cent of the 22,420 Sydney inquirers were making a firsttime commitment, and over 80 per cent of these were under 29 years of age, affirmed Graham’s ‘greater emphasis on young people’, reaching those with little or no memory of 1959.123 A similar age breakdown was witnessed in Melbourne, though with just over half the number of Sydney’s enquirers.124 Crowds far outstripped the numbers for the first week of the much longer 1959 crusade, and the 1966 London crusade; Graham’s ten-day crusade in Pittsburgh in September 1968, though including a visit from presidential nominee Richard Nixon, still only brought forward half as many enquirers

America

95

as in his nine days in Sydney.125 In all, considering that aggregate figures cannot account for the many who attended multiple crusade meetings, Graham and his associates preached in person to over one million Australians. Such comparisons, though encouraging, could not hide the fact that the glories of 1959 had not been repeated. While evangelical churches had undoubtedly received a ‘shot in the arm’, they had not witnessed the revival hoped for.126 Several reasons were advanced. The brevity of Graham’s visit was perhaps the most significant practical difference. All were disappointed

Figure 3.1 Crowds fill the stands and spill out onto the grass at the Sydney Showground at the final rally of the second Billy Graham crusade, 28 April 1968. Source: © Ramon Williams. Used with permission.

96 America that the campaign in each city lasted no more than a week, preventing sustained public discussion of Christianity, and the flow-on effect of converts bringing along others, both of which were key ingredients to the success of the three months of meetings in 1959.127 ‘It was almost over before it had begun,’ reflected one clergyman.128 The deferral of Graham’s Melbourne campaign from April 1968 to March 1969, due to illness, seemed to dampen enthusiasm amongst Melbourne churches, and may help account for the substantially smaller response and greater opposition there. Others pointed to the ‘obvious lessening’ of prayerfulness in comparison to the all-night packed prayer meetings which had preceded the 1959 campaign.129 Some evangelicals questioned their own ability to organise a crusade, and wished there had been ‘a stronger direction from America’, indicating not so much a lack of local capability as a lack of available time and experience to meet the extensive crusade preparation requirements.130 Whatever internal factors were lacking, it was inescapable that wider enthusiasm for religion had cooled in Australia since Graham’s first crusade. Mrs P.H. Butler of Western Australia was ashamed of the low turn-out at her local landline relay of the parallel Leighton Ford crusade in Perth in 1968. ‘But what must Christ feel about a so-called Christian country,’ she wrote, ‘which is almost totally unwilling to support an evangelistic crusade.’ In other nations and at other times, people were martyred for proclaiming Christ, ‘[y]et we Australians are so weak-kneed that we tremble even to be seen attending a religious meeting’. The costs of cowardice were high: ‘Wake up, Australia, for it is later than we think. Christ has said that He will come again.’131 Speaking the language of civic Protestantism, Mrs Butler presumed that most Australians still watched the crusades at home, and thought of themselves Christians, even if they would not publicly identify as such. More people might have been reached through the small screen (as with the use of evangelistic radio), but their response was largely invisible. Pondering the same low turn-out in Perth, one writer to the Australian looked for deeper reasons for the indifference he saw: Australia, unlike America and so many other privileged nations, was not founded by God-fearing men and women. There is a basic lack of reverence, tradition and Christian background in at least this State. W.A. [Western Australia] is a spiritual and cultural wilderness and Perth is among the most Godless cities in the so-called Christian community.132 Australia was again presumed to be a nation of shallow beliefs and rude indifference, using the same language of hypocrisy (‘so-called’) that had been levelled at Graham as an American. Even evangelicals, enthusiastic about the prospects of the crusades, saw the differing backgrounds of America and Australia as cause to expect greater difficulty for the evangelist. Archbishop Loane, in an article in the American journal Christianity Today, pointed out that ‘Americans trace their spiritual heritage to the Pilgrim fathers, and we

America

97

Australians to the prodigal son’. The nation’s historic battle between Puritanism and paganism had, he claimed, particularly exacerbated the wider Western drift into materialist affluence and moral permissiveness since the high spiritual tide of the 1950s.133 If the second coming of Billy Graham did not bring a great inflow of converts, it did cause evangelicals to reflect on their changing place in the nation. Much prodding came from beyond the Church. Graham Williams, religion editor for the Australian, ran a five-part series of articles in April 1968 entitled ‘Challenge to the Church’. He noted how Billy Graham had ‘jolted the local denominations out of their apathy and fragmented isolation, as no one else ever has, to join in mammoth ecumenical efforts in Brisbane and Sydney’.134 While evidently showing a bias for liberal Christianity (for example, lavishing praise on the theologically unorthodox Wayside Chapel in Sydney’s King’s Cross), Williams did cite examples of evangelical clergymen bemoaning the introspection of their churches. Williams had run a similar series of articles on the ‘Crisis in Christianity’ in the same newspaper in early 1965, suggesting that Billy Graham’s visit was more cathartic than catalytic for critics of Australian Church life.135 Other debates precipitated by the crusade centred on issues such as the place of religion in public education and the extent to which Christianity was foundational to ‘the necessary ethics of civilisation’.136 Shortly after the 1969 Melbourne crusade, the New South Wales branch of the Evangelical Alliance gathered 250 evangelicals from a range of denominations for a conference in Sydney on ‘The Gospel in our Strange New World’. Most of the organisers had a year earlier been the leaders of the Sydney crusade: Alex Gilchrist, Fred Nile, Jack Dain, Dudley Foord and Marcus Loane. Lectures and seminars explored evangelism’s biblical basis, the changing milieu of new morality and lost authority, and the challenge of presenting the gospel in a host of new or rapidly changing settings, such as the inner city, universities, the drug sub-culture and amongst migrants. Contrary to claims that Graham’s visit entrenched reliance on large, centralised, expensive crusades, much of the conference’s emphasis was on the importance of the local church. This is unsurprising, given the ascendency amongst Sydney Anglicans of the doctrine of the Church as espoused by Moore College’s Broughton Knox and Donald Robinson (the latter of whom gave a paper on this topic at the conference), arguing for the primacy of the local gathering of believers, rather than denominational or parachurch structures.137 At the Sydney Anglican Diocesan Synod in 1968, a special Commission on Evangelism was established to ‘survey the whole area of the church’s duty to proclaim the gospel both in our own Diocese and in the areas of our immediate neighbours in Asia’. Whether or not this investigation was directly precipitated by the crusade is unclear. However, its 1971 report, Move in for Action, did suggest that mass evangelism had serious limitations in a culture of declining biblical literacy and scepticism towards public professions of

98 America faith. The crusade’s limited effectiveness was most helpful in stimulating further emphasis on localised, more sustainable forms of evangelism. Future campaigns had to issue forth from a ‘felt need of the churches’ rather than a top-down centralised ambition.138 A critic of that report, Sydney Diocese Director of Evangelism Geoffrey Fletcher, also reflected in 1974 that mass evangelism was not always the most effective strategy. ‘There is a time when you ought to have the heavy bombers taking advantage of a situation,’ he said, ‘but there is also a time when to have them operating is dangerous to the rest of the troops.’139 The Graham crusade marked something of a transition, from mass evangelism as a method of winning converts and winning back the nation to a focus on the training and sending of Christians for more localised evangelism, as well as a more strategic use of television and other forms of mass media.140 According to an ABC survey in 1970 of Melbourne and Sydney citizens, television was far and away the most trusted medium, and there was one television set for every four Australians (and almost one per household). It therefore made sense for evangelicals to use mass media, rather than just mass meetings, to evangelise the nation.141 Evangelicals were coming to realise that the form of future revivals would need to look very different. The evangelistic task in the secular city was less about reviving nominal believers and more about renewing the faithful in their own spiritual vitality. Furthermore, biblical literacy was beginning to decline with enough perceptibility that the role of the evangelist was to be less about exhortation to decision and more about, to quote Move in for Action, ‘teaching the nature of Christianity’.142 If Graham’s campaign helped Australian evangelicals think harder about their place in the nation, it also seemed a success in directing their thoughts to international responsibilities, chiefly in Asia. Of course, substantial interactions had taken place between Australian evangelicals and their Asian brethren for decades, and interest in Asia was as great within the Church as public intellectuals like Donald Horne were advocating for greater regional engagement. For example, Dudley Foord, dean of Moore Theological College, conducted five speaking visits to Asia in the six years up to 1969. Reporting back on trends in the region after a trip to Indonesia, Foord lamented that ‘too few Australians have been willing to concede that we no longer live in a tranquil corner of the globe’, and that Australia’s destiny was ‘inextricably bound up’ with Asia. If they took heed of the responsibilities and opportunities in their region it ‘could be the finest hour for the Australian churches’.143 Accordingly, Foord, as chairman of the Sydney crusade’s youth committee, made the most of Graham’s visit by organising an impromptu youth congress at the Sydney Showground: 2,300 young people gathered to hear about evangelistic, medical and media opportunities for service in Asia.144 Scores of them made enquiries to missionary societies in the following weeks.145 At the final Sydney rally, to which over 100,000 people turned out, the entire collection of $30,000 was donated to the forthcoming Asia

America

99

South Pacific Congress on Evangelism, affirming Graham’s call to make it ‘a great witness to all of Australia and Asia’.146 At that Congress, in Singapore in November 1968, the 71 Australian evangelicals in attendance (including key leaders of the 1968–1969 crusades) were confronted with confident, growing Asian Christianity. Though backed administratively and financially (to the tune of $300,000) by the Graham organisation, rather than broadcasting Western superiority in an American imperialist key, the Congress was very much an Asian affair.147 Sydney Anglican bishop Jack Dain, the architect of Graham’s first non-Western crusade, in India in 1956, was the only non-Asian member of the ten-man organising committee. ‘From the outset it was Asians who were vocal, and those of us from Australia were clearly there to learn,’ said Adelaide psychologist John Court to the congregation of Holy Trinity Anglican Church.148 ‘We went there thinking we were from Australian [sic], what can we do to help the Asians,’ reflected Kevin Crawford, Director of Evangelism for the New South Wales Churches of Christ. ‘Personally, we were challenged by the level of commitment and dedication we saw in Asia.’149 The Australian participants returned with a number of practical commitments aimed at fostering a partnership with Asian churches, ‘fraternal and not paternal in character’.150 Though Graham was not directly involved in the Singapore Congress, if this was what he intended in his emphasis on Australia’s regional responsibilities, it was very much the opposite of cultural imperialism.

Americanisation? What to make of the relationship between Australia, America and Billy Graham? Does the accusation of Americanisation hold water? In Meanjin’s 1966–1967 ‘Godzone’ series, foreign affairs analyst Bruce Miller had contributed a piece on ‘Other Places’, offering three rejoinders to the prophets of a conspiratorial cultural imperialism. First, most complaints about America were really more ‘complaints about the twentieth century’. Modernity destabilised local identity, and it found its bogey in the United States. Second, critics often only regarded ‘the dark side of American society as typically American’, and neglected not only its history of liberty, plurality and democracy, but Americans’ disarming frankness about their own shortcomings – a point Graham’s sermons had repeatedly affirmed. Third, American influences need not be seen as entirely one-way or bilateral, but rather as tokens of a new ‘common English-speaking culture’. While America might be the biggest fish, ‘eating away at us,’ he wrote, ‘we, together with the British and others will be eating away at them. I think the result will be good.’ Indeed, the proverbial Robinson Crusoe could ‘console himself with the thoughts that the men in the boats are not cannibals or pirates, but people in situations something like his own’.151 In many ways, Miller’s assessment – which has been echoed in more recent appraisals of Americanisation and globalisation – could have characterised

100 America the way Billy Graham approached Australia.152 In the first place, the technology and organisational methods of the crusades were not especially American any more than the automobile was intrinsically American.153 Indeed, the military-like planning of the Sydney crusade was most due to the work of Assistant Director Fred Nile, drawing on his experience as an officer in the Citizens’ Military Force (which he had joined out of a strong attachment to Australia’s First World War Anzac legend).154 Second, Graham pointed to the dark side of American society as indicative of America’s present spiritual wandering, but not typical of its essential character as a nation in covenant with God. Third, while in Graham’s preaching the United States was still the locus of influence and a barometer of Australia’s own future, it was increasingly less a foreign hegemon. Rather, it was a dominant – though not indomitable – centre in a growing global English-speaking mass culture, in which ‘the most evangelical city in the world’ and its continent were, in small ways, ‘eating away’ at American influence. As Glen O’Brien has noted of the experience of American Wesleyan-Holiness churches in Australia since the Second World War, a genuine trans-Pacific evangelical partnership existed, even if the United States played a more significant role.155 Several examples of a more nuanced web of cultural influence stand out. The 1969 Melbourne crusade’s final meeting was broadcast back to an estimated prime-time television audience of 50 million Americans and Canadians, one of only three Graham crusades televised in North America that year.156 The publication in 1970 of the official souvenir book Crusading Down Under was the first time the BGEA had commissioned local writers, ‘a particular distinction’.157 The 100,000 copies printed were used as promotional give-aways for another North American television crusade.158 The Kinsfolk, the three adult sons and one daughter of Canon Alan Begbie, the Anglican chaplain-general of the Australian Military Forces, so impressed Billy Graham in their performances at the Sydney crusade that they were hired to accompany him touring New Zealand, Britain and the United States.159 Australian evangelicals were also more likely to hear visiting British evangelicals than Americans in the late 1960s. The influences on Australian evangelicals were also not exclusively, or even mainly, American. A survey of visiting preachers to St Andrew’s Cathedral in Sydney in the six months following the March 1969 crusade reveals a steady stream of British luminaries: John Stott, Dick Lucas, Maurice Wood and J.I. Packer.160 Perhaps most significantly, the very diversity of the Graham team testified to a broader English-speaking evangelical culture: of the seven evangelists who visited Australia, only three were American, with three Canadians and an Indian.161 The success with which one Canadian, the black former baseball player Ralph Bell, preached to Aboriginal people in the Northern Territory seemed to highlight the way in which North American influence was not monolithic. Still three miles out from his destination, Hermannsburg mission, Bell’s car was surrounded by Aboriginal children crying, ‘Negro! Negro!’, ‘[o]ur brother, our brother has come’. It was the warmest welcome

America

101

to a visitor that the white missionaries had ever witnessed.162 By contrast, the reception one University of Western Australia student afforded Leighton Ford – a placard reading ‘Go Home Yank’ – suggests the confused nature of much anti-American sentiment in Australia: Ford was a Canadian.163 Excepting the excesses of the Elmer Gantry form of revivalism which prospered in early-twentieth-century America, historic evangelical revivalism has generally been concerned with the large-scale, strategically planned

Figure 3.2 An irony of critiques of Billy Graham as an American was that they were often blind to the other means by which they had been shaped by American culture. Source: Australian Christian Endeavourer, April 1974. © Australian Christian Endeavour Union. Used with permission.

102 America preaching of the gospel for personal conversion and, in turn, social transformation. Like ‘Americanisation’, it has rarely emerged as an organic upswell of independent effort. Rather, since Englishman George Whitefield crossed the Atlantic and helped spread the First Great Awakening in North America, through the influence of the corporate confession and crucicentric preaching of the East Africa Revival on Aboriginal revival at Elcho Island in 1979, evangelical revivalism has always been transnational, seeing ideas, methods and personalities interpreted differently within local settings.164 David Bebbington has dissected the myopic historiographical association between revivalism and America – in the words of one historian, that religious revivals are ‘as American as baseball, blues, and the stars and stripes’ – reminding us that the phenomenon of revivalism ‘needs to be seen not as a national distinctive but in a broad global context’.165 Just as Paul Giles has shown how American and Australasian literatures have been deeply interconnected over the past 200 years, so the intellectual history of evangelicalism needs to be re-envisaged as a more multi-directional cultural story.166 As with modernity, the global, universalising claims of the evangelical message have been locally dislocating for some and empowering for others. There is some irony in the fact that Graham’s ministry, particularly through international evangelical congresses such as Berlin 1966 and Lausanne 1974, helped bring about the dethronement of North Atlantic evangelical hegemony (a theme explored further in Chapter 6). Graham’s global status and the ‘pan-evangelical pragmatism’ he fostered helped to decouple the movement from its particular (North Atlantic) national identities, while at the same time creating space for new flowerings of revival within previously marginal (Southern) national settings.167 Perhaps some apprehensions about the influence of the globe-trotting evangelist on Christianity in Australia had more to do with anxieties about the impact of such globalisation on Australia’s own cultural and spiritual moorings than a genuine belief in the dominance of American culture. Indeed, the muted nature of complaints of Americanisation at the time of Graham’s 1968–1969 crusades reflected Donald Horne’s observation a year later, that ‘Australians cannot repeat many of the criticisms that other nations make of the Americans, because some of them are criticisms these nations would also make of Australia’.168 Robinson Crusoe may have been seeing not his antithesis, but his likeness.

Conclusion In the mid-late 1960s, with ebbing cultural authority and signs of declining numbers, Australian evangelicals certainly had hopes for revival and saw Graham as the man for the moment. Memories of 1959 loomed large. But they viewed him not so much as an American export than as a symbol of ascendant, culturally respectable global evangelicalism. In one sense, he was bigger than his nationality. When faced with questions about America’s domestic and foreign policy crises, Graham did not shy away from America’s

America

103

failures. On the contrary, he made much of them to illustrate the need for national and personal repentance, the return of Christ daily more imminent. The irony of the criticism he met, over his ‘big business’ methods, America’s moral hypocrisy and his silence on Vietnam was that Graham was invariably contrasted against other Americans. From Elmer Gantry to Martin Luther King Jr., Australians had widely varying ideas of what a typical American preacher – for good or ill – ought to be like, pointing to the fickle and often contradictory nature of national stereotypes. The 1968–1969 crusades’ relative lack of success in staying the tide of deChristianisation cannot solely be put down to Graham’s Americanness, as though some comparable alternative was being suggested by Australians and thwarted by his presence. If anything, Graham’s crusades helped evangelicals think harder about their place in the nation and the region, not so much precipitating a ‘reorientation of thinking’, as the official account claimed, but adding impetus to one already underway.169 Just as the argument that Australia went from British colony to American satellite neglects Australia’s considerable agency and clear sense of national interest in Cold War foreign policy, so the claim that Australian evangelicals traded British intellectualism for American revivalism fails to account for the local autonomy and transnational interdependence of postwar evangelicalism.170 Indeed, given evangelical epistemology’s emphasis on independent personal judgement, and its activist entrepreneurialism in evangelism, we should expect diversity in expressions of faith and mission between national contexts. If the second coming of Billy Graham did not represent the sort of deferential bow to cultural imperialism that some assert, the evangelist ought not to be rendered culturally neutral, a nowhere man. For all his protestations of being a humble preacher of a universal message and not an agent of American interests, and for all the claims of Australian evangelicals that ‘the messenger is not important, the message itself is’, Graham returned Down Under very much as an American at a time when Australian popular and political attitudes to the United States were being contested.171 Graham may have called his listeners to come to Jesus enacting the words of the usual appeal hymn ‘Just As I Am’, but the evangelist never came just as he was. The message and the messenger could not be disentangled. Therein lies the critical significance of the Graham crusades, situating Australian evangelicalism after Christendom within its wider contexts: global and local, political and cultural. Evangelicals were engaged in such contexts in complex ways. As the following chapter attests, this complexity had as much to do with the legacies of the past as it did with the anxieties and opportunities of the future.

Notes 1 Humphrey McQueen, Gallipoli to Petrov: Arguing with Australian History (1984), quoted in David McLean, ‘From British Colony to American Satellite? Australia and the USA during the Cold War’, Australian Journal of Politics and History 52, no. 1 (2006), p. 67. For other examples of this ‘thwarted nationalism’ thesis, see Don Watson, ‘Rabbit Syndrome: Australia and America’,

104 America

2 3

4 5 6 7

8

9 10 11 12 13 14 15

Quarterly Essay, no. 4 (2001), pp. 54–6; Stephen Alomes, ‘Who Largely Makes This Case within the Realm of Popular Culture’, in A Nation at Last? The Changing Character of Australian Nationalism, 1880–1988 (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1988); and, focussing on high culture, Geoffrey Serle, From Deserts the Prophets Come: The Creative Spirit in Australia 1788–1972 (Melbourne: Heinemann, 1973). Robert Macklin, Kevin Rudd: The Biography (Camberwell, Vic.: Viking, 2008), p. 150. For example, Maddox, God Under Howard; Rob Irvine, Ian Kerridge and Paul Komesaroff, ‘Bioethics in Australia: On Politics, Power and the Rise of the Christian Right’, in Catherine Myser (ed.), Bioethics around the Globe (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), pp. 245–68. Neville Buch, ‘American Influence on Queensland Protestantism since World War II’, PhD Thesis, The University of Queensland, 2007, p. 359. Phillip Adams, ‘Backstage at the Second Coming’, Australian, 25 November 1967. Geraldine Doogue, ‘The Sum of a Preacher Man: Billy Graham’s Pretty Faith Was Not Enough’, Australian, 28 February 2009. The standard work, Roger and Phillip Bell (eds.), Americanization and Australia (Sydney: UNSW Press, 1998), gives no attention to religion. The few studies that have done so include Piggin, ‘The American and British Contributions to Evangelicalism in Australia’, pp. 290–309; and Glen O’Brien, ‘Anti-Americanism and the Wesleyan-Holiness Churches in Australia’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History 61 (March 2010), pp. 314–43. Along with Graham’s own autobiography and the numerous popular portraits, the definitive scholarly works are: Martin, A Prophet with Honor; Grant Wacker, America’s Pastor: Billy Graham and the Shaping of a Nation (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2014); Andrew Finstuen, Anne Blue Wills, and Grant Wacker (eds.), Billy Graham: American Pilgrim (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017). The few studies on Graham’s reception abroad include: Alana Harris and Martin Spence, ‘“Disturbing the Complacency of Religion”? The Evangelical Crusades of Dr Billy Graham and Father Patrick Peyton in Britain, 1951–54’, Twentieth Century British History 18 (December 2007), pp. 481– 513; Nathan Showalter and Yichao Tu, ‘Billy Graham, American Evangelicals, and Sino-American Relations’, Missiology: An International Review 38 (October 2010), pp.  444–59; Uta Balbier, ‘“Billy Graham’s Cold War Crusades”: Rechristianization, Secularization, and the Spiritual Creation of the Free World in the 1950s’, in David Hempton and Hugh McLeod (eds.), Secularization and Religious Innovation in the North Atlantic World (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017), pp. 234–52. Howard Guinness, I Object . . . to Billy Graham (Sydney: Ambassador Press, 1959), pp. 2–3, BGCA, CN 19: BGEA: Papers of Robert O. Ferm, Box 5, Folder 47. Stuart Barton Babbage, Memoirs of a Loose Canon (Canberra: Acorn Press, 2004), p. 119. Piggin, ‘The American and British Contributions to Evangelicalism in Australia’, p. 299. Billy Graham, response to welcome of Sir Edmund Herring at first meeting of Melbourne Crusade, 15 February 1959, BGCA CN 26, Tape T577. Edmund Herring, remarks welcoming Billy Graham at the first meeting of Melbourne Crusade, 15 February 1959, BGCA CN 26, Tape T577. Daily Telegraph (Sydney), 1 June 1959, cited in Frank Crowley, Modern Australia in Documents, Volume 2: 1939–1970 (Melbourne: Wren Publishing, 1973), p. 378. Judith Smart, ‘The Evangelist as Star: The Billy Graham Crusade in Australia, 1959’, Journal of Popular Culture 33 (1999), pp. 165–75.

America 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25

26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35

36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43

105

Piggin, Spirit, Word and World, p. 168. Martin, A Prophet with Honor, pp. 254–5. Warwick Olson, interview with the author, 24 October 2012. Douglas Rose, ‘Has Billy (He’ll Be in Town Today) Still Got the Old Touch?’, Courier-Mail, 4 April 1968. Martin, A Prophet with Honor, pp. 348–9, and chapter 19. Marcus Loane, Decade of Decision: The Archbishop of Sydney Writes about Billy Graham  .  .  . the Man and the Message (Sydney: Diocese of Sydney, 1966), p. 21. Loane, Decade of Decision, p. 21. Alan Nichols and Warwick Olson, Crusading Down Under: The Story of the Billy Graham Crusades in Australia and New Zealand (Minneapolis, MN: World Wide Publications, 1970), p. 34. ‘The Debate over Billy Graham’, Sydney Morning Herald, 1 July 1967. Reginald Jarrott, ‘Australasia’, in Carl F.H. Henry and W. Stanley Mooneyham (eds.), One Race, One Gospel, One Task: World Congress on Evangelism, Berlin 1966: Official Reference Volumes: Papers and Reports, 2 vols. (Minneapolis, MN: World Wide Publications, 1967), pp. 236, 238. Rick Perlstein, Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America (New York: Scribner, 2008), p. 6. Perlstein, Nixonland, pp. 9–11. Jeremi Suri, ‘The Rise and Fall of an International Counterculture, 1960–1975’, American Historical Review 114 (February 2009), pp. 45–68. Carl Henry, ‘Editorial: Has America Passed Her Peak?’, Christianity Today, 1 March 1968, pp. 28–9. For other examples, see Axel Schafer (ed.), American Evangelicals and the 1960s (Madison, Wisc.: The University of Wisconsin Press, 2013). Andrew Preston, ‘Evangelical Internationalism: A Conservative Worldview for the Age of Globalization’, in Gifford and Williams (eds.), The Right Side of the Sixties, p. 223. Graham to Nicklin, 31 July 1967, in BGCA CN 245, Box 4, Folder 12, ‘Correspondence: Warkentin, Martha; 1967–1968’. Billy Graham, ‘Turning Point of the Nation’, Hour of Decision Radio Broadcast, 17 March 1968, The Billy Graham Audio Archives, , accessed 16 May 2018. Robert Bellah, ‘Civil Religion in America’, Daedalus 96 (1967), pp. 1–21. ‘We’re Tops, Says Johnson’, Sun, 25 September 1967, p. 5. Cf. James Curran, ‘Beyond the Euphoria: Lyndon Johnson in Australia and the Politics of the Cold War Alliance’, Journal of Cold War Studies 17 (2015), pp. 64–96. For Gorton’s manner, see Maximilian Walsh, ‘You Ain’t Seen Nothing Yet’, Quadrant, November–December 1968, p. 23; Donald Horne, ‘John the Bold or Gorton the Unready’, Bulletin, 20 January 1968, p. 22; Donald Horne, ‘The New Nationalism?’. Curran and Ward, The Unknown Nation, pp. 154–60. Billy Graham, ‘Signs of Christ’s Return’, Hour of Decision Radio Broadcast, Sydney, Australia, 21 April 1968, The Billy Graham Audio Archives, , accessed 13 May 2018. Cf. Mark Amstutz, Evangelicals and American Foreign Policy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), pp. 2–7. ‘Huge Roll-Up Likely: Last Day of Crusade’, Sun-Herald (Sydney), 28 April 1968. ‘Final Sydney Crusade’, Sun-Herald, 6 April 1968. Nichols and Olson, Crusading Down Under, p. 21. Nichols and Olson, Crusading Down Under, p. 1. On this interplay, see Preston, ‘Evangelical Internationalism’, pp.  221–3; Angela Lahr, Millennial Dreams and Apocalyptic Nightmares: The Cold War

106 America

44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69

Origins of Political Evangelicalism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), pp. 14–7. ‘Editorial: We’re Backing God’, Southern Cross, April 1968, p. 2. Geoffrey Serle, ‘Godzone 6: Austerica Unlimited?’, Meanjin Quarterly 26 (September 1967), p. 240. Robin Boyd coined the term ‘Austerica’ in his book The Australian Ugliness (Melbourne: FW Cheshire, 1960). Richard White, ‘A Backwater Awash: The Australian Experience of Americanisation’, Theory, Culture and Society 1 (1983), p. 108. Geoffrey Blainey, ‘Godzone 7: The New Australia: A Legend of the Lake’, Meanjin Quarterly, 26 (December 1967), p. 365. Billy Graham, Press Conference, Sydney, 1 April 1968, in BGCA Collection 24: Billy Graham Press Conferences, Series B, Tape 16, ‘Sydney. Australia. Ca. April 1, 1968’. ‘Book about Billy Graham: Exploratory Memo from John Pollock’, n.d., BGCA CN 245, Box 2, Folder 2: ‘Correspondence: Turner, Dorothy – Pollock, John; 1964–1966’. BGEA, ‘World Wide Pictures: Shadow of the Boomerang’, online at Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, , accessed 11 May 2018. Billy Graham, Press Conference, Sydney, 29 April 1968, in BGCA CN 24, Series B, Tape 14, ‘Sydney Australia, April 28, 1968’. On the record figures at the 1959 crusades, see Piggin, Spirit, Word and World, p.  168. On British Anglicans and the 1966 London crusade, see Martin, A Prophet with Honor, p. 320. Alan Nichols, ‘Australia Crusade Begins’, Christianity Today, 12 April 1968, p. 42. Alan Nichols, ‘The Cross Over Sydney’, Christianity Today, 24 May 1968, p. 44. Olson, interview with the author. Marcus Loane, Interview with Lois Ferm, 29 May 1982, transcript p.  5, in BGCA CN 141, Box 13, Folder 28, ‘Loane, #468, 1982’. Douglas Rose, ‘Anglican Call to Support Graham’, Courier-Mail, 16 March 1968. Martin, A Prophet with Honor, chapters 13 and 15. ‘Billy Beaten by Sin’, Australian, 3 July 1967. Cf. John Pollock, Crusade ’66: Britain Hears Billy Graham (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1966), p. 81. ‘Billy Ticks off Britain: Bingo, Minis Anger Evangelist’, Daily Mirror (London), 28 June 1967. ‘Billy Beaten by Sin’. Billy Graham, Press Conference, Sydney, 1 April 1968, quoted in Nichols and Olson, Crusading Down Under, p. 34. ‘Editorial’, Melbourne Herald, 22 March 1969. On this image, which was both the reality of his upbringing, and the persona he continued to publicly craft, see Seth Dowland, ‘Billy Graham’s New Evangelical Manhood’, in Finstuen, Wacker, and Wills (eds.), Billy Graham, pp. 216–31. Marshall Frady, Billy Graham: A Parable of American Righteousness (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1979), p. 329. Billy Graham, ‘Personal Discipline’, Hour of Decision Radio Broadcast, Sydney, Australia, 28 April 1968, The Billy Graham Audio Archives, , accessed 13 May 2018. ‘Mr Graham Meets the Press’, New Life, 23 March 1969. Laura Gifford and Daniel Williams, ‘Introduction: What Happened to Conservatism in the 1960s?’, in Gifford and Williams (eds.), The Right Side of the Sixties, pp. 1–18. Martin, A Prophet With Honor, p. 383; Wacker, America’s Pastor, chapter 2. Cf. Andrew Finstuen, Original Sin and Everyday Protestants: The Theology of Reinhold Niebuhr, Billy Graham, and Paul Tillich in an Age of Anxiety (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2009).

America

107

70 Billy Graham, ‘Remarks at Civic Reception, Sydney, April 1968’, quoted in Nichols and Olson, Crusading Down Under, p. 39. 71 Martin, A Prophet with Honor, p. 321. 72 Billy Graham, Press Conference, Sydney, 28 April 1968, in BGCA CN 24, Series B: Audio Recordings, T14, ‘Sydney Australia, April 28, 1968’. 73 James Cunningham, ‘Dr Billy Graham Comes Striding in’, Sydney Morning Herald, 2 April 1968. 74 Ben Davie, ‘The Drive Behind Billy Graham’, Sun, 9 April 1968, p. 13. 75 Graham Williams, ‘Vietnam War the Beginning of the End, Says Billy Graham’, Australian, 2 April 1968; Anne Maston, ‘Crusader’s Plea to Churches’, Sun, 2 April 1968; Helen Frizell, ‘Billy Says We’re Number Two’, Sydney Morning Herald, 2 April 1968. 76 Walter Smyth, quoted in Davie, ‘The Drive Behind Billy Graham’, p. 13. 77 Douglas Rose, ‘For 45 Minutes, 35,000 Sat Rapt’, Courier-Mail, 6 April 1968, p. 3. 78 Smart, ‘The Evangelist as Star’; Williams, ‘Vietnam War the Beginning of the End’. 79 ‘Preacher with a Star’s Charm,’ Sunday Mail, 7 April 1968. 80 ‘Editorial: Special Easter Heresy Issue’, Honi Soit 41 (5 April 1968), p. 1. 81 D.R. Huxley, ‘Letters to the Editor: “Only Built-in Obsolescence”’, Australian, 29 March 1968. 82 Phillip Adams, ‘Giving Religion the Diners’ Club Touch’, Australian, 3 April 1969. 83 Adams, ‘Giving Religion the Diners’ Club Touch’. 84 Brad Mulligan, ‘Billy Graham talking’, Australian, 24 March 1969. 85 ‘Evangelists as “Obstetricians”’, Advertiser (Adelaide), 29 March 1968. 86 ‘Crusade Described as “Unqualified Success”’, Courier (Canberra), 20 March 1969. 87 Elesha Coffman, ‘“You Cannot Fool the Electronic Eye”: Billy Graham and Media’, in Finstuen, Wacker and Wills (eds.), Billy Graham, p. 207. 88 Olson, interview with the author. 89 Alan Nichols, interview with the author, 16 January 2013. 90 Len Tyler, ‘Letters to the Editor: Billy Graham’, Newcastle Morning Herald, 13 April 1968. 91 Arthur Nevill, ‘Letter to the Editor: Why Is America So wicked?’, Age, 15 March 1969, p. 10. 92 Jean Garner, ‘Letters to the Editor: Graham Was invited Here, “Get Your Facts Right”’, Melbourne Herald, 12 March 1969, p. 11. 93 J.E. Brooks, ‘Letters to the Editor: Graham Was Invited Here, “Get Your Facts Right”’, Melbourne Herald, 12 March 1969, p. 11. Emphasis original. 94 Gary Smitham, ‘Letters to the Editor: Graham Was Invited Here, “Get Your Facts Right”’, Melbourne Herald, 12 March 1969, p. 11. 95 Lance Shilton, ‘Why Do We Need Billy Graham?’, Advertiser, 22 March 1969. 96 ‘Graham Crusade Drew 35,000’, Queensland Times, 6 April 1968. 97 Graham Williams, ‘We Live Like Devils, Says Graham’, Australian, 6 April 1968. 98 ‘Graham Crusade Drew 35,000’. 99 Graham, ‘Signs of Christ’s Return’. 100 Rose, ‘Has Billy (He’ll Be in Town Today) Still Got the Old Touch?’. 101 Graham, ‘Personal Discipline’. 102 Andrew Murphy, Prodigal Nation, chapter 1. 103 Nancy Christie and Michael Gauvreau, ‘Introduction: “Even the Hippies Were Only Very Slowly Going Secular”: Dechristianization and the Culture of Individualism in North America and Western Europe’, in Christie and Gauvreau (eds.), The Sixties and Beyond, p. 8. 104 Grant Wacker, ‘Introduction’, in Finstuen, Wacker, and Wills (eds.), Billy Graham, p. 4. 105 Billy Graham, Press Conference, Sydney, 1 April 1968, quoted in Nichols and Olson, Crusading Down Under, p. 34.

108 America 106 Claude Tillett, ‘Letters to the Editor: Billy Graham and Vietnam’, S.A. Farmer (Adelaide), 8 November 1967. 107 Dean Mullan, ‘Letters to the Editor’, Advertiser, 3 April 1968. 108 Frizell, ‘Billy Says We’re Number Two’. 109 R.K. Hornabrook, ‘Letters to the Editor: Dr Billy Graham and Vietnam’, Age, 17 April 1968. 110 Alan Walker, quoted in ‘Billy Graham’s Opening Night Heavily Booked’, SunHerald, 25 February 1968. 111 Hornabrook, ‘Letters to the Editor’. 112 For example, Dorothy McMahon, ‘Letters to the Editor: Billy Graham and Vietnam’, Australian, 11 September 1967. 113 Helen Hill, ‘Letters to the Editor: Bring Out Dr King!’, Australian, 13 September 1967. 114 ‘News stuns Dr Graham’, Advertiser, 6 April 1968. 115 On Graham and King as ‘the antipodal prophets of that continuing duality in the American nature between the Plymouth asperities and the readiness for spiritual adventure, between the authoritarian and the visionary’, see Frady, Billy Graham, pp. 412–3. 116 Douglas Brass, ‘The Peace-Making That Passeth Understanding’, Australian, 10 April 1968. 117 For examples of protests over Vietnam at Graham’s London crusade in 1966, and his Knoxville (Tennessee) crusade in 1970, see Martin, A Prophet with Honor, pp. 322, 368. On the delayed intensity of Australian Vietnam protests, see Ann Curthoys, ‘The Anti-War Movements’, in Jeffrey Grey and Jeff Doyle (eds.), Vietnam: War, Myth and Memory (St Leonards, NSW: Allen & Unwin, 1992), pp. 90–104. 118 ‘Jeers, Boos: Graham Crusade’, Sun, 15 March 1969, p. 2. 119 ‘Jeers, Boos: Graham Crusade’. 120 ‘Leaflets Thrown during Crusade’, Age, 22 March 1969. The two other groups, according to the Courier-Mail (‘40 arrested’, 22 March 1969), were the Secondary Students for Democratic Action and Students in Dissent. 121 ‘Billy Graham’s “a Nazi”’, Truth (Melbourne), 19 April 1969. 122 ‘Youth Responds to Graham Crusade’, Courier-Mail, 10 April 1968. 123 For Sydney crusade statistics, see ‘Final Statistical Report, Billy Graham Crusade Sydney 1968’, in BGCA CN 245, Box 20, Folder 2, ‘Procedure Book – Vol. 3; 1968’. For Graham’s prediction, see Press Conference, Sydney, 1 April. 124 New Life, 3 April 1969, p. 5. 125 ‘1200 Decisions Registered Nightly at 10-Day Crusade in Pittsburgh’, Challenge (NZ), 28 September 1968, p. 7. 126 Michael Norman, ‘Letter to the Editor’, Age, 15 March 1969, p. 10. 127 A.J. Dain, Interview with Lois Ferm, 1 December 1971, transcript p. 8, in BGCA CN 141, Box 3, Folder 12, ‘Dain, #52, 1971’. 128 Douglas Mill, Interview with Robert Ferm, July 1974, transcript p. 3, in BGCA CN 141, Box 11, Folder 34, ‘Mill, #142, 1974’. 129 Ramon Williams, ‘News Release: “Billy Graham Crusade 79” Launched in Sydney’, October 1977, in BGCA CN 245, Box 27, Folder 6, ‘Correspondence and Printed Material: Billy Graham Sydney Crusade – Launching Rally; 1977’. 130 Neville Cush, Interview with Robert Ferm, 18 July 1974, transcript p.  7, in BGCA CN 141, Box 3, Folder 10, ‘Cush, #50, 1974’. 131 P.H. Butler, ‘Letters to the Editor: Attendances at W.A. Crusades’, West Australian, 6 April 1968. 132 D.M. Stuart, ‘Letters to the Editor: Crusade Attendance’, Australian, 10 April 1968. 133 Marcus Loane, ‘The Cross over Sydney’, Christianity Today, 24 May 1968, p. 44. 134 Graham Williams, ‘Challenge to the Church’, Australian, 15 April 1968, p. 7.

America

109

135 Graham Williams, Australian, 17–23 February 1965, cited in Hilliard, ‘The Religious Crisis of the 1960s’, pp. 213–4. 136 E.g. Letters to the Editor in the Canberra Times between 14 and 24 March 1969. 137 Chase R. Kuhn, The Ecclesiology of Donald Robinson and D. Broughton Knox: Exposition, Analysis, and Theological Evaluation (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2017). 138 John Reid, et al., Move in for Action: Report of the Commission on Evangelism of the Church of England Diocese of Sydney (Sydney: ANZEA Publishers, 1971), pp. 107–10. 139 Geoffrey Fletcher, Interview with Robert Ferm, 18 July 1974, transcript, p. 2, in BGCA CN 141, Box 3, Folder 42, ‘Fletcher, #75, 1974’. 140 Reid, et al., Move in for Action, pp. 115–26. 141 Alan Nichols, The Communicators: Mass Media and the Australian Church (Sydney: Pilgrim Productions, 1972), pp. 64, 77. Television was voted the most believable medium by 63 per cent of respondents, followed by radio (15 per cent), newspapers (9 per cent) and magazines (3 per cent). 142 Reid, et al., Move in for Action, p. 110. 143 Dudley Foord, ‘Face to Face with Asia: New Strategy Need’, Australian Church Record, 1 May 1969, pp. 1–2. 144 Fred Nile, ‘Youth Crusade’, Australian Christian Endeavourer, May 1968, p. 8. 145 Nichols and Olson, Crusading Down Under, p. 52. 146 ‘Huge Roll-Up Likely: Last Day of Crusade’, Sun-Herald, 28 April 1968. 147 For this budgeted figure, see Stan Mooneyham to Jack Dain, 17 April 1968, in BGCA CN 245, Box 2, Folder 23, ‘Correspondence: Asia South Pacific Congress on Evangelism – Singapore; 1968’. 148 John Court, Singapore Congress: A Layman’s View (Adelaide: Holy Trinity Publishing Society, 1969), p. 2. 149 Kevin Crawford, Interview with Lois Ferm, July 1974, in BGCA CN 141, Box 3, Folder 7, ‘Crawford, #48, 1974’. 150 Australian National Group Report, quoted in Lance Shilton, First-Hand Singapore Report (Adelaide: Holy Trinity Publishing Society, 1969), p. 7. 151 J.D.B. Miller, ‘Godzone 5: Other Places’, Meanjin Quarterly 26 (June 1967), pp. 121–5. 152 For a good overview of the literature on Americanisation, and the complexities of terms like ‘cultural imperialism’, ‘anti-Americanism’ and ‘Americanisation’, see Neil Campbell, Jude Davies and George McKay, ‘Introduction: Issues in Americanisation and Culture’, in their edited volume Issues in Americanisation and Culture, pp. 1–38. For an overview of similar issues in an Australian setting, see Philip Bell and Roger Bell, ‘Introduction: The Dilemmas of “Americanisation”’, in their edited volume Americanization and Australia, pp. 1–14. On Americanisation, globalisation and evangelicalism, see Mark Hutchinson and Ogbu Kalu (eds.), A Global Faith: Essays on Evangelicalism and Globalization (Sydney: Centre for the Study of Australian Christianity, 1998). 153 Though see Graeme Davison’s reflections in ‘Driving to Austerica: The Americanisation of the Postwar Australian City’, in Approaching Australia: Papers from the Harvard Australian Studies Symposium (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998), pp. 159–83. 154 Nile, ‘I used my army officer’s training to conduct the crusade as a battle for God.’ Fred Nile, p. 74. 155 O’Brien, ‘Anti-Americanism and the Wesleyan-Holiness Churches in Australia’, pp. 314–43. Cf. Glen O’Brien, Wesleyan-Holiness Churches in Australia: Hallelujah under the Southern Cross (Abingdon: Routledge, 2018), Chapter 6. 156 Nichols and Olson, Crusading Down Under, p. 24. 157 Stuart Sayers, ‘Writing as Ripe as a Nut’, Age, 11 July 1970.

110 America 158 Alan Nichols, conversation with the author, 16 January 2013. 159 ‘Singing Family to Tour with Billy Graham’, Sydney Morning Herald, 24 March 1969, p. 57. 160 Southern Cross, March–August 1969. 161 The Americans were Graham, Adams and Wilson; the Canadians were Ford, Bell and White; and the Indian was Abdul Akbar-Haqq. 162 Alan Nichols and Gerald Muston, ‘Space Age to Stone Age’, Decision, Australian edition, August 1969, p. 12. 163 ‘Leighton Ford Heckled at Uni’, Daily News (Perth), 27 March 1968. Ford’s nationality was misjudged on more than one occasion in his career. See, for example, Norman Rohrer, Leighton Ford: A Life Surprised (Wheaton, IL: Tyndale House, 1981), p. 139. 164 On first generation trans-Atlantic evangelicalism, see Richard Carwardine, Transatlantic Revivalism: Popular Evangelicalism in Britain and America, 1795–1865 (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1978). On the links between the East African Revival and Aboriginal revivals, especially that at Elcho Island in early 1979, see Colin Reed, Walking in the Light: Reflections on the East African Revival and Its Link to Australia (Brunswick East, Vic.: Acorn Press, 2007), chapter 11. 165 David Bebbington, Victorian Religious Revivals: Culture and Piety in Local and Global Contexts (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), pp. 39–42. 166 Paul Giles, Antipodean America: Australasia and the Constitution of US Literature (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014). 167 Mark Hutchinson and John Wolffe, A Short History of Global Evangelicalism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), pp. 183–9. 168 Horne, The Next Australia, p. 184. 169 Nichols and Olson, Crusading Down Under, p. 52. 170 For a persuasive refutation of this ‘thwarted nationalism’ argument in Australian Cold War foreign policy, see McLean, ‘From British Colony to American Satellite?’, pp. 64–79. 171 Shilton, ‘Why Do We Need Billy Graham?’.

4

Empire Marcus Loane, Britishness and the Cook Bicentenary, 1970

‘Special bonds’ Queen Elizabeth II arrived in Sydney in April 1970 to celebrate 200 years since Captain James Cook raised the Union Jack on the shore of Botany Bay, and to recognise an Australia ‘come of age’. Speaking to the hundreds of clergy and laity in the Anglican Diocese of Sydney’s Synod, Marcus Loane, its first Australian-born archbishop, sought a lodestone appropriate to the significance of the royal visit and the climate of new nationalism in which it was being marked. Yet seemingly at odds with the time, Loane found his bearings in the ‘prescient utterance’ of a British Prime Minister spoken almost 90 years before. ‘“I claim that this is a country which has established itself as a nation”, said Lord Rosebery of Australia in 1884, “and that its nationality is now and will be henceforward recognised by the world”’. Loane quickly pointed out that this benediction was given before all the standard hallmarks of independent ‘nationhood’ had been achieved. It was ‘almost twenty years before Federation took place; it was during the long colonial tutelage of the several States of Australia; it was before Australian participation in the Sudan Campaign or the Boer War, much less in two World Wars’.1 The Archbishop’s point was clear enough: British loyalty and Australian independence were not chronologically competing ideals but complementary continuities. Loane went on to quote Rosebery’s response to those contemplating republicanism: ‘There is a further question; does this fact of your being a nation imply separation from the Empire? God forbid! There is no need for any nation, however great, leaving the Empire, because the Empire is a Commonwealth of Nations.’ And in 1931, by the Statute of Westminster, Loane concluded: Lord Rosebery’s vision was formulated into the law which still unites Australia and other members of the Commonwealth with Great Britain. And it is the person of the Queen as the crowned head of Great Britain and her dominions that lends strength and stability to this ideal for the voluntary association of countries and nations.2

112

Empire

In a period of the supposed flourishing of post-colonial Australian ‘new nationalism’, what prompted Loane to quote a Scottish peer’s benediction for an independent Australia, vitally enmeshed in a voluntary Commonwealth, and loyal to the person of the Queen?3 He could have called on any number of Australian Prime Ministers from left and right, who, contrary to the radical nationalist interpretation of a persistent thirst for independence, were ardent ‘British race patriots’.4 Loane chose Rosebery’s words of affinity because he was faced with the rapid collapse of British liberal imperialism as a binding myth of Australian identity. He was looking back to a period in the late nineteenth century that saw both the flowering of Australian nationalism and the height of the idea of ‘Greater Britain’ in order to articulate just what it was that made membership of the Commonwealth and loyalty to Britain so vital to Australia’s identity and prosperity. This sense of the past did not, however, blind him to the realities of the future. ‘The far-flung Empire on which the sun never set has contracted its frontiers and refashioned its character,’ he conceded in that synod address. Elsewhere he urged a determined humanitarian, economic, and missionary engagement with Asia, calling Australians to ‘wake up and grow up’, the post-imperial world affording ‘no room for the selfish, idle, drifting spirit which was the mark of our long colonial tutelage’.5 Even so, Loane was eager to affirm ‘the special bonds of kinship, and culture, and inheritance’ which bound together legatees of the British World – especially Australia, Canada and New Zealand – in loyalty to the Crown.6 He believed that Britishness remained a potent source of cultural and spiritual identity after it no longer provided the material environment in which that identity had been cradled. Or, to use another infant metaphor, that the cultural baby ought not be discarded with the political bathwater. Britain’s wholesale retreat from empire in the 1960s, particularly its withdrawal of troops from East of Suez; its devaluation of the pound; and – most surprising for Australians – its bid for membership in the European Economic Community; brought to an end one of the most dominant myths of Australian identity: Britishness.7 The ensuing search for a non-imperial national identity – in the parlance of the day, a ‘new nationalism’ – was not a simple flourishing of authentic Australian-ness, but rather a complex, confused and ostensibly ongoing odyssey.8 Australians, like other white Britons in Canada and New Zealand, were cut loose from the British embrace and struggled to fill the symbolic vacuum it had left behind.9 As the Australian’s inaugural editorial in 1964 reflected, ‘the burning desire of Mother to leave us to our own affairs was a shock’, ‘a salutary shock’ which ‘helped to make us understand that now, as never before in our short history, we stand alone’.10 For Australians, that aloneness was most palpably felt when looking to Asia. As Prime Minister Robert Menzies had said months before the Second World War, ‘what Great Britain calls the Far East is to us the near north’.11 Australians had doubly situated themselves within a community of culture centred on Northern Europe and a community of interest focused on Southeast Asia.12 The dissolution of the cultural bonds of Greater Britain

Empire

113

brought the unfamiliarity of Asia into sharp relief. It is this crisis precipitated during the 1960s by the realisation that, in the words of one editorial on the Cook Bicentenary, ‘human affairs are shaped by geography as well as history’, which set the scene for Marcus Loane’s response to the end of Christendom in Australia.13

‘A slavish attachment to the past’?: Loane and the value of memory As a prism through which to view the problems encountered by evangelicals, and evangelical Anglicans in particular, in facing the end of empire and the search for a new nationalism, Marcus Loane provides a compelling subject. Representative of ‘The Establishment’ in the ‘Age of Aquarius’, an ardent monarchist and conservative evangelical, perhaps more at ease with the Protestant Reformers Thomas Cranmer, Hugh Latimer and Nicholas Ridley than his ecclesiastical contemporaries, we could position Loane, in Manning Clark’s dichotomy, firmly on the side of old-world resistance to new-world change, the proverbial ‘Old Dead Tree’ from a ‘land that belongs to the lord and Queen’.14 One English obituarist certainly claimed so, arguing that the Sydney Diocese, under Loane’s leadership from 1966–1982, exhibited a ‘slavish attachment to the past [which] gave it, in the Australian context, the character of a sect’.15 Such a view only intensified since the 1980s, as debates over women’s ordination and human sexuality saw Sydney at odds with other Anglican dioceses in Australia and, through leadership of the Global Anglican Futures (or ‘GAFCON’) movement, at the forefront of the wider debate over the future of the Anglican Communion.16 Beyond Sydney, some have viewed with rather condescending bemusement the longevity of attachment to Britain within the Church of England in Australia more generally (which kept this derivative title, unique in the Anglican Communion, until 1981).17 Anglican sociologist Gary Bouma, who migrated to Australia from the United States in 1979, recalled being ‘stunned by the reality still accorded to the Empire’: I would point out that since its withdrawal from Singapore in the 1960s Britain had turned its back on Australia and was busy joining Europe. The demise of the Empire was undermining the basis of their position in Australian society, and some of these Australians were in denial. During this transition, some churches provided comfort to these views by offering inexpensive private clubs where the myths of the British Empire could be maintained and providing a collective support network of nostalgia for the former realities that underlie the Britain that has now for many become a giant theme park.18 From the perspective of a relatively new arrival like Bouma, it is hard not to view Loane’s attachment to the past as a symptom of denial about the present and, more seriously, a barrier to the ‘indigenisation’ of Christianity in Australia.

114

Empire

Yet critically locating Marcus Loane and his response to the end of empire is not quite so easy a task. As The Sydney Morning Herald’s long-time religious affairs writer, Alan Gill, wrote at Loane’s retirement, ‘there are contradictions about Archbishop Loane which make his personality and ministry hard to assess’. For Gill, one of the most pronounced contradictions was Loane’s sense of national identity. Despite being ‘fiercely Australian’ and ‘justly proud to have been the first Australian-born Primate’, Gill noted that ‘he has a near-mystical regard for royalty and is passionately loyal to Britain’.19 This apparent contradiction was crisply illustrated in Loane’s interchange with the rather bold godfather of a boy the Archbishop confirmed. Loane’s sermon at the confirmation had made the point that the descriptor ‘Christian’ is a ‘mongrel’ word, part Greek, part Latin. Over morning tea, the confirmee’s godfather asked the origin of the Archbishop’s strange accent, part Tasmanian, part English. ‘It’s a hybrid’, Loane replied. ‘The word you used in church was “mongrel”’, the godfather quickly rejoined.20 Hybrid or mongrel, the tension between old attachments to Britain and an Australian new nationalism, between Loane’s sense of the past and place in the present, deserves a closer look. This chapter asks how the first Australian-born Anglican archbishop responded to the end of the ‘British World’ and the end of Christendom around the time of the 1970 Cook Bicentenary. While the interconnections between these dual crises affected all the evangelicals in this book, they produced for Loane three particular challenges. First, geographic isolation and the question of Asian engagement. Second, multiculturalism and the decline of ethnic nationalism. And third, the lost centrality of British monarchical Protestantism in Australia’s national public culture, brought into sharp relief by Loane’s response to the Bicentennial visit of the Pope. His responses to these challenges were profoundly shaped by a sense of the importance of remembering the British Empire, even after it ceased to animate a wider sense of Christian nationhood. Marcus Loane was fascinated by the past. It was intrinsic to his sense of identity – personally, ecclesiastically and nationally. Throughout his long career, he wrote extensively on the history of Australian Anglican evangelicalism, seeing it as a story of providence and succession that gave direction for the future. He repeatedly used the call of the prophet Isaiah, to ‘look unto the rock whence you were hewn’, as justification for recalling the past, especially when it came to asserting the nation’s intertwined British and Christian heritage. Likewise, his own origins and the men whom he succeeded as Archbishop loomed large in his mind. Marcus Lawrence Loane was born on the west coast of Tasmania in 1911.21 His family moved to Chatswood in Sydney, where he was educated at North Sydney Boys’ High School and The King’s School in Parramatta (about which he later wrote a short history entitled This Goodly Heritage) before taking his BA at Sydney University by night classes while working as a shipping clerk.22 He proceeded across the road to Moore Theological College, graduating in 1935 and returning immediately as a resident tutor.

Empire

115

During the war, he served as an army chaplain in the New Guinea campaign. He won admiration from the soldiers for his sense of toughness and duty, and found his missionary concern for Australia’s near neighbours ‘strongly quickened’ by time amongst the Papua New Guinean people.23 Yet despite that missionary interest, Loane was best suited as a pastor and scholar. After the war, he went straight back to Moore as vice-principal, and then principal from 1953. There he wrote several biographies, his most influential being Masters of the English Reformation (1954), a study of five Protestant martyrs. In his foreword, Loane expressed his sense of the importance of preserving the memory of his spiritual forebears. Tyndale’s Bible and Cranmer’s Prayer Book had ‘for four hundred years done more than any other single thing to shape the thought and mould the faith of England’, and it was the duty of his contemporaries, ‘who are their spiritual legatees’, to ‘hold their names in the highest honour’.24 Naturally, the importance of the monarchy in either threatening or safeguarding the advances of the English Reformation was central to Loane’s story. In the lead-up to the Queen’s April 1970 Bicentenary visit, Loane reflected on English monarchs and their love for the Bible, aiming to inspire his contemporaries in renewed devotion to God and his word. From Edward VI’s coronation with the three swords of the kingdoms of England, Scotland and Ireland and the ‘sword of the Spirit’, to Queen Elizabeth I’s institution of the Bible in every parish, to Queen Victoria’s determination to ‘make the Royal Law the pattern for her reign’, and even King George V’s reverence for the Bible as ‘the first of national treasures’, Loane saw a lineage of British rulers preserving the prized place of the scriptures. He devoted three pages of the December 1969 issue of the diocesan magazine Southern Cross to extolling the virtues of the Bible as ‘the greatest single creative force’ in the formation of the ‘national character’ of ‘English-speaking people’ – a strange allusion to the shared national identity of English speakers spread far beyond Britain’s shores.25 It was thus fitting, he wrote in April 1970, to welcome Queen Elizabeth II by taking the Bible ‘into our hearts and homes’ as, to quote the words with which the Queen had been presented a Bible at her own coronation, ‘the Royal Law and the Lively Oracles of God’.26 The linking of British royalty with the inheritance of the Reformation was central to Loane’s Protestant identity, as it was to many others in the Sydney Diocese. It was intensified in his two major studies of Church of England leaders emanating from the Evangelical Revival, Oxford and the Evangelical Succession (1950) and Cambridge and the Evangelical Succession (1952).27 Loane rejoiced in recounting how they had passed on ‘the faith once delivered to the saints’ right down to the early inhabitants of the colony of New South Wales. Bishop John Reid, his colleague and biographer, writes of how Loane ‘found his spiritual roots’ in this evangelical inheritance: Nothing would have been better than that [John] Newton and [William] Wilberforce had joined hands to influence the Prime Minister to

116

Empire provide a minister of the Gospel in Botany Bay from its very beginnings. To miss the interplay of English eighteenth-century evangelicals with the formation of the Australian Anglican Church is to miss the key to Loane’s leadership.28

Of course, much of Loane’s attachment to British race patriotism could well be attributed to the era of his upbringing. Yet in a climate in which evangelicalism was still ridiculed as sectarian and Protestant doctrines as an affront to the tide of ecumenism, his appreciation of the cost of what he termed ‘true evangelical continuity’ in the Church of England ought not be underplayed.29 Loane’s experience as a member of the committee tasked with proposing a Constitution for the Church of England in Australia illustrated his concern about the severing of formal links with Britain. At a General Synod debate on the Constitution in 1957, Loane broke ranks with Archbishop Howard Mowll and other senior Sydney clergy who supported its adoption. Loane believed that its accommodation of deviations from the Book of Common Prayer (such as prayers for the dead, a practice odious to evangelicals) would undermine the unity and orthodoxy of the Anglican Church.30 He held the same position at the 1958 Lambeth Conference when debating similar liturgical revision.31 Loane, and Anglican evangelicals before and after him, placed great weight on preserving recourse to English ecclesiastical law in order to protect the Reformed character of the Church from the threat of Anglo-Catholicism. Preserving vital links with Australia’s British Protestant past was thus in some respects a way of safeguarding the gospel into the future. The reality of the oftentimes tense relationship between Sydney Anglican evangelicalism and the wider Anglican Church can be seen in correspondence with the Archbishop of Canterbury over a successor for Archbishop Mowll after his death in late 1958. Some clergy outside the diocese strenuously objected to Loane’s nomination. Archbishop Frank Woods of Melbourne, an Englishman only recently arrived in Australia and a moderate liberal in theology, strongly averred, calling Loane ‘an avowed fundamentalist’ of ‘extremely narrow evangelical churchmanship’.32 Bishop John Moyes of Armidale shared this view, though expressed his concern to have an Australian-born archbishop – ‘we are rather tired of Englishmen who don’t get to know Australia, or are too cautious to give a lead’.33 Even so, Moyes preferred another Englishman to the ‘knife-edge narrowness of the Sydney extreme party’.34 That Englishman was Hugh Rowlands Gough, whose episcopate carried from the peaks of the 1959 Billy Graham crusade to the challenges of the mid-1960s. Loane maintained that Gough ‘never ceased to be “pukka” English, but he fell in love with Australia as a country still rich in adventure and excitement’.35 Gough’s response to the 1963 royal visit stressed the familiarity experienced with the Queen and Prince Philip as they met for ‘an ordinary service’: ‘She was “one of us” in a way in which she could hardly be on any other occasion during her visit to Sydney.’36 Gough seemed unable to give

Empire

117

substance to this sense of affinity Anglicans felt with their Queen. ‘It may be an enigma, it may be a paradox, it may be illogical and inexplicable’ he wrote in 1961, ‘but the plain fact of the matter is that neither Great Britain nor the British Commonwealth would be what they are today if it were not for the Monarchy and in my opinion neither would continue long if we abandoned the Crown.’37 When Marcus Loane spoke of the significance of the monarchy to Australia, he was never so ambiguous. After Gough’s premature resignation while in Britain in 1966, Loane was elected the eighth Archbishop of Sydney and Metropolitan of the Province of New South Wales. Gough’s episcopate and the circumstances of his departure had been painful.38 Loane was a ‘vote for stability’.39 Quieting the discontent of his critics by adopting a doctrinally conservative but relationally irenic attitude, Loane served as Archbishop of Sydney from 1966, and Primate of Australia from 1977, retiring from both posts in 1982. His tenure covered a host of social, economic, political and diplomatic shifts largely unimaginable a decade before. Loane’s enthronement as archbishop on 13 August 1966 attracted significant attention, beamed by television to three states and claimed by reporters to be, excepting the Billy Graham crusade of 1959, the most widely viewed religious ceremony in the nation’s history until that date. It was historymaking for at least two reasons: Loane was the first Australian-born Anglican Archbishop of Sydney, and the ceremony involved for the first time the Catholic Archbishop of Sydney, Cardinal Norman Gilroy (who like Loane was the first native-born occupant of that office) and a variety of other Christian leaders.40 It was also history-conscious, Loane looking back to the beginnings of the diocese and the nation to explain his vision for their future. In this first sermon, he spoke, as he often did, of the first sermon preached in Sydney, that of the Anglican evangelical chaplain Richard Johnson to the newly landed ‘Prodigal Sons’ of the First Fleet in 1788.41 With an evangelical there at the start, Sydney thus became the cradle of the Church and of the nation, and though circumstances – social, economic, political – may have rocked the cradle with more turbulence than decorum, Church and nation alike have not only survived but have grown up to a strong and virile maturity.42 This ‘virile maturity’ meant a new sense of independence from Britain. ‘Nearly all the original apron strings have been cut’, he said, ‘and we now find ourselves free to pursue what path we will in a troubled world and in a changing climate.’43 For Loane, that path particularly included a missionary and humanitarian concern for ‘the multi-millions who are our near neighbours to the north of Australia’. The exigencies of geography and the responsibilities of history called Australia to become ‘the Good Samaritan of South-East Asia’.44 This double-vision outlook of a British heritage and

118

Empire

an Asian destiny was a theme Loane dwelt upon throughout his episcopacy. In many ways, it owed its origins to the influence of his predecessor and lodestar, Archbishop Mowll.45 Elected to the See of Sydney in 1933 having been the missionary Bishop of West China, Mowll’s ardent evangelicalism was deeply connected to the idea of a providential global mandate for Britain and its empire. His 1951 address to an ecumenical service was instructive: At Jubilee time there was a feeling of pride and gratitude to those who had written the history of this land with their blood and sweat, and to the Motherland, whose traditions and institutions had become Australia’s precious heritage, he added. Dr Mowll asked would the next 50 years see 50 to 60 million predominantly British people distributed over the continent, and would they be a happy and prosperous nation or one degenerated by selfishness and irresponsibility?46 In classic civic Protestant tones, Mowll had connected the health of the nation with the preservation of its British heritage and the holiness of its Christian citizens. He expressed the civic virtues of what John Murphy has called the ‘responsibility generation’: personal morality, industry, population growth, and ethnic homogeneity.47 At the same time, however, Mowll stressed that the heritage bequeathed by ‘the Motherland’ must propel the nation’s gaze beyond its shores. The towering Cambridge graduate spoke to the national Anglican General Synod in 1950 of the ‘unique opportunity’ presented by advances in technology to meet the ‘general feeling of tension’ created by Communism having ‘spread its tentacles throughout Asia’: Australia, as air travel defeats time and space, has gained immense significance in both imperial and world affairs – as an advertisement in the Cambridge Review puts it. A unique opportunity has been given to us, as representatives of the British way of life and of the Christian faith, to influence 1160 million of the world’s population living in close proximity to our shores. The fact that most Australians do not appreciate the significance of this and do not find it easy to understand the viewpoint of those who have been brought so close to us by air communication, makes the responsibility of the Church all the greater.48 This language of opportunity and responsibility, ensconced within the ethnic nationalist ideal of ‘the British way of life’, was taken up strongly by Loane as a mandate for both Australian churches and the Australian government. His annual presidential addresses to the Sydney Diocesan synod – arguably his most significant and carefully constructed opinions – returned without ceasing to the theme of Asian engagement, while waxing lyrical about the virtues of Britishness as the necessary spiritual basis for a ‘virile’ Australian nationalism. To bring the gospel and civilisation to Asia was a

Empire

119

particularly Australian way to express membership of the British family of nations. Loane comfortably meshed belief in a British heritage with an Asian destiny as Australia’s unique role in God’s purposes for the world. But the compatibility of these two ideals came to be seriously challenged in the cultural crises of the 1960s, when the bonds of empire receded and the realities of geographic isolation intensified.

‘Going it alone’: the challenge of geographic isolation Loane’s concern about British withdrawal from Southeast Asia had been growing for some time. He was conscious of the nearness of volatility to Australian shores. He had served in New Guinea during the war, and he had been in Jakarta during the Confrontation with Malaya, seeing Sukarno’s populist mass rallies which two weeks later led to the burning of the British Embassy.49 Perhaps with these memories in mind, in September 1967, shortly after the announcement that British forces would be progressively withdrawn from East of Suez, he urged the Commonwealth government to protest. ‘No pains should be spared to persuade Great Britain to maintain a presence in the Indian Ocean,’ he wrote.50 He praised Prime Minister Harold Holt’s efforts to foster ‘new relations with countries in South-East Asia’, while he ‘resisted all temptation to devalue the Australian dollar with a high sense of duty both to Great Britain and to this Commonwealth’.51 Loane’s 1968 presidential address to the diocesan synod devoted a third of its time to changes in Asia, to which he applied British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan’s famous decolonisation motif: No one can see very far into the future; but all can feel the winds of change. We do not know where our duty should lie. Australia’s position at the foot of South-East Asia compels us to think in particular of those countries which are our own immediate neighbours. It is purblind not to see that our whole future is as closely linked with that of Asia as that of South Africa is with the rest of the African continent. Men may not prefer to see it; they do not serve their own country by averting their eyes from the facts of life.52 The ‘facts of life’ were becoming increasingly clear by the start of the 1970s. In January of the Bicentenary year, Loane stressed the importance of a clarified sense of the nation’s place in the world, suggesting that the Labor Party’s ambiguity on this front had cost it the recent federal election. ‘The average Australian knows that he cannot afford a Government which is “suspect” in this all important area,’ he argued. ‘We must know where we are going in our overseas connections and there is no greater obligation on the Federal Government than to clarify its policy on this issue.’53 In his anxiety about the retreat of empire and the cultural distance separating Australia from its nearest neighbours, Loane was not widely out of step with

120

Empire

his contemporaries. As historians such as David Goldsworthy, James Curran and Stuart Ward have pointed out, the great majority of Australian political leaders and commentators were similarly anxious about defining the nation’s post-imperial place in the region.54 The Cook Bicentenary accentuated the uneasy tension between history and geography. It marked, in the words of a special editorial in the Australian, not only 200 years of remarkable history but a challenge to define our identity and our ideals for the future. And this challenge comes not only from history but from the contemporary world around us. . . . We proclaim our independence but cling desperately to powerful allies. . . . We say we are part of Asia but cannot decide in what way. Though it offered a diagnosis of the problems, the editorial left its readers with no sense of just what might constitute ‘our identity and our ideals for the future’. ‘Let us, as never before,’ it concluded, ‘think about where we’re going, talk about it, argue about it. And then go there.’55 In a Sydney Morning Herald supplement, Peter Robinson noted the irony of celebrating imperial expansion at just the same time as the empire was fading from view: It is oddly appropriate that Australia’s celebrations of the Captain Cook bi-centenary should have coincided with the withdrawal of Britain’s benevolent military concern for the security of the Australian environment. Still groping, still lacking in confidence, Australia is nevertheless moving toward a new role in the region. In Robinson’s view, this new era was ‘not one for which the past holds many precedents’.56 The Archbishop’s first diocesan letter of 1970 contained language as bold as that of any cultural commentator about the ‘urgent’ need for Australia to have ‘its own clearly defined, constructive policy with regard to Asia’. He lambasted the nation’s tendency to isolationism, which had made it ‘insular, self-contained, complacent, provincial’. ‘Australia needs to wake up, and to grow up’, he wrote; the 1970s afforded ‘no room for the selfish, idle, drifting spirit which was the mark of our long colonial tutelage’.57 This was hardly the language of ‘slavish attachment to the past’. Compared to the Primate, Archbishop Woods, who somewhat hesitantly suggested that ‘it may well be good for us to learn to take our place amongst the nations of East Asia and the Pacific’, this was decisive engagement.58 However, it was in his two-fold proposed course of action that Loane’s commitment to such engagement became more qualified. On one hand, the nation’s political leaders ought to invest in the future of Papua and New Guinea, cultivate ‘close and lasting goodwill with Japan and Singapore, with Malaysia and Indonesia’, and ‘exert all their skill to foster mutual confidence between Australia and the rapidly expanding countries of South-East

Empire

121

Asia’.59 His persistent call for the government to welcome Asian refugees, especially those from Vietnam who, he argued, were Australia’s particular responsibility, further indicated a genuine commitment to embracing the region. But on the other hand, it was Loane’s ‘own belief’ that Australia’s first priority was to ‘strengthen all its ties with the sister Dominion of New Zealand’, particularly pursuing the ‘full integration’ of defence and foreign policy – the same outlook advanced by the Labor Minister for External Affairs Herbert Evatt in his advocacy for the ANZAC Agreement of 1944. That Loane’s first instinct was to look to a community of race and culture across the Tasman, despite Australia’s best strategic and economic prospects lying in Asia, indicates the depth of his attachment to the British racial ideal and the persistence of his belief in a shared British community of culture. ‘Australia and New Zealand will more than ever represent the antipodes; they will have to “go it alone”’.60 In one respect, this was the painful plea of an abandoned Briton, reluctantly turning to an Asia which he knew theologically to be equal but experienced culturally as a world apart, and finding only New Zealand sharing the same cultural heritage and geographic challenges. That he described the two nations as representing the Antipodes underscores how Loane still conceived of a community of sentiment with its metropole in Britain. It echoed in some ways the enthronement sermon of Archbishop Woods, who drew the distinction between cultural and spiritual relations with the region: ‘We in Australia may be an outpost of the West but we are not an outpost of the Church.’61 While Australia might need to engage with Asia out of necessity, it would do so as a cultural ‘other’, not a constituent part. Japan, Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia all offered far more opportunities for defence and trade integration than New Zealand. But none of them was a ‘sister Dominion’. While Loane conceded that ‘the focus of [national] interest is determined by geography’, the focus of sentiment continued to lie in his cultural memory of Greater Britain.62 The past continued to animate Loane’s calls for action in a new future. He enjoined the nation not only to strengthen its ties with New Zealand, but also to look to Japan, Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia ‘free from all inhibitions based on the past’.63 That he felt the need to raise the memory of past conflicts – using language reminiscent of wartime Prime Minister John Curtin’s declaration that ‘Australia looks to America’, ‘[w]ithout any inhibitions of any kind’ and ‘free of any pangs as to our traditional links or kinship with the United Kingdom’ – suggests how real the memories of difference lingered for him.64 It was much more comforting to look east to New Zealand, rather than north to Asia. Even if Australia’s ‘whole future is as closely linked with that of Asia as that of South Africa is with the rest of the African continent’ (a telling comparison with another British settler society wrestling with history and geography), Loane still saw Australia’s cultural identity lying in Northern Europe.65 Asia was a strange place to which Australia had a missionary and humanitarian responsibility rather

122

Empire

than a sentimental and cultural affinity. Loane’s concern was more than just rhetorical; he had made a point of travelling extensively throughout Asia and the South Pacific, forming personal bonds and sustaining a wide correspondence with indigenous Christian leaders and foreign missionaries. When he depicted the nation as ‘insular, self-contained, complacent, provincial’, or, in February 1976, the ‘average Australian’ as ‘much more provincial in his outlook and attitude than the average citizen of any European country’, he was not being hypocritical.66 But even so, at the level of culture, there was still an awareness of ‘otherness’. In speaking of Australia’s opportunity to be ‘the Good Samaritan of SouthEast Asia’, Loane reflected the tensions between geographically aware Christian humanitarianism and Anglocentric cultural paternalism, so protracted in this period of decolonisation, particularly on the question of whether Australian missionaries ought to remain in newly independent countries.67 Commenting at the end of 1975 on the recently dismissed Prime Minister’s successive recognition of communist countries (China, North Vietnam, Cuba, Poland, and North Korea), Loane remarked that ‘it has seemed as though it were more important in his judgment to cultivate their good-will than to strengthen traditional ties with Great Britain’.68 For Loane, Australia still owed its first allegiance to the mother country; Whitlam’s preoccupation with other diplomatic relationships was a case of principle being traded for pragmatism.

‘A substantial proportion of people of British descent’: the challenge of multiculturalism ‘Traditional ties with Great Britain’ were increasingly challenged by the rise of non-British immigration and the ascendency of multiculturalism as official Federal Government policy.69 Loane was naturally aware of the changing ethnic composition of the population, particularly after the postwar encouragement of massive continental European migration to Australia. The year of the Cook Bicentenary marked the high point of postwar immigration, with a record 185,000 arrivals. The 1971 Census indicated that of the total population of 12,756,000, over 2.6 million Australians were born overseas.70 In spite of this surge of ‘New Australians’, Loane argued in 1974 that ‘the basic British structure of Australian society has been maintained’, with non-British European migrants ‘integrated into our culture and economy with reasonable success’.71 Loane was not opposed to increased nonEuropean immigration in principle, especially when it came as part of the nation’s humanitarian responsibility to accept refugees. In fact, he criticised the Whitlam government for its small intake of South Vietnamese refugees ‘at uncertain intervals and with seemingly grudging consent’; taking over 2,000 refugees from Chile in 1973 made far less sense, given Australia’s ‘thin and tenuous’ relationship with that country. To neglect the victims of an Australian war in Australia’s region was ‘a lasting disgrace’, leaving ‘a dark

Empire

123

and ugly stain on the honour and humanity of our country’, and threatening to sour Australia’s credibility in the eyes of the region.72 The Archbishop’s critique of this putatively imbalanced policy was not reserved only for Labor; he lambasted the conservative Fraser government for accepting 37,000 Lebanese refugees while maintaining a miserly attitude towards those escaping from Indochina – perhaps a catalyst for Fraser’s subsequent significant support for Southeast Asian refugees.73 Those who criticised Loane’s emphasis on homogeneity and the preservation of British identity were wont to forget that he was as fierce as other Church leaders in his outspoken support for Asian refugees, not to mention his frequent travels to hotspots of regional unrest.74 But accepting refugees as a humanitarian responsibility and pursuing a policy of ethnic and cultural diversity were two very different things. Loane’s extensive analysis of the Whitlam government’s recent changes to immigration policy in his 1974 synod address pointed to this distinction.75 He began with a brief account of Australia’s migratory history. This was ‘a country which was populated by Aboriginal tribal communities and which has been settled by immigrants’. The nation subsequently became ‘a British enclave in the antipodes’, and, said Loane, ‘neither time nor massive post-war immigration can detract from the fact that the basic patterns of Australian society have been derived from a people of British descent’. He went on to give a detailed explanation of the development of Australian immigration policy from the 1840s through the formation of the White Australia Policy in 1901 up to the Labor Party’s new policy platform of 1971 – the ‘avoidance of discrimination on any grounds of race, or colour of skin, or nationality’. There are at least three salient features of Loane’s response to the end of White Australia and the dissociation of race from immigration policy. First, Loane saw nationalism through the language of its nineteenthcentury proponents, requiring ethnic solidarity for national survival. The nation had a discernible essence, grounded in a shared race, culture and heritage. While it could absorb degrees of diversity, its survival depended on a majority of the population sharing these traits. Thus, for Loane, the overriding concern of any immigration policy had to be ‘the preservation of a homogenous society’. This required the ‘integration’ of migrants ‘into a cohesive Australian community’. From this reasoning, the White Australia Policy, though ‘a running sore in the mind of the peoples of South East Asia’ and perceived as ‘a form of international apartheid’, still had reasonable intentions. It sought to ‘avoid the seemingly insoluble problems which have been caused by the inability of white and non-white peoples to merge in a single nation’. This echoed the statements of his predecessor Hugh Gough, who in 1962 called this ‘grievously misunderstood’ policy ‘necessary for the economic and social well-being of Australia’.76 Almost mimicking Howard Mowll’s hopes of a half-century before, Loane believed it was ‘in the best interests of Australia’ to ‘always have a substantial proportion of people of British descent’.

124

Empire

Second, Loane looked to the experience of Britain, the United States and South Africa as examples of the challenge of preserving cultural unity with racial diversity. But instead of being examples to emulate, they were errors to evade. Great Britain had seen a flood of immigrants who lived in virtual ghettoes, thereby making ‘a vast dent in the traditional idea of a homogeneous society’. America’s hypocrisy of championing integration as an ideal while practising segregation in reality was ‘a constant threat to peaceful society’. And South Africa’s situation was ‘tragic’ – ‘not the policy of apartheid so much as its administration’, its ‘refusal to recognise the common basic humanity of black and white’. The key problem was how to be humane and equal, while preserving social cohesion. For Loane, non-European immigration was inevitable, but would ‘raise many awkward questions’ (though on what exactly such questions were, he was silent). The government’s new policy required the Immigration Minister Al Grassby to work with ‘unsleeping vigilance’ to ensure the policy would be enacted with ‘common sense, compassion and goodwill’. That Labor’s policy platform had included since 1965 a cautious recognition of ‘the difficult social and economic problems which may follow from an influx of peoples having different standards of living, traditions and cultures’ escaped Loane’s attention.77 Moreover, the statistics did not show a major influx underway. The net migrant intake had fallen dramatically from a high of 117,955 in 1969 (the highest figure since 1950) to 56,320 in 1972 and just 13,513 in 1975.78 While this reduced migrant intake had more to do with rising oil prices abroad and inflation at home, it nevertheless showed that the challenge immigration posed to ethnic cohesion was felt by Loane more in rhetoric than in reality. The new policy of multiculturalism, advanced under Whitlam and enshrined under Fraser, unsettled his sense of a culturally and racially homogenous Australian identity. The excessive mixing of races had not worked in the rest of the British World, Loane argued, so how could it succeed in Australia? Third, while this was ‘a very complicated problem; one of paramount importance to us both as citizens and as Christians’, Loane’s analysis was telling for what it did not say. His reasoning was almost solely based on observations and personal preferences. His religious convictions seemed entirely absent, or at least submerged – this was no theological or biblical response to cultural diversity. His brother-in-law, Broughton Knox, the long-serving principal of Moore Theological College, had at least explored biblical expressions of ‘nation’ and ‘race’ in his controversial defence of the policy (if not the practice) of apartheid.79 Instead, the personal pronoun featured heavily in Loane’s carefully crafted address, along with the sort of emphatic commitments usually reserved only for matters of evangelical doctrine: If I may speak for myself, I would wish to say that I am glad to know that Government policy rejects racial prejudice in its concept of our future population and allows a certain number of non-European migrants to

Empire

125

make their home in this country. At the same time, I believe that an integrated society is in the best interests of Australia, and for that reason, while I welcome the fresh cultural influence of post-war non-British immigrants, I hope that our Australian population will always have a substantial proportion of people of British descent. For the same reason, I am equally committed to the hope that Australia will always retain the closest links with the United Kingdom of Great Britain. . . . I am wholly opposed to the idea that Australia should become a Republic; the reallong-term effects of such a move would be the gradual severance of all traditional ties with Great Britain. I stand for the closest possible relations between countries like Australia, New Zealand, and Canada with Great Britain under one Crown and one Sovereign.80 Perhaps this use of personal pronouns suggests the extent to which Loane knew that his preference for cultural homogeneity and a strengthened sense of transnational Britishness was increasingly untenable. Moving on in his Presidential Address from this plea to a discussion of the selection of a new Archbishop of Canterbury, he conceded that such a topic was also expressive of a ‘reminiscent spirit’.81 By the end of the decade, Loane acknowledged that national identity had changed irrevocably. His Presidential Address to the Diocesan Synod in 1979 looked at particular political, social, economic and spiritual challenges facing the nation in the last 20 years of the century. ‘Our history and destiny march hand in hand as we approach a new era,’ he said, warning that ‘national direction cannot be separated from national origins.’ These were British racial origins, and it was the ‘influx’ of postwar non-British migrants that would have ‘far-reaching consequences for our national development’. In that same address, Loane observed that ‘Australia within thirty years has become a multi-cultural country just as for other reasons the United Kingdom has become multi-racial during the last twenty years’.82 To posit a ‘multi-cultural’ idea of Britain and Britishness would be, for Loane, conceptually challenging – as it had been for other Australian leaders.83 Australia might have embraced a range of races, but at its core, he still saw it as a British nation. Indeed, even if Britain lost all appearances of cultural Britishness, the essential character of Greater Britain – of a ‘crimson thread of kinship’ encircling the globe – remained in Loane’s mind a fixed and pure entity.84 This was a nationalism of ethnic essence, grounded in a rich and immutable past. But it was a past that seemed increasingly at odds with the changing cultural and racial mix of the present.

‘If I forget thee, o England’: Cook and the challenge of historical amnesia Marcus Loane was not averse to change. Like a true conservative, he preferred ‘quiet and almost imperceptible’ change rather than that which ‘shakes

126

Empire

tradition to its foundations’.85 But there was no point in denying its extent. In 1969, surveying the changes which had swept the 1960s, he stressed that the Church ‘must face the fact that the ferment which is going on all around is of colossal magnitude’. Given that patterns in society would always influence the Church, it would be ‘a foolish act of escapism to close our minds to all idea of change’.86 ‘We should thank God that we were born into this age, and ask for grace that we may be matched with this hour.’87 The aspect of recent social change that seemed to most unsettle Loane was the loss of collective memory. It was one thing for society to no longer live as in previous ages, but another entirely to discard, by revisionism or neglect, the heritage of values, traditions and beliefs such ages had bequeathed. Loane observed in 1968 the emergence of a ‘new generation with no personal memory of the Depression or the Second World War’.88 Their affluence and technology inclined them to think that humanity had no need for the Almighty. This generation was also growing up without a shared memory of the British Empire. For Loane, this too weakened the relevance of the Christian faith. For one, the decline in imperial rhetoric left Loane without the metaphors he and other clergy often used in exhorting worship of the King of Kings.89 To speak of the Church as a ‘colony of heaven’, as he did in 1972, curiously using James Moffatt’s 1913 translation of Philippians 3:20 rather than the commonly-used Revised Standard Version (‘our commonwealth is in heaven’), grated against the new nationalism of the day.90 Even Hugh Gough, using the same metaphor in 1961, had recognised that ‘colony’ was ‘an unpopular word today – especially in Australia!’91 The quiet removal of ‘Defender of the Faith’ from the Queen’s title on her 1973 visit also severed a visible link with the Christian heritage of the monarchy. Twenty years before, Anglican bishops had successfully persuaded Menzies to reverse his decision to omit ‘F.D.’ (‘Fidei Defensor’) from Australian coinage, condemning it, rightly or wrongly, as a disloyal attempt to curry favour with Roman Catholics.92 Come 1973, however, any such protest fell on deaf ears. The Australian Church Record lamented that the title had ‘disappeared without a whimper’, ending a practice ‘proudly used by our Protestant sovereigns’ since the reign of Henry VIII. That Elizabeth II was now ‘Queen of Australia, “by the grace of God”’, was a small consolation which could only be enjoyed ‘as long as British blood runs strongly in Australian veins’.93 But even if British blood was running in the veins of many Australians, their understanding of the monarchy was undergoing profound changes. While Australians were still enamoured with the Royals in their 1970 Bicentenary tour as they had been on previous tours in 1954 and 1963, this seemed less because of a sense of loyalty to sovereign grandeur, and more because of the popularity of British popular culture in the wake of the 1960s. As Janet Hawley noted in the Bulletin, after the advent of ‘Swinging London’, ‘all things British are generally “in” and loved again’.94 Donald Horne agreed, suggesting that amongst non-British immigrants and young people ‘the Queen is best thought of as a celebrity. Many come to look,

Empire

127

not to cheer.’95 Much of the interest had also shifted to the Queen’s children, Charles and Anne, who were greeted as symbols of ‘new Royal ideas’, ‘in touch with the people’, and doing what the monarchy was ‘all about now – to be a unifying agent in a mixed up world’.96 On a broader scale, the royal family were becoming more dissociated from their formal British and Anglican status and more representative of a generalised sense of stability in family and marriage.97 It was thus all the more difficult for Loane, when he came to preach before the Queen at St Andrew’s Cathedral during her 1973 visit to open the Sydney Opera House, to point his hearers to the ‘inmost significance’ of such a service: ‘to remind ourselves that there is another Sovereign to whom we owe obedience and another Kingdom to which we ought to belong’.98 In some ways, the ‘decline in imperial rhetoric’ that Geoffrey Serle and others had pointed out had much deeper religious significance than was often observed.99 At the time of the Cook Bicentenary, Loane also faced more direct challenges to the memory of a Protestant British World. One was subtle, one overt. The subtle challenge came in attempts to claim the extent to which the character and motivations of the man of the hour, Captain James Cook, were influenced by religion. Given his encounter with the mainland of Australia was brief and left little lasting direct impact, and noting as well that his ‘discovery’ of Australia was just one of many in his multiple exploratory voyages, emphasising Cook’s character rather than his achievements is understandable.100 The Premier of New South Wales, Robert Askin, noted as much in his speech at the April 1970 re-enactment of Cook’s original landing at Botany Bay 200 years before. Cook was ‘not strictly our founder’, conceded Askin, but, with the naturalist Joseph Banks, was a man of science and exploration who would have been proud of Australia’s subsequent exploitation of mineral resources, visually epitomised in ‘the great tankers that come into Botany Bay’.101 The Queen’s speech at the re-enactment emphasised Cook’s humanitarian regard for the indigenous people he encountered. This vision of Cook as a man of science was taken by others to mean he was not a man of faith. False dichotomy though this invariably was, it nevertheless nourished the belief that Australian identity owed more to a secular enlightenment than British Protestantism. In a five-part commemorative series in the Australian on ‘Cook the Man and the Enigma’, attention was drawn to Cook’s apparent lack of religious feeling. Part three in the series began with German seaman Heinrich Zimmerman’s description of Cook as a man who ‘never mentioned religion and would have no priests on his ships’, but was nevertheless a ‘just and upright man’. The author of the series, Rex Rienits, made a point of the way successive biographers of Cook had glossed over his ‘lack of strong religious convictions’, ‘no doubt not wishing to tarnish the image of the great man’. Rienits noted how the morality of Cook’s Presbyterian grandfather and close Quaker friends had ‘rubbed off’ on him, ‘but not, it would seem, their religious beliefs’. When he attended Church of England services while in

128

Empire

port he did so ‘more from a sense of duty than devoutness’. In contrast, Rienits stressed that Cook was ‘a man of science’ in an age of ‘great scientific curiosity’, and one who was both personally upright and socially benevolent without the need for religious doctrine. Indeed, Rienits pointed out that Cook’s dismay at the impact of Western civilisation on native peoples, who he found now trading their women ‘for a spike nail’, was intimately linked to religion: ‘Such are the consequences of a commerce with Europeans – what is still more to our shame – civilised Christians’.102 Similarly, the Australian’s editorial on the Aboriginal protest staged at Kurnell during the official reenactment highlighted the complicity of Christianity in the displacement of Aboriginal people – ‘the dark side of Endeavour’.103 Some evangelicals concurred that Cook’s religion was muted at best. Noel Pollard, Master of New College at the University of New South Wales, noted that ‘on the surface’, the Cook Bicentenary had ‘very little’ significance for Christians in New South Wales, ‘because Cook the discoverer was a “son of the Enlightenment”’. Yet even so, the occasion was significant for the opportunity it provided to recall that the great achievements of the Enlightenment, and specifically the Royal Society which sent Cook forth, were directed by ‘men who were moulded by the great religious movements of Protestant England’.104 The search for scientific discovery sprang from the crucible of Protestant epistemology, and the imperial dimension to expansion was bound up in the belief that Protestantism was central to the transformation of nations like England and Holland into the great imperial powers they became. Loane, too, interpreted the significance of Cook within a larger story of British Protestant expansion and exploration and challenged the way Reinets and others claimed Cook as a hero of the secular enlightenment. He was ‘a man of quiet faith’ who ‘never sailed without a copy of the Bible’ (a policy, it should be noted, which most ship’s captains would have adopted). He must have noticed the regular references to the sea in the Psalms, Loane mused, and would have thus known of God’s providential sovereignty in leading Israel across the waters into the Promised Land. Loane led on from a detailed discussion of Cook’s character to fashion his own story of exploration, providence and heritage: For twelve thousand miles from England, across ‘the great waters’, lies the land of our birth: a land into whose spacious freedom and splendid promise we have entered through the goodness of God. It used to be referred to as ‘the great south land of the Holy Ghost’, and this should help us to lift our eyes to an immortal heritage. This ‘immortal heritage’, Loane went on, was encapsulated in the second verse of the hymn, ‘I Vow to Thee My Country’: ‘For there’s another country I’ve heard of long ago, most dear to them that love her, most great to them that know’.105 For Loane, Cook’s journeying helped tell a bigger story, a

Empire

129

teleology from Britain to Australia, and on to ‘another country’ – the heavenly kingdom. As with the monarchy, Loane was again using Australia’s British heritage to point to spiritual matters, and asking that such a heritage not be lost. This subtle example of Loane’s determination to recall a British Protestant heritage was matched at the end of 1970 with a much more overt challenge to the memory of empire. Sydney played host not only to the Queen in its Bicentenary year, but also the Pope.106 On a whirlwind ten-day tour through Asia, the Pontiff, Pope Paul VI, spent four days in Sydney, holding an ecumenical service and a Bicentenary Mass at Randwick Racecourse.107 While some commentators conceded that the Cook Bicentenary ‘seemed an odd pretext’ for a papal visit, it was nevertheless welcomed as a coming-ofage event in the life of a nation exploring its heritage and destiny. Australian journalist Desmond O’Grady, who lived in Rome and travelled with the Pope, described the visit as ‘strangely appropriate’, a ‘voyage of discovery for all concerned’.108 It had shown Australians the Pope in his endearing humanity, and, as the last continent to which he travelled, exposed Pope Paul VI to loyalty and affection at the ends of the earth. The Sydney Morning Herald’s editorial argued that the visit was not merely significant for the many Roman Catholics who had emigrated to Australia since the late 1940s. It was also significant ‘for all Australians who, consciously or unconsciously, have a sense of separation, even isolation, from the civilisation from which we sprang’. ‘Since the war we have become accustomed,’ it went on, to visits by the Royal Family which have reinforced our sense of national origin and inheritance. We have had two visits from a United States President to acknowledge our relationship with the great Western political community. But the Pope’s visit is unique as a potent reminder of our historic, religious and cultural indebtedness to the cradle of all Western civilisation which we represent in this part of the world – the Mediterranean of Judaea, Greece and Rome.109 This attempt to include the papal visit within a longer story of Australia discovering its cultural, political and spiritual roots was remarkable. For while others had urged Australians not to forget their classical roots in Rome and Athens and Judaea, this lineage had not been explicitly traced through the Vatican.110 The Herald went on to use the Pope’s larger itinerary in the region as ‘an elegant reminder of our involvement in Asia and Polynesia’, which it termed ‘other cradles of civilisation’.111 Far from being a figure of division against which Australian Britons defined themselves, the Pope was now being employed as the symbol of a common past transcending even that of Britain, and a token of the nation’s progress into a cosmopolitan future. The papal visit was a national affair, not merely a Catholic one, so much so that Asher Joel, the chief organiser of both the papal and royal

130

Empire

tours of 1970, though an Orthodox Jew, hailed it as ‘the greatest spiritual event in Australian history’.112 This vision of the Pope as a figure with whom all Australians could identify was aided by the near-universal appreciation that sectarian tensions had significantly cooled.113 Loane, who maintained a good working relationship with Cardinal Gilroy, welcomed such rapprochement.114 Anticipating the Pope’s arrival on 30 November, the Canberra Times predicted that the ‘vast majority of Australians will welcome him’ as simply ‘a messenger of Jesus Christ’. It added its hope that ‘the few who affect to be displeased by his presence here will have enough good sense to respect the feelings of those who think otherwise’.115 Evidently, in its opinion, ecumenism was ascendant and those who had reservations were an awkward minority who should keep their beliefs to themselves. Marcus Loane found himself in this supposed minority. In his October letter in Southern Cross, the Archbishop had stated that he could not in conscience attend the planned ecumenical service in the Sydney Town Hall at which the Pope would lead prayers. Though he gave clergy in the diocese freedom to go, he would not. The Roman Catholic Church’s official teachings about papal headship, transubstantiation, the Virgin Mary’s mediation and justification by works as well as faith were doctrines ‘radically inconsistent with the New Testament as well as the Reformation Settlement of the Church of England in the reign of Elizabeth I’. While he was thankful that the bitter hostilities that once marked the Protestant-Catholic divide had abated, Loane concluded that ‘one cannot pretend that the barriers have all disappeared’.116 The costly heritage of British Protestantism that Loane the historian so keenly appreciated would be discarded should he compromise his conscience and bow to the pressure of ecumenism. That the papal visit overlapped with the 400th anniversary of Pius V’s excommunication of Queen Elizabeth I was a coincidence not overlooked by his colleague (and eventual successor as archbishop) Canon Donald Robinson writing in defence of Loane, especially as Paul VI had recently canonised 40 of the English Catholics martyred under her rule.117 Loane’s measured refusal to attend the service generated a storm of controversy. Along with the much more public protest of Fred Channing, pastor of the sectarian Bible Presbyterian Church in Palmerston North, New Zealand, it was reported as far away as Alabama and New York.118 The Brisbane Diocese’s official newspaper, the Church Chronicle, reprinted a parish paper’s scathing attack on Loane and Sydney evangelical Anglicanism. ‘It is the genius and the pain of Anglicanism that it has always put up with groups like that in the Diocese of Sydney’, the author lamented, calling it ‘a sect on the fringe of the Anglican Communion’.119 The Australian’s Graham Williams, in a lengthy profile on Loane entitled ‘In the Steps of the Reformation’, depicted him as ‘intent on being the guardian of a church of the 17th century, rather than blazing the trail for a new church of the 21st century’.120

Empire

131

In response to these attacks on both Loane and Sydney Anglican evangelicalism, the editors of Southern Cross went on the defensive, arguing that ‘most thinking churchmen would agree that Evangelical Anglicans have made a creditable contribution to the church life of this nation’.121 Perhaps the critiques of sectarianism around the papal visit also stimulated the spate of articles about evangelical beliefs written by Loane and others in the leadup to the first National Evangelical Anglican Congress in August 1971.122 The Congress, modelled on the significant English equivalent of the same name, held at Keele in 1967, was pitched as something ‘uniquely Australian’, ‘strongly positive’, ‘gospel-oriented’ and ‘a powerful dose of medicine for the Australian church’.123 Loane’s language on its eve evoked his concern to present evangelicalism as truly Anglican, truly Australian and a fruitful fusion of historical conviction and contemporary realism. ‘The Evangelical School of thought had a long and honoured history in the Church of England’, inspiring ‘many of the finest movements in voluntary service and missionary effort’. Where evangelicals had drifted into ‘intellectual obscurantism or ecclesiastical isolationism’, they had ‘not been true to their own essential convictions’. Loane recognised the embattled nature of evangelicalism, particularly in its regard for preserving the memory of the past: It is true that we live in an age when people like to be thought broadminded and tolerant. They draw away from strong convictions and brand them as bigotry. They are inclined to think that those who try to learn from the past are fanatics. They argue that by-gones should be by-gones.124 Evangelicals must never presume to merely inherit the faith of their forebears without proving it in their own spiritual experience, argued Loane. But equally, they could not last long if they cut themselves off from the faith passed down to them. The Archbishop was making a case for the historic legitimacy and contemporary relevance of an evangelicalism that was deeply conscious of the past. Yet as the wide embrace of the papal visit and the subtle presentation of a religionless Cook demonstrated, the case for continuity was often drowned out by the pressure for change. Wider realignments were also forcing a reconsideration of the posture evangelicals ought take towards the Roman Catholic Church. Vatican II had signalled such liberalisation of conscience that a theologian as prominent as Hans Küng could be ‘Catholic’ but not ‘Roman’, a believer in its teaching but not a follower of the Pope.125 The Whitlam Government’s decision, despite Protestant protests, to appoint an Anglican, Dudley McCarthy as Australia’s first Ambassador to the Holy See in early 1973 further confirmed the way ‘Roman’ Catholicism was no longer seen as a challenge to national loyalty.126 Perhaps the changed circumstances at home were most clearly illustrated in the honours conferred on Cardinal Gilroy. In April 1969, this ‘prince of the Church’ was made a Knight of the British Empire (an

132

Empire

honour conferred on Loane in 1976), the first Cardinal to be knighted since the Reformation. Indeed, in the Cook Bicentenary year itself, Gilroy was named ‘Australian of the Year’, the first cleric to receive this award.127 Such plaudits would have been unthinkable a generation earlier, so intensely had sectarianism shaped national life. The embrace of Roman Catholicism was thus a significant marker of the end of Christendom and its civic Protestant assumptions. It removed for evangelicals one of the chief ‘others’ against which they had defined themselves and, to varying degrees, against whom they had asserted their loyalty to the nation. Resisting such a rapprochement on grounds of history and principle made evangelicals like Loane seem all the more out of touch. If his attachment to the heritage of Reformed Anglican evangelicalism was undercut somewhat by the lost significance of sectarian divides, Loane’s attachment to the memory of Britain seemed more and more nostalgic. He was, it seems, aware of this. Preaching before the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh on their next visit in October 1973 (Figure 4.1), Loane argued that for a young nation like Australia, it was ‘still very fitting that we should “look unto the rock whence we were hewn”’. His use of the past tense is indicative of his awareness of the reality of change: It is safe to say that until the great post-war immigration boom, ninetyfive per cent of Australian citizens were of British or Irish descent. It will

Figure 4.1 Anglican Archbishop of Sydney Marcus Loane escorts Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, visiting to open the Sydney Opera House, 21 October 1973. Source: © Ramon Williams. Used with permission.

Empire

133

always be true to claim that Great Britain was the home from which our forebears ventured to the ends of the earth. Her history and heritage are the wells from which we have drawn.128 This evocation of an immutable inheritance from Britain echoed the epithet Harold Holt had assigned to Australia while in London in 1967: ‘in essence still a British country’.129 As Jeppe Kristensen notes, the power of ‘the British founding myth’ in Australia was seen in that, ‘even in the moment of realisation that Britishness could have no practical meaning, it was still possible for Australians to imagine a vague British “essence” underneath the rubble of empire’.130 In times of such major reorientation, historic foundations were, if anything, all the more attractive to Loane. The ‘evolution of time and the process of development’ which had seen Britain’s future ‘bound up with Europe’ as much as Australia’s was with Southeast Asia called for ‘an ever more responsible form of autonomy’. But it also signalled for Loane the ‘increasingly desirable’ need ‘to confirm our spiritual affinities’. All pretensions of a shared community of interest had been dealt a fatal blow by Britain’s withdrawal from East of Suez and persistent desire to move into Europe. That Loane felt moved to call his hearers, in the presence of the Queen during her 1973 visit, to strengthen the ties of sentiment showed just how weak they had become. It is hard to imagine him having to make apologies for ‘a nostalgic paraphrase of the Psalmist’s great cri du Coeur’, as he did in that sermon: If I forget thee, O England, may my right hand forget all her skill; let my voice choke in the hour of my strength if I do not remember thee, if I do not count thee among the chief of all my joys.131 Such a ‘nostalgic paraphrase’, substituting ‘England’ for ‘Zion’, was as bald as that of Robert Menzies in the Queen’s presence ten years before, borrowing from Elizabethan poet Thomas Ford: ‘I did but see her passing by but yet I love her till I die’.132 Coming from the mouth of one who prized so highly the integrity and authority of scripture, Loane’s ardour for Albion seemed to almost overtake his devotion to the Bible. Perhaps most tellingly, that Loane felt the need to exhort his hearers to remember Britain, to actively affirm spiritual affinities, suggests just how conscious he was that the old order was passing away and nothing substantive had been found to fill out the rhetoric of the new.

Conclusion Marcus Loane lamented the end of the British Empire. He seemed eager to point out the cultural and symbolic void that this lost heritage would leave behind. That said, so did a good many other critics. Geoffrey Serle claimed in 1967 that there had been ‘such a vacuum since the decline of standard imperial rhetoric that it is difficult to make any sure statement’.133

134

Empire

Manning Clark, who had little sympathy for Britishness, wrote a commemorative piece on the Cook Bicentenary, bearing the simple title: ‘Where Are We Heading?’134 Loane confronted the geopolitical challenges which faced Australia and stressed that the nation could not afford to face the 1970s ‘in the mood of isolation from the world to which we belong’.135 He ought, therefore, not be lumped with the ‘somnambulists’ Donald Horne described in 1965, those who ‘continue to behave as if the drug was still acting. They seemed too stupid even to have withdrawal symptoms.’136 Loane certainly exhibited withdrawal symptoms. Nor, when he spoke with some wariness about increased Asian immigration, ought he be seen as a clerical version of former Minister for External Affairs Paul Hasluck’s chided academic diplomat, the sort who ‘wanders distractedly from the academic groves of Australia to the fringes of Asia, a missionary without faith, an evangelist without a gospel, a Samaritan who gives neither bread nor stone but only his analysis of an abstraction’.137 He maintained a humanitarian and missionary concern for Asia, and was deeply acquainted with its struggles. Evangelicals like Loane, in much the same way as imperial Britons, conceived of their identity as an inherently expansive, outward-looking one. Their gospel was not to be hidden under a bowl; it had to be shared, and, to varying degrees, indigenised, to the ends of the earth. Perhaps because of these historically complimentary ambitions, distinguishing between biblical and imperial reasoning was not always straightforward. Reading Loane’s attention to history as a ‘slavish attachment to the past’ seems all the more tempting because he was an Anglican. Anglicans in Britain had been particularly inclined to perpetuate narratives of their own decline, and accentuate their struggles with race, immigration and national identity in the 1960s and 1970s.138 Ian Moffitt, reporting on the Australian Anglican Church’s General Synod in 1973, expressed his surprise that ‘the prelates are not the doddering old gas-and-gaiters relics of Empire whom one half-expects to find there’. Anglicans, ‘once the impregnable bastion of God, Monarch and Empire; a mighty fusion of Christ and Queen’, seemed to Moffitt very aware of their lost establishment status.139 Many of those he quoted, such as the outspoken Dean of Perth John Hazelwood or the equally controversial lay Sydney Anglican publisher Francis James, welcomed this change as an opportunity for the Church to win new relevance with pluralist Australia. This often implied an embrace of ecumenism, a looser commitment to doctrine, and a missiology that prized social action and derogated conversionist evangelism. As Loane continued to look back to the theological inheritance of the Reformation and the Evangelical Revival, while at the same time looking back to the cultural inheritance of England and the British Empire, it was easy to write him off as doubly outdated. Yet as with Mark McKenna’s depiction of histories of the monarchy in Australia since the 1960s, Anglican evangelicalism of the likes of Marcus Loane has also been ‘more often pilloried than understood’.140 As this book argues, it was easier to point out the crises of spiritual and national identity

Empire

135

so suddenly brought on in the 1960s than to suggest compelling alternatives. Loane’s attachment to Australia as ‘British, white, and Christian’, while increasingly showing the signs of anxious alienation, was consistently couched within the language of tradition and heritage. With the rise of postmodernism and post-Marxian arguments for the recovery of historic moral narratives, tradition, heritage and the practices they inform have once more become serious scholarly concerns.141 Loane’s attachment to British traditions and his insistence that their relegation would leave Australians without a heritage from which to form their identity may have had more substance to it than otherwise assumed. That Anglicanism itself was undergoing a profound detachment from its ethnic, if not cultural, roots in Britain makes Loane’s experience of the end of empire all the more complex.142 But just as Anglicanism itself has always required enculturation in local contexts – its Articles of Religion permit ‘traditions and ceremonies’ to be ‘changed according to the diversity of countries, times, and men’s manners’ – so too should the end of empire and the receding of British global culture not have proved an impassable obstacle for Australian Anglicans.143 In fact, Sydney Anglican evangelicals like Marcus Loane were arguably best placed to respond to this reorientation of global Anglicanism. In part this was because of the prevailing doctrine of the Church in the diocese, which maintained that the local congregation was the only earthly gathering that could claim the New Testament mantle of ekklesia, ‘the Church’. This argument logically led to the view by some that the wider Anglican denomination was contingent and not essential, a helpful structure but not a true ‘Church’.144 Perhaps this looser attachment to the formal structures of Anglicanism could be carried over to the loss of formal links with the British Empire. That Loane nevertheless found the end of empire so difficult probably says more about both the strength of wider cultural attachments to Britishness and the way such cultural mores shaped even the most theologically discerning. Evangelicalism, as David Bebbington put it, ‘did not manage a total escape to a world of eternal truths. It was bound up in the flux of events.’145 Radically different responses to the flux of events surrounding the end of Christendom would be the preserve of a new generation of evangelicals. To them we next turn.

Notes 1 Marcus Loane, ‘Presidential Address to Synod, 1970’, in Year Book of the Diocese of Sydney, 1970 (Sydney: Anglican Information Office, 1971), p. 230. 2 Loane, ‘Presidential Address to Synod, 1970’, p. 230. 3 On Rosebery and ‘Greater Britain’, see Bell, The Idea of Greater Britain, pp. 118, 223. 4 James Curran, The Power of Speech (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 2004), Chapter 1. 5 Marcus Loane, ‘The Archbishop Writes’, Southern Cross, January 1970, p. 3. 6 Loane, ‘Presidential Address to Synod, 1970’, p. 231.

136

Empire

7 Stuart Ward, Australia and the British Embrace: The Demise of the Imperial Ideal (Carlton, Vic.: Melbourne University Press, 2001). 8 Curran and Ward, The Unknown Nation. 9 Stuart Ward, ‘The “New Nationalism” in Australia, Canada and New Zealand: Civic Culture in the Wake of the British World’, in Kate Darian-Smith, Patricia Grimshaw, and Stuart Macintyre (eds.), Britishness Abroad: Transnational Movements and Imperial Cultures (Carlton, Vic.: Melbourne University Press, 2007), pp. 231–66. 10 ‘Facing the Challenge of Adulthood’, Australian, 15 July 1964, quoted in Curran and Ward, The Unknown Nation, p. 39. 11 Robert Menzies, Sydney Morning Herald, 27 April 1939, cited in Alan Watt, The Evolution of Australian Foreign Policy 1938–1965 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1968), p. 24. 12 Neville Meaney, ‘Britishness and Australian Identity: The Problem of Nationalism in Australian History and Historiography’, Australian Historical Studies 32, no. 116 (2001), pp. 76–90. 13 Sydney Morning Herald, 29 April 1970, quoted in Curran and Ward, The Unknown Nation, p. 207. 14 C.M.H. Clark, ‘Faith’, in Peter Coleman (ed.), Australian Civilization: A Symposium (Melbourne: Cheshire, 1962), p. 80. 15 ‘The Most Reverend Marcus Loane’, Daily Telegraph, 23 April 2009. 16 See, for example, Muriel Porter, Sydney Anglicans and the Threat to World Anglicanism: The Sydney Experiment (Farnham, Surrey: Ashgate, 2011); Chris McGillion, The Chosen Ones: The Politics of Salvation in the Anglican Church (Crows Nest, NSW: Allen and Unwin, 2005). For more balanced assessments, see Marcia Cameron, Phenomenal Sydney: Anglicans in a Time of Change, 1945– 2013 (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2016); Michael Jensen, Sydney Anglicanism: An Apology (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2012). 17 For an overview of the issues, see Brian Fletcher, An English Church in Australian Soil: Anglicanism, Australian Society and the English Connection since 1788 (Canberra: Barton Books, 2015). 18 Gary Bouma, Australian Soul: Religion and Spirituality in the Twenty-First Century (Melbourne: Cambridge University Press, 2006), p. 108. 19 Alan Gill, ‘Marcus Loane: A Man of Contradictions’, Sydney Morning Herald, 1 February 1982, p. 7. See similar comments about Loane’s complexity in ‘An Outspoken Prelate: James Murray on Archbishop Marcus Loane’, Australian, 28 April 1972, p. 11. 20 John Reid, Marcus L. Loane: A Biography (Melbourne: Acorn Press, 2005), p. 122. 21 On Loane, the most thorough biography is Allan Blanch, From Strength to Strength: A Life of Marcus Loane (North Melbourne: Australian Scholarly Publishing, 2015). 22 Marcus Loane, This Goodly Heritage: A Historical Interpretation of the Origins and Traditions of The King’s School: 1832–1982 (North Parramatta, NSW: The King’s School, 1990). 23 Loane to Alfred Stanway, 18 November 1943, quoted in Reid, Marcus L. Loane, p. 23. 24 Marcus Loane, Masters of the English Reformation (London: The Church Book Room Press, 1954), p. x. 25 Marcus Loane, ‘The English Bible’, Southern Cross, December 1969, pp. 8–9, 20. 26 Marcus Loane, ‘The Archbishop Writes’, Southern Cross, April 1970, pp. 10–1. 27 Marcus Loane, Oxford and the Evangelical Succession (London: Lutterworth Press, 1950); Cambridge and the Evangelical Succession (London: Lutterworth Press, 1952).

Empire

137

28 Reid, Marcus L. Loane, p. 82. 29 Loane, Makers of Our Heritage: A Study of Four Evangelical Leaders (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1967), p. 12. 30 Reid, Marcus L. Loane, pp. 41–3. 31 Reid, Marcus L. Loane, pp. 43–5. 32 Woods to Fisher, 10 November 1958, quoted in Reid, Marcus L. Loane, p. 48. 33 Moyes to Fisher, 1 December 1958, in Ruth Frappell et al. (eds.), Anglicans in the Antipodes: An Indexed Calendar of the Papers and Correspondence of the Archbishops of Canterbury, 1788–1961, Relating to Australia, New Zealand, and the Pacific (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1999), p. 330. Fisher agreed in his reply of 29 December, stating that Sydney ‘ought to have’ an Australian Archbishop (p. 330). 34 Moyes to Fisher. 35 Marcus Loane, ‘Obituary: The Right Rev. Hugh Gough’, Independent (UK), 29 November 1997. 36 Hugh Gough, ‘The Archbishop’s Letter’, Southern Cross, April 1963, p. 1. 37 Hugh Gough, ‘The Archbishop’s Letter’, Southern Cross, September 1961, p. 1. 38 Stephen Judd and Ken Cable, Sydney Anglicans (Sydney: Anglican Information Office, 1988), pp. 273–4; Reid, Marcus L. Loane, pp. 57–9. 39 Reid, Marcus L. Loane, p. 59. 40 ‘New Archbishop in Historic Ceremony’, Sun-Herald, 14 August 1966, p.  3. On Gilroy, see John Luttrell, ‘“Australianizing” the Local Catholic Church: Polding to Gilroy’, Journal of Religious History 36 (September 2012), pp. 335–50. 41 Loane reflected on this sermon and Johnson’s evangelical pedigree again in February 1972, ‘The Archbishop Writes’, Southern Cross, p. 12. 42 ‘The Enthronement’, Southern Cross, September 1966, pp. 2–6. 43 ‘The Enthronement’, p. 2. 44 ‘The Enthronement’, p. 3. 45 Loane’s admiration is evidenced in his multiple works on or related to Mowll, principally Marcus L. Loane, Archbishop Mowll: The Biography of Howard West Kilvinton Mowll, Archbishop of Sydney and Primate of Australia (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1960). 46 ‘Foundations of Australia Not Laid on Laziness’, Advocate (Adelaide), 29 September 1951, p. 2. 47 Murphy, Imagining the Fifties, pp. 66–7. 48 Howard Mowll, ‘President’s Address to Synod,’ Summary of Proceedings of the General Synod of the Dioceses in Australia and Tasmania, Session 1950 (Sydney, 1951), pp. 19–22. 49 Marcus Loane, ‘Presidential Address to Synod, 1970’, in Year Book of the Diocese of Sydney 1970 (Sydney: Anglican Information Office, 1971), p. 213. 50 Loane, ‘The Archbishop’s Letter’, Southern Cross, September 1967, p. 6. 51 Loane, ‘The Right Honourable Harold Holt, P.C., LL.B, M.H.R.’, Southern Cross, January 1968, p. 2. 52 Loane, ‘Presidential Address to Synod, 1968’, p. 219. 53 Loane, ‘The Archbishop Writes’, Southern Cross, January 1970, p. 2. 54 David Goldsworthy, Losing the Blanket: Australia and the End of Britain’s Empire (Carlton South, Vic.: Melbourne University Press, 2002); Curran and Ward, The Unknown Nation, pp. 154–60. 55 ‘Editorial: Now for the Next 200 Years’, Australian, 29 April 1970, p. 10. 56 Peter Robinson, ‘Withdrawal by Britain Noteworthy Coincidence’, Sydney Morning Herald, 27 April 1970. 57 Loane, ‘The Archbishop Writes’, Southern Cross, January 1970, p. 3. 58 Archbishop Frank Woods, ‘Presidential Address to the Fourth General Synod of the Church of England in Australia’, Proceedings of the Fourth General Synod

138

59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69

70 71 72 73

74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83

Empire of the Church of England in Australia, 21 May 1973 (Sydney: Anglican Press, 1974), p. 17. Loane, ‘The Archbishop Writes’, Southern Cross, January 1976, p. 11; Alan Gill, ‘Loane Attacks Govts’ Crisis Centre Finance’, Sydney Morning Herald, 5 October 1977, p. 2. Loane, ‘The Archbishop Writes’, January 1970, p. 2. ‘Enthronement Sermon, St Paul’s Cathedral, Melbourne, 17 December 1957’, reprinted in Frank Woods, Sermons and Addresses: Forward in Depth (Melbourne: Joint Board of Christian Education, 1987), p. 38. Marcus Loane, ‘The Archbishop Writes’, Southern Cross, January 1976, p. 10. Loane, ‘The Archbishop Writes’, Southern Cross, January 1976, p. 11. John Curtin, quoted in the Melbourne Herald, 27 December 1941, reprinted in Neville Meaney, Australia and the World: A Documentary History from the 1870s to the 1970s (Melbourne: Longman Cheshire, 1985), pp. 473–4. Loane, ‘The Archbishop Writes’, Southern Cross, January 1976, p. 10. Loane, ‘The Archbishop Writes’, Southern Cross, February 1976, p. 13. Loane, ‘The Enthronement’. Loane, ‘The Archbishop Writes’, Southern Cross, December 1975–January 1976, p. 10. On the changing shape of Australian immigration policy in the 1960s and 1970s, see A.C. Palfreeman, ‘Immigration’, in W.J. Hudson (ed.), Australia in World Affairs: 1971–75 (Sydney: Allen and Unwin and the Australian Institute of International Affairs, 1980), pp. 93–110. On the rise of multiculturalism as official policy, see Mark Lopez, The Origins of Multiculturalism in Australian Politics 1945–1975 (Carlton, Vic.: Melbourne University Press, 2000). Palfreeman, ‘Immigration’, p. 93. Loane, ‘Presidential Address to Synod, 1974’, p. 215. Marcus Loane, ‘The Archbishop Writes’, Southern Cross, January 1976, p. 11. Gill, ‘Loane Attacks Govts’ Crisis Centre Finance’, p. 2. On Fraser and asylum seekers, see Rachel Stevens, ‘Political Debates on Asylum Seekers during the Fraser Government, 1977–1982’, Australian Journal of Politics and History 58 (December 2012), pp. 526–41. Alan Gill, ‘Talks on Differing Immigration Views’, Sydney Morning Herald, 22 October 1976, p. 8. Unless otherwise acknowledged, the following section quotes Marcus Loane, ‘Presidential Address to Synod, 1974’, pp. 213–27. Hugh Gough, ‘The Archbishop’s Letter’, Southern Cross, July 1962, p. 2. Official Report of the Proceedings of the 26th Commonwealth Conference (Sydney, 1965), pp. 25–7, quoted in Meaney, Australia in the World, p. 705. Charles Price, ‘Immigration and Ethnic Origin’, in Vamplew (ed.), Australians: Historical Statistics, Table IEO 33–41, p. 7. D. Broughton Knox, ‘Race’, The Protestant Faith radio broadcast, 11 July 1971, reprinted in Tony Payne and Karen Beilharz (eds.), D. Broughton Knox: Selected Works, vol. 3 (Kingsford, NSW: Matthias Media, 2006), p. 195. Loane, ‘Presidential Address to Synod, 1974’, p. 222. Loane, ‘Presidential Address to Synod, 1974’, p. 222. Marcus Loane, ‘Presidential Address to Synod, 1979’, in Year Book of the Diocese of Sydney 1979 (Sydney: Anglican Information Office, 1980), p. 222. Australian politicians were commensurately slow to take up the concept of ethnically heterogeneous nationalism, a Prime Minister not evoking the term ‘multi-racial’ until 1971. In fact, the idea of a multi-culture seemed impossible, at least for Billy Snedden, who, in 1969 as Immigration Minister, said, ‘I am quite determined, we should have a monoculture, with everyone living in the same way, understanding each other, and sharing the same aspirations’. Quoted in

Empire

84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110

139

Stuart Macintyre, A Concise History of Australia, second edition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), p. 225. Cole, ‘“The Crimson Thread of Kinship”’, pp. 511–25. Loane, ‘Presidential Address to Synod, 1969’, in Year Book of the Diocese of Sydney, 1969 (Sydney: Anglican Information Office, 1970), p. 250. Loane, ‘Presidential Address to Synod, 1969’, p. 250. Loane, ‘Presidential Address to Synod, 1968’, in Year Book of the Diocese of Sydney, 1968 (Sydney: Anglican Information Office, 1969), p. 203. Loane, ‘Presidential Address to Synod, 1968’, p. 205. Bouma, Australian Soul, p. 109. Marcus Loane, ‘Presidential Address to Synod, 1972’, in Year Book of the Diocese of Sydney, 1972 (Sydney: Anglican Information Office, 1973), p. 239. Hugh Gough, ‘Presidential Address to Synod, 1961’, in Year Book of the Diocese of Sydney (Sydney: Diocesan Information and Public Relations Office, 1962). Doris LeRoy, ‘Anglicanism, Anti-Communism and Cold War Australia’, PhD Thesis, Victoria University, 2010, pp. 129–31. ‘Editorial: Advance Australia Where?’, Australian Church Record, 14 June 1973, p. 2. Janet Hawley, ‘We Want Royalty’, Australian, 2 May 1970, p. 15. Horne, The Next Australia, pp. 173–4. ‘Editorial’, Courier-Mail, 13 April 1970, quoted in Mark McKenna, ‘Monarchy: From Reverence to Indifference’, in Schreuder and Ward, Australia’s Empire, p. 281. Holly Randell-Moon, ‘Australian Secularism, Whiteness, and the British Monarchy’, in Timothy Stanley (ed.), Religion after Secularization in Australia (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015), pp. 75–89. Marcus Loane, ‘Sermon given by the Archbishop of Sydney at the service of Morning Prayer on October 21, 1973’, in Anglican Historical Society Papers, Bible House, Macquarie Park, Sydney, Box H: ‘St Andrew’s’. Serle, ‘Godzone 6: Austerica Unlimited?’, p. 244. ‘Editorial: Captain Cook: The Third Century’, Sydney Morning Herald, 29 April 1970, p. 2. Royal Visit 1970: Re-Enactment: The Landing at Botany Bay 1770, video recording, (n.d., n.p.), State Library of New South Wales Film and Video Collection. Cook, quoted in Rex Rienits, ‘A Just and Upright Man’, Australian, 29 April 1970, p. 11. ‘Editorial: The Dark Side of Endeavour’, Australian, 30 April 1970, p. 10. Noel Pollard, ‘Why Captain Cook First?’, Australian Church Record, 30 April 1970, p. 1. Marcus Loane, ‘Who Was James Cook?’, Southern Cross, May 1970, p. 11. Cf. Hugh Chilton, ‘Religious Royals in the New Australia: The Queen, the Pope, and the 1970 Cook Bicentenary’, Royal Studies Journal 5, no. 1 (June 2018), pp. 147–56. Michael Parer, Four Papal Days (Sydney: Alella Books, 1970). Desmond O’Grady, ‘Visit Unqualified Personal Success’, Sydney Morning Herald, 4 December 1970, p. 4. ‘Editorial: Pope Paul’s Visit’, Sydney Morning Herald, 3 December 1970, p. 2. For example, see the heated response to the 1969 proposal by Minister for the Interior, Peter Nixon, to dispense with European languages in favour of Asian ones: ‘We are a European outpost whose roots go back through Britain to medieval Europe and beyond to Rome and Athens and Judaea. If we cut those roots completely, our own culture will wither and die’. Sydney Morning Herald, 25 January 1969, quoted in Curran and Ward, The Unknown Nation, p. 156.

140

Empire

111 ‘Pope Paul’s Visit’, p. 2. 112 Asher Joel, quoted in Ken Hooper, ‘Ecumenism at Work’, Age, 30 November 1970, p. 4. 113 On this cooling and the recognition of it see Edwards, WASPS, Tykes and Ecumaniacs, Chapter 13. 114 Marcus Loane, ‘The Archbishop Writes’, Southern Cross, October 1970, p. 10. 115 ‘Editorial: Welcome’, Canberra Times, 30 November 1970, p. 2. 116 Loane, ‘The Archbishop Writes’, October 1970, p. 10. Cf. Blanch, From Strength to Strength, p. 244. 117 Donald Robinson, ‘Protestants and the Pope’, supplement to Southern Cross, January 1971, p. 4. Cf. Andrew Atherstone, ‘The Canonisation of the Forty English Martyrs: An Ecumenical Dilemma’, Recusant History 30 (October 2011), pp. 573–87. 118 Patrick O’Keefe, ‘Protestants Picket as Pope Prays’, Times Daily (Alabama), 2 December 1970, p. 26; ‘Pope’s Visit Planned to the Finest Detail’, Evening News (New York), 9 November 1970, p.  4. On Channing’s protest, see Edwards, WASPS, Tykes and Ecumaniacs, pp. 219–20. 119 Church Chronicle, November 1970, quoted in Edwards, WASPS, Tykes and Ecumaniacs, p. 219. 120 Graham Williams, ‘In the Steps of the Reformation: A Profile of the Anglican Archbishop of Sydney’, The Australian, 2 October 1970, p. 11. 121 ‘Editorial: Sydney and the Australian Church’, Southern Cross, December 1970, p. 3. 122 E.g. ‘Editorial: A Challenge to Evangelicals’, Southern Cross, January 1971, p. 3; Marcus Loane, ‘What Evangelicals Believe’, Southern Cross, June 1971, pp. 10–1, reprinted in Australian Church Record, 3 June 1971, pp. 3, 11. 123 ‘Editorial’, Southern Cross, August 1971, p.  5. Cf. Andrew Atherstone, ‘The Keele Congress of 1967: A Paradigm Shift in Anglican Evangelical Attitudes’, Journal of Anglican Studies, 9 (September 2011), pp. 175–97. 124 Marcus Loane, ‘The Archbishop Writes’, Southern Cross, August 1971, pp. 10–1. 125 ‘Editorial: Evangelicals and Roman Catholics Today’, Australian Church Record, 8 March 1973, p. 2. 126 ‘A Mystery Appointment’, Australian Church Record, 19 April 1973, p. 4. 127 Luttrell, ‘“Australianizing” the Local Catholic Church’, pp. 349–50. 128 Loane, ‘Sermon Given by the Archbishop of Sydney at the Service of Morning Prayer on October 21, 1973’. 129 Quoted in Jeppe Kristensen, ‘“In Essence Still a British Country”: Britain’s Withdrawal from East of Suez’, Australian Journal of Politics and History 51 (2005), p. 48. 130 Kristensen, ‘“In Essence Still a British Country”’, p. 52. 131 Loane, ‘Sermon Given by the Archbishop of Sydney at the Service of Morning Prayer on October 21, 1973’. 132 Robert Menzies, ‘Speech Welcoming Queen Elizabeth, Canberra, 18 February 1963’, reprinted in Sally Warhaft (ed.), Well May We Say: The Speeches That Made Australia (Melbourne: Black Inc., 2004), p. 547. 133 Serle, ‘Godzone 6: Austerica Unlimited?’, p. 244. 134 Manning Clark, ‘Where Are We Heading?’, Sydney Morning Herald, 27 April 1970, cited in Curran and Ward, The Unknown Nation, p. 210. 135 Loane, ‘The Archbishop Writes’, Southern Cross, January 1970, p. 3. 136 Donald Horne, ‘The British and Us 1: Mates in the Empire’, Quadrant 9 (January–February 1965), pp. 9, 13. 137 Paul Hasluck (1964), quoted in Garry Woodard, Asian Alternatives: Australia’s Decision and Lessons on Going to War (Carlton, Vic.: Melbourne University Press, 2004), p. 263.

Empire

141

138 On decline narratives, see David Nash, Christian Ideals in British Culture (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), pp. 160–83. On the Church of England, see Peter Webster, ‘Race, Religion and National Identity in Sixties Britain: Michael Ramsey, Archbishop of Canterbury, and His Encounter with Other Faiths’, in Charlotte Methuen, Andrew Spicer, and John Wolffe (eds.), Christianity and Religious Plurality, Studies in Church History 51 (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2015), pp. 385–98; Daniel S. Loss, ‘Missionaries, the Monarchy, and the Emergence of Anglican Pluralism in the 1960s and 1970s’, Journal of British Studies 57 (July 2018), pp. 543–63. 139 Ian Moffitt, ‘Protestants Search for a Light on the Hill’, Australian, 25 May 1973, p. 9. 140 McKenna, ‘Monarchy’, p. 264. 141 For example, Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory (London: Duckworth, 1981); Edward Shils, Tradition (London: Faber and Faber, 1981); Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger, The Invention of Tradition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993). 142 On these changes in the era of decolonisation and since, see Kevin Ward, A History of Global Anglicanism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006); Todd M. Johnson and Gina A. Zurlo, ‘The Changing Demographics of Global Anglicanism, 1970–2010’, in David Goodhew (ed.), Growth and Decline in the Anglican Communion, 1980 to the Present (London: Routledge, 2017), pp. 37–54. 143 Article 34 of the Thirty-Nine Articles, reprinted in An Australian Prayer Book (Sydney: The Standing Committee of the General Synod of the Church of England in Australia, 1978), p. 635. 144 Kuhn, The Ecclesiology of Donald Robinson and D. Broughton Knox. 145 Bebbington, Evangelicalism in Modern Britain, p. 271.

5

Renewal The Jesus People, the counter-culture and Kairos, 1973

Protest at Parliament The grassy forecourt of Old Parliament House in Canberra has been the scene of some prominent protests, especially in the early 1970s. The Aboriginal Tent Embassy, erected on Australia Day 1972 and variously removed and reconstructed over the following year, and the clash of pro- and antiabortion activists in May 1973 reflected a growing tide of civic demonstrations and popular activism in Australia and abroad in the late 1960s and early 1970s.1 While nothing in the period ever occurred in Canberra on the scale of the 250,000 who had swelled the National Mall in Washington, DC and the 100,000 cramming the streets of Melbourne to protest against the Vietnam War in 1970, or even the 40,000 who gathered in Trafalgar Square in London to launch the Nationwide Festival of Light in 1971, these demonstrations were intimately connected to the broader emergence in Western democracies of a new mood of popular protest on both sides of the sociopolitical spectrum.2 On the first weekend of March 1973, just before Gough Whitlam’s newly elected federal Labor government sat for the first time, a rather unfamiliar protest took place outside the Parliament. Over 2,000 adolescents and young adults, gathered from around Australia, marched through the streets of the Australian capital behind three 10-foot-high wooden crosses and under banners declaring ‘The Real Revolution: Jesus!’3 Preceded by the roar of 40 Harley-Davidsons from John Smith’s recently formed ‘God Squad’ Christian Motorcycle Club, the (mostly) long-haired, Levi-clad ebullient youth surrounded Parliament House, chanting, ‘We love you Australia!’, ‘How many ways are there? One Way!’ (with the customary ‘Jesus salute’ of an upraised index finger), and ‘What does Gough need? Jesus!’4 Over the rest of that autumnal weekend, they lounged on the lawns to the tunes of Christian folk and rock bands; they heard Bible readings and sermons, including by establishment figures such as the Anglican Bishop of Canberra and Goulburn, Cecil Warren; they joined hands to pray for the nation and its new leaders, and greeted them and any Canberra locals, including members of the recently established Chinese embassy, with carnations and a specially

Renewal

143

produced newspaper explaining their call for ‘Liberation’ through Jesus.5 Though sharing similarities with the non-violent festival atmosphere of Woodstock or its Australian equivalent, Sunbury, this protest was so different from those that had come before, claimed the organisers, they ‘even had a garbo [garbage] detail to make sure the place was left spotless’.6 Naming their protest festival ‘Kairos’ (a Greek New Testament word meaning the appointed time, or an opportune moment), these self-styled ‘street Christians’ of the ‘Jesus Movement’ sought to present their own very public response to the new era symbolised by the election of Whitlam in December 1972, playing on his memorable election slogan, ‘It’s Time’. This chapter explores the meaning, purpose and significance of what the Kairos Live! record claimed was ‘for the first time the flexing of the muscles in public

Figure 5.1 Jesus People hold protest signs at Kairos, a music festival-cum-protest at Parliament House, Canberra, in March 1973. Source: © Ramon Williams. Used with permission.

144

Renewal

of what the popular press has come to call the Jesus Revolution’.7 This gathering expressed a new and complex response to the de-Christianisation of Australian public culture during the long 1960s. It tells us much not only about a changing evangelical youth culture but about the broader tendency of evangelicalism to adapt and ‘re-indigenise’ itself within new cultural contexts.8 Although the Jesus Movement was short-lived in the public eye, it represented a profound shift in evangelical attitudes to popular culture and social policy, and had lasting implications for the way evangelicals understood their place in a pluralist, post-Christendom nation. This chapter seeks to understand these ‘holy hippies’ and their search for radical renewal in three stages: first, examining the rise of an international counter-culture and a distinctive Australian Jesus Movement; second, exploring how the Movement’s ‘radical evangelicalism’ interacted with national identity and public policy at Kairos ’73; and third, considering the influence of the Jesus Movement on the public face of Australian evangelicalism after the ostensible end of ‘Christian Australia’ during the long 1960s.

The global counter-culture and the Australian Jesus Movement The Jesus Movement of the late 1960s and early 1970s arose in creative tension with the broader mood of youth disaffection which American sociologist Theodore Roszak termed ‘the counter-culture’.9 Reacting against the perceived stolidness and hypocrisy of middle-class American social and political institutions, the shattered idealism of the Kennedy era and the subsequent mire of Vietnam, significant numbers of young people of high school and university age were ‘dropping out’ of ‘the system’ and attempting to pursue ‘alternative lifestyles’ (the phrase itself, noted Donald Horne, was something of a neologism of the period).10 Many turned to communal living experiments, ‘free love’, Eastern mysticism and the occult, and psychedelic drug ‘trips’ either to escape reality or to experience an enhanced expression of it. They sought a third way between capitalism and communism, rejecting what Jacques Ellul had dubbed ‘the technological society’ and its emphasis on efficiency, materialism and authority, and searching for radical alternatives.11 Amidst these attempts to seek a more authentic and unscripted way of being human, there arose in California’s 1967 ‘Summer of Love’ a new movement of counter-cultural young Christians, variously dubbed ‘Jesus People’, ‘Street Christians’ or ‘Jesus Freaks’ (a term of opprobrium which they proudly adopted, much as the Methodists had done two centuries before). Sharing many of the markers of the counter-culture in casual dress, ‘hip’ language, a delight in the natural world and an aversion to middle-class norms, the Jesus People claimed to hold out a better solution to the problems of the technocracy. They had found ‘the high without the hang-ups’ (in the words of Billy Graham at a 1969 rock festival in Miami), and a fuller expression

Renewal

145

of the romanticism, nativism and spiritual experimentation of the counterculture.12 On a rising tide of popular music which was starting to focus on spirituality in general and Jesus in particular – epitomised in the 1970 smash hit rock opera Jesus Christ Superstar, which brought fame to Andrew Lloyd-Webber and Tim Rice – being an evangelical in the hippie mould had become, oddly enough, ‘groovy’.13 Clad in ‘witnessing gear’ (bumper stickers reading ‘Break the hate habit, love your neighbour!’ and pins with the ‘One Way’ logo), they were widely visible on American streets sharing their new discovery with classic evangelical zeal.14 The Movement came to such influence in the United States that in 1971 it featured on the front of Time magazine – five years after the seminal pictureless cover which asked ‘Is God Dead?’ – as well as in substantial articles in Look, Life, Newsweek and the Wall Street Journal.15 From within evangelicalism, it received the endorsement of none less than Billy Graham, whose hugely popular 1971 book The Jesus Generation claimed that ‘Jesus Christ can no longer be ignored’, and that the Jesus Movement ‘may be the answer to the prayer of millions of Christians’ for ‘spiritual awakening’.16 To use the title of one of the many contemporary books on the Movement, this was ‘old-time religion in the age of Aquarius’, and a potential sign of God’s continued civic compact with the nation whose God is the Lord.17 Despite the ubiquity of the Jesus Movement in the bright media flash of 1971, it has been largely ignored since. If they acknowledge it at all, most historians have often viewed it as an interesting but inconsequential sidelight to broader patterns of secularisation, or have focused more intently on the influence of the New Left, new religions and non-religious conservative youth activism. Increasingly, however, scholars are recognising the significance of the Jesus Movement within evangelicalism and within American (and, to a lesser degree, Canadian) culture.18 Drawing particularly on Larry Eskridge’s definitive study God’s Forever Family, two major histories of global evangelicalism note the long-term impact of the Movement on evangelicalism, in promulgating a new rapprochement between Christianity and popular culture, passing on Biblicist activism to a new generation, and sowing many of the seeds for the charismatic renewal movement which reached full flight in the 1980s, particularly in the arena of ‘praise music’.19 New attention has also been given to the surprising role of the Jesus People in the emergence of both the ‘New Christian Right’ in the late 1970s and the ‘moral minority’ of an evangelical left, both of which continue to play an influential part in American political culture.20 Similar attention is still lacking on the transnational nature of the Jesus Movement and its influence in Australia. Though some studies have been made of actors and organisations within the Movement, only John Smith, a self-described ‘insider’, has attempted to trace out its trajectory and significance as a revitalising and radicalising influence in denominational Church life.21 As with many other new social ferments, including the counter-culture, the Jesus Movement took off in Australia with something of a time lag.

146

Renewal

Though youth ‘coffee shops’ – relaxed Christian ‘drop-in’ centres, usually including some form of music, message and spiritual counselling – had been a feature of Church life since the early 1960s, the Australian evangelical scene did not witness similar expressions of the ‘Jesus Revolution’ in earnest until 1970, and this did not attract the attention of the popular media until late 1971 and early 1972.22 The origins of the Australian Jesus Movement lay in the establishment in April 1970 of the House of the New World, a non-denominational Christian drop-in centre, training hub and drug referral base, occupying a rented shop-front in suburban West Ryde, Sydney. Baptist clergyman John Hirt, a former mechanic converted at the 1959 Billy Graham crusade, had previously founded Christian Boardriders in an early attempt to reach the growing surfer sub-culture.23 With three other ministers – two Baptists and one Anglican – Hirt began the House of the New World as a parachurch ministry to connect with the broader counter-culture.24 In his recollection, the Church of the day ‘was not counter-culture, the church was pro-culture’, and offered little in its medium or message which might engage with the emergent youth hunger for authenticity, communalism and political activism.25 Most ministers, he wrote in the early 1970s, were ‘tolerably harmless men who have perfected the art of tea drinking and biscuit nibbling’, and the churches were ‘a massive testimonial to irrelevance, a mouldering vastation of victorian [sic] virtue’.26 That Hirt referred to tea drinking and Victorian social mores may hint at an anti-British strand to his anti-ecclesiasticism; he later described the ‘traditional Australian view of the Clergy’ as those who ‘spoke with “plumb in the mouth sounds” and tried to act as posh “poms”’.27 The House of the New World attracted positive attention from evangelical churches and mainline denominations (it featured on the June 1971 cover of the Sydney Anglican magazine Southern Cross), with Hirt regularly in demand as a guest speaker at churches and schools.28 It also drew the interest of the secular press, particularly when New South Wales Minister for Transport Milton Morris, an evangelical Baptist and keen Christian Endeavourer, met members of the God Squad Christian Motorcycle Club at the House, or when the ‘golden girl’ of the Munich Olympic Games, Shane Gould, became a Christian and joined the community.29 The swimmer recalled the breadth and intensity of the House’s concern for social engagement: The people in this community were deeply concerned about big issues such as nuclear technology, ethics, world economics and social justice. . . . There were books and tapes in the library, and discussions about issues to which I had never been exposed. My Olympic experiences seemed overrated by comparison. I heard talks by people like the prominent trade union leader, Jack Mundey, by psychiatric social workers and the Hare Krishnas. . . . It was wonderful stuff, and all new to me.30 Similar Christian shared houses and drop-in centres quickly sprang up across the country, taking such colourful names as ‘The House of Freedom’

Renewal

147

in Brisbane (founded by Baptist theologian Athol Gill), the ‘House of the Risen Son’ in Wollongong, the ‘Jesus Light and Power House’ in Melbourne and the ‘Soul Hole’ and ‘High House’ in Perth. While these tended to be non-denominational and ecumenical, some were closely connected to existing church ministries, such as Fred Nile’s ‘Jesus Commune’ in Surry Hills, Sydney, which grew out of the 1971 ‘Newness New South Wales’ Mission and was an official arm of Alan Walker’s Central Methodist Mission, or Peter Corney’s ‘The Master’s Workshop’, which he created in his capacity as director of youth ministry in the Anglican Diocese of Melbourne.31 That Nile, a disciplined conservative, was so closely involved in the Jesus Movement spoke to its breadth. Other ministries formed out of long-running non-denominational evangelical youth organisations such as the Theos ministries run by John U’Ren in Victoria as part of the Scripture Union.32 Still others sought to reach particular sub-groups, such as Methodist clergyman John Smith’s ‘God’s Squad’ which positioned itself in the world of outlaw motorcycle clubs.33 Consequently, the ‘Jesus Movement’ was decentralised and eclectic. It included ‘hippies’, ‘surfies’, ‘sharpies’ and ‘straights’. While most young evangelicals did not go so far as to join a Christian commune, they did identify with the Jesus Movement through their consumption of its cultural products. They listened to Larry Norman’s ‘Jesus Rock’, read Os Guinness’s cultural exegesis, tuned in to John Hirt’s weekly radio broadcast ‘Hirt Line’, heard seminars on culture by Athol Gill and adopted the widely disseminated strategies of the Jesus Movement in their school and churchbased evangelism.34 It was through this broader energising of evangelical youth culture, rather than the more radical, pioneering efforts of Hirt, Smith and Gill, that the Jesus Movement had a deep and lasting impact on Australian evangelicalism. While links were certainly established with American Jesus People from the outset, Australian leaders of the Movement were eager to affirm that theirs was an authentic indigenous creation, and one of much greater depth than that found in the pages of Time. This was, claimed Baptist theologian Athol Gill in a 1973 ABC radio series on ‘The Christian Counter Culture’, ‘not simply a pale imitation of an American prototype’ but a movement which began ‘long before anyone had heard of the American Jesus Revolution’.35 John Hirt travelled to the centre of the radical spring, Berkeley, California in 1972 (as well as visiting Francis Schaeffer and Os Guinness at L’Abri in Switzerland and Jesus Movement leaders in Norway), and returned somewhat disappointed by the political conservatism and theological superficiality he saw in organisations like the Christian World Liberation Front.36 Though his House of the New World, along with other Christian counter-culture centres, reprinted news and resources from the American Jesus Movement, and invited American and British figures to Australia on speaking tours, Hirt and others sought distinctly Australian ideas and motifs. One reader of John Smith’s Truth and Liberation newspaper was anxious for it to be less ‘American-oriented’, given what he sensed was ‘a strong opposition to trends of the United States, due I think to the

148

Renewal

terrible American blunders in Indo-China’. While this correspondent might well have noted the opposition of many in the American Jesus Movement to their own government’s actions in Vietnam, his deeper aversion to any derivative sense of evangelical identity still stood. He wanted a paper – and a movement – that was ‘By Australians, For Australians and of Australians’.37 (That he was re-appropriating a central phrase of the American democratic myth, the closing words of Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, seemed to escape his notice.) Perhaps the jibe of critics accentuated this anxiety about authenticity. Ted Noffs, the celebrated leader of the Central Methodist Mission’s Wayside Chapel in Kings Cross, Sydney, and a decided theological radical, dismissed the Australian Jesus Movement as ‘the Billy Graham brand of Christianity with a few beads and long hair’.38 As with the counter-culture more broadly, there was no shortage of sceptics.39 This charge seemed as much about Graham’s American identity as his evangelical theology; as with other criticisms of Graham previously discussed, that Noffs used the word ‘brand’ seems no idle choice. At a symbolic level, this search for cultural authenticity manifested itself in the adoption of Australian fauna as markers of identity, as in the case of the House of the Gentle Bunyip in Melbourne (one of the Movement’s longest-running and most influential experiments), which found that mythic mammal an appropriate representative as ‘an Australian creature in search of his own identity’.40 Athol Gill, who had established the House of the Gentle Bunyip as another experiment following The House of Freedom in Brisbane, recalled that the choice of the bunyip, with its Aboriginal Dream Time origins, was influenced by the House’s emphasis on incarnational ministry, or ‘the gospel becoming real in the Australian context’.41 They also sought a symbol which would capture the sense of a shared journey, and found it in the recent publication of an award-winning children’s book, The Bunyip of Berkeley’s Creek.42 The protagonist journeyed from its billabong home to find its identity, only to be laughed at and rejected by various other Australian animals. Not until the bunyip encountered another of its own species did it find peace.43 The story emphasised for Gill the importance of a communal expression of the Christian life, and of the expectation of being misunderstood and rejected on the quest for an authentic, counter-cultural identity.44 At the level of praxis, the groups sought to define themselves in opposition to the usual criticisms levelled at the popular American Movement. They were not all ‘drop-outs’, nor anti-Church, anti-intellectual, or premillennialists. They would not adopt a proof-text approach to the Bible, nor buy into the wild popularity of Hal Lindsey’s post-apocalyptic treatise The Late Great Planet Earth, using the ‘rapture’ as an excuse for social disengagement – or in John Smith’s words, an ‘eschatological relax-a-tab’.45 Rather, they sought to engage with social problems intellectually and practically, drawing on Jesus’ incarnation and suffering as a model for mission to society’s outcasts, ‘the little people’.46 They were Biblicists and activists, like conservative evangelicalism

Renewal

149

in their concern for a recovery of the original meaning of the New Testament, but self-consciously unlike it in their application of the gospel to mission and lifestyle. In this way they came to define themselves as ‘radical evangelicals’, committed to ‘radical discipleship’. What was meant by ‘radical evangelicalism’? Though deeply influenced by the ‘religionless Christianity’ of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the Jesus People were not merely an echo of the radical British ‘South Bank’ theology epitomised in Honest to God and the more American ‘Death of God’ debates in the mid1960s. They saw themselves as radically re-oriented towards the words and works of Jesus in the gospels, repeatedly defining ‘radical’ with reference to its Latin etymology: radix, concerned with ‘roots’.47 They stressed a recovery of ‘the Biblical Jesus’, who was ‘the Radical Jesus’. ‘We are re-emphasising what the first Christians started with,’ claimed Fred Nile in 1972. ‘Jesus said, “Believe in me” and we are going to zero in on Jesus’.48 ‘We wanted to be free to find the boldness and fidelity of Jesus[’] quest again,’ recalled John Hirt; ‘the un-church tainted Jesus.’49 Whereas, they claimed, most conservative theologians had viewed the gospels and acts as descriptive and the Epistles as prescriptive, the Jesus People sought to obey the Sermon on the Mount just as earnestly as the injunctions of Paul. They endeavoured, in Athol Gill’s words, ‘to take seriously the teaching of Jesus and to apply it to life in the modern technocracy’.50 In seeking to apply the teachings of Jesus to their lifestyle, the Jesus People demonstrated a primitivist desire to return to the first century and, specifically, the pre-Constantinian Church. Ken Rolph of the House of the New World, writing in the Kairos newspaper about the Church’s complicity in ‘the environmental crisis’ (itself a rather new concern in the early 1970s), apportioned blame to Constantine’s ostensible embrace of Christianity in 313 A.D. ‘From then till now,’ he argued, ‘the Christian hierarchy has been getting cosier and cosier with the established order, to protect its own power, position and property.’51 By contrast, the Jesus People wanted the Church to occupy a prophetic minority position in a pagan society, much like the original Jesus People, ‘preaching the Gospel and expounding its implications with such fervour that it was not long before they were threatening to undermine contemporary social structures’.52 They were not alone in their cynicism towards Christendom. Whitlam himself, when lavishing praise on the influence of Christianity in elevating ‘respect for women and sanctity of human life’, constrained this to ‘the First Centuries’, ‘before it became established, before Constantine’.53 For these radical evangelicals, the rupturing of this Christendom relationship, dramatised in the election of an avowedly non-Christian social democratic Prime Minister, was cause not for dismay and withdrawal but freedom and opportunity. ‘We really were Bible people,’ reflected Smith, pointing to the role of the Persian King Cyrus in returning the exiled Israelites to Jerusalem, ‘so when we read that God uses a pagan ruler to liberate the children of Israel, and a pagan ruler to put money into the temple, you know, why not?’54

150

Renewal

The arrival of Whitlam and Kairos ’73 After 23 years in opposition, the Australian Labor Party, led by Gough Whitlam, was elected in December 1972 on a wave of popular support and with a wide-ranging ‘program’ for the nation which they wasted no time in implementing.55 Some Church leaders, like the Anglican Primate Frank Woods, were concerned about the raft of changes made by the duumvirate of Whitlam and his deputy Lance Barnard, who occupied all cabinet posts for the first two weeks of the new government.56 But to most members of the Jesus Movement, Whitlam’s arrival signalled a new and hopeful era. As with many other youth who had experienced, to quote Keith Hancock’s 1973 Boyer Lectures, ‘always their government, never our government’, this was ‘the first change of government many of us have known,’ wrote Harvey Volke in the Kairos paper. ‘That very fact forces us to ask what kind of society we want to live in’.57 One of the performers at Kairos, Ross Langmead of the Jesus folk band Daddy’s Friends, recalled Whitlam’s aura: ‘He had a messianic appearance and a stentorian voice and a wonderful sense of idealism.’58 Many commentators, especially from the left, shared these hopeful sentiments. Russel Ward called the election ‘the end of the Ice Age’, a moment when ‘Australians decided, not before time, to step forward into reality’.59 Manning Clark, as was his custom, evoked biblical motifs, announcing an end to the ‘years of unleavened bread’ and the arrival of ‘a teacher who had a chance to lead us out of the darkness into light’.60 Of course, such perceptions of Whitlam as the harbinger of the new belied the fact that much of the change he symbolised had already been affected since at least the retirement of Menzies in 1966. The left’s narration of Whitlam as Messiah played into the narrative of an Australia belatedly come of age and struggling to catch up with the 1960s of the North.61 While Langmead and other Jesus People celebrated the mood of new hopes embodied in Whitlam, they also noted the avowed agnosticism of this ‘fellow-traveller’, and the absence of any Christian references in his election campaign. (Compare this to the 1954 Labor platform, which envisaged an Australia ‘destined under Divine Providence to be truly great’ and ‘making a worthy contribution to Christian ideals’.)62 They were quick to point out that political change alone could not bring in the New Jerusalem. ‘In the afterglow of victory’, the ‘only acknowledgement of the spiritual basis of our problems that you gave was to cast yourself as the Southern Hemisphere’s Christ,’ wrote the Kairos protesters in an open letter to the Prime Minister. ‘Mr Whitlam, it is only the power of Jesus Christ that will give Australia new men to build a new world’, they enjoined. ‘We urge you to give up any messianic pretensions’.63 True solutions to the problems of pollution, war, unemployment, drug abuse and the alienation of the technocracy would require more than a change of government or a behaviour-centred alteration of social structures. ‘If we seek merely to put coats of political paint over the top of the nasty nature of man

Renewal

151

then we eventually will reap that which we have sown’, warned John Smith from the Kairos platform.64 The Jesus People affirmed the classic evangelical belief in personal conversion as the fountainhead of national renewal. But unlike their more pietistic brethren, they sought to express conversion in a radical lifestyle and support for socially progressive policies. They drew on the radical communal vision of majority world evangelical leaders like René Padilla of Ecuador and the Anabaptist political ideas of North American Mennonite John Howard Yoder, both of whom visited Australia.65 Using Luke 4:18, the same passage of scripture which formed the theme of the Lausanne Congress on World Evangelisation the following year, and which featured strongly in liberation theology, they spoke of ‘Jesus the Liberator’, and Kairos as the moment of his arrival: ‘In Jesus a new day rises: proclaiming liberty to the captives, recovery of sight to the blind, and freedom to the crushed and broken-hearted’.66 While this did not necessarily make for uncritical acceptance of Marxist dialecticism – Kairos Chairman David Claydon mounted a thorough critique of the theory of Herbert Marcuse – it usually equated to a democratic socialist outlook.67 In practice, this meant the Jesus People supported many of the social policies of the Whitlam government – the end of conscription, environmental protection, land rights for Aboriginal people, needs-based education funding and universal medical insurance.68 On matters of personal morality, however, they digressed from the government’s seemingly libertarian idealist agenda, affirming traditional Christian understandings of sexuality and drug use.69 The Jesus People’s strong eschatological vision, calling Australians to become members of the ‘new world’, did not mean they had no political vision for the earthly nation. To use Richard Ely’s dialectic of corporate and civic Protestantism, though their stress on conversion, discipleship and community evinced a deep commitment to corporate Protestantism, at Kairos, the Jesus People were also renewing their commitment to civic Protestantism, to a special responsibility for Australia in God’s purposes.70 When Harvey Volke of the House of the New World asked at Kairos where the country was heading – ‘Quo Vadis Australis?’ – he appealed to a sense of national responsibility and divine destiny. It was ‘not without accident that our society is placed within South East Asia’, he wrote, and Australia had a responsibility ‘for sharing our riches with our Asian brothers’. In addition, the nation’s ‘tragic history’ of its treatment of Aboriginal people and its racist immigration policies were ‘sub-Christian’ – implying that the nation could or should pursue a ‘Christian’ foreign policy. Acknowledging the radical idealism this entailed, Volke’s article in the Kairos ’73 newspaper was accompanied by an illustration of Gough Whitlam protesting against Jesus’ commands: ‘Jesus, I couldn’t do that . . . they’d crucify me’.71 The Jesus People were, in explicit ways, drawing on the rhetoric of the ‘new nationalism’. They called for the consummation of Federation-era hopes for Australia to fulfil divine purposes. Though Edmund Barton had declared ‘a continent for a nation, and a nation for a continent’, they found themselves ‘still struggling for our nation’. The civic fibre of its citizens had

152

Renewal

Figure 5.2 A flyer produced by the House of the New World around the time of Kairos ’73. One side featured a reproduced handbill from the 1890s promoting the Federation of the British colonies into a new Commonwealth. The other appealed to a new nationalism for the 1970s. Source: John Hirt, A New World: House of the New World Training Resources (West Ryde, NSW: House of the New World, 1974). © John Hirt. Used with permission.

been found wanting. ‘Is this its image,’ they mused in a pre-election handbill prepared by the House of the New World (Figure 5.2): ‘a beer-sodden Anzac myth sitting on his tucker box – his cornucopia of steady money, long week-ends, footie and beating up on the missus – while he howls “I’m all right Jack” at the harvest moon?’72 The Jesus People came to Kairos to declare materialism’s bankruptcy, that ‘the great Australian dream is just not enough’.73 Much like J.D. Pringle, A.A. Phillips, Ronald Conway and Donald Horne, amongst a coterie of other intellectuals, the Jesus People were critiquing a mediocre, parochial and superficial Australian culture, or at least the image of it. And yet, as Whitlam’s anticipated cry of impossibility suggested, like these commentators, the Kairos protesters found critique came more easily than practical solutions. Indeed, it was far easier to call on Whitlam to recognise God’s authority than it was to suggest how this conviction would create the policies for a new and better nation. It was easier to

Renewal

153

march through the streets of the capital and sing on the lawns of Parliament than it was to sit in the seat of power.

Self-theologising: radical evangelicals rethinking national public culture While few politicians seemed to notice the celebratory demonstration occurring outside the Parliament on that March weekend, and the mainstream media similarly paid little attention, Kairos ’73 had lasting significance for Australian evangelicalism and its engagement with national public culture (though perhaps not quite to the extent envisaged by the Australian Evangelical, which claimed Kairos to be potentially of more long-term significance ‘than even the central issue of Black rights or the controversial issue of abortion’).74 At the instigation of David Claydon, the Chairman of Kairos and Federal Secretary of the Scripture Union, Labor MP Frank Stewart, then federal Minister for Tourism and Recreation, convened a Frontier Youth Workers’ Consultation in Melbourne in September 1973. The Consultation brought together 75 ‘frontier youth workers’ – those operating amongst subcultures and outside traditional youth ministry organisations. The Scripture Union, with the support of the National Youth Council, invited as guest speakers Michael Eastman from the Frontier Youth Trust in the United Kingdom, and Dr Jack Sparks from the Christian World Liberation Front in Berkeley, California, arguably the leading Jesus Movement figures in Britain and the United States, respectively.75 Claydon’s report of the proceedings, which was ‘distributed widely’, identified the failure of traditional community organisations to socialise young people and the consequent emergence of new forms of pastoral work amongst sub-cultures of ‘unattached’ or delinquent youth.76 The report argued that effective work with such youth, regardless of whether its ‘value system’ was religious or otherwise, ought to receive the support of the federal government through initiatives such as a national resource centre, greater liaison with police and government sponsorship of a free newspaper for semi-literate youth.77 Drawing on the message of Kairos, more ‘establishment’ figures were advancing similar calls for a religiously informed values education. Referring to the Kairos protesters’ ‘Open letter to Mr Whitlam’, Harry Dean, formerly acting headmaster of Sydney’s elite Methodist boys’ school Newington College, called for the teaching of Christian values to address problems that are ‘not technological or political’ but ‘moral and spiritual’.78 While not quite a ‘revolution for Jesus’, Dean’s appeal nevertheless seemed to endorse Kairos’s goal of being ‘a symbolic declaration that Jesus Christ is real in the lives of a large number of people’.79 Amongst the churches, Kairos helped to legitimise the Jesus Movement as a serious expression of evangelical piety and political demonstration. The Australian Festival of Light’s launching rally in South Australia in October 1973, and its ‘rehearsal’ for expansion into New South Wales through the January

154

Renewal

1974 Christian Endeavour ‘Nowtime’ Convention in Sydney (orchestrated by Nile) both drew strongly on the Kairos mix of protest and celebration, of a call to national repentance and a stress on ‘positive’ values.80 The logos of both ‘Nowtime’ and the AFOL featured the ‘One Way’ upraised finger of the Jesus People. One British commentator on the launch of the Festival in Britain in 1971 noted the significance of its fusion of pop culture and moral protest, disarming those who viewed the Festival as yet another traditionalist movement to oppress youth: ‘For the first time, using the weapons of pop culture, that is demonstrations and music, Jesus had won.’81 In contrast to the straight-laced temperance campaigners of a previous generation, the Jesus People were showing that evangelicals could be morally conservative and culturally progressive, shunning premarital sex and respecting authority while embracing rock music, long hair and brightly coloured clothes. The description of the youth ministry at the Highway Methodist Church in Western Sydney by one of its lay leaders, Ron Page, is a good example. The ‘Highway Hide’a’way’, started in 1969, stressed ‘acceptance’ and ‘relevancy’ as the keys to communicating with counter-cultural youth. Its weekly meeting was held in the ‘utilitarian’ church building, where the transformation from traditional church layout to a multi-purpose hall with a stage and chairs around tables created ‘an atmosphere of nonconformity’. It was ‘open to all and dress is no barrier’. While smoking was not encouraged, the smoker was still welcome. ‘A few problems related to this “most grievous sin” (while babies burn with napalm) have been ironed out,’ wrote Page. ‘The conclusion reached was that “people” are our prior concern. Cigarettes are incidental.’82 That this old shibboleth of evangelical piety was summarily dismissed as an irrelevant legalism based on some sort of group consensus reflected the freedom young evangelicals were claiming in their approach to culture. Concern from the mainstream denominational churches over their stand on smoking was also muted; after all, the questions posed by the Jesus People had moved on. They were now asking ‘Would Jesus smoke grass?’83 This recasting of traditional evangelical piety to embrace some elements of the changing cultural context and tolerate others also saw an expansion of the social issues upon which evangelicals focused. Ron Page was adamant that a broad social engagement was not foreign to historic evangelical identity, appealing to the Evangelical Revival’s example of ‘Christians with hearts aflame’ who ‘erased child labour, slavery, and poor working conditions of women in one blow’ – a powerful, if overstated, narrative amongst some evangelicals. Essential to this renewed engagement was recognition of intellectual complacency, ‘that Christians are no exception when it comes to lazy minds’.84 The wide range of complex new social issues facing Christians in the 1970s required serious study, and if the clerical leaders of denominational churches could not provide compelling answers, the lay activists of the Jesus Movement saw it as their responsibility to take up the slack. First in the pages of the Jesus papers and the seminars of the

Renewal

155

various intentional communities like the House of the New World (through its ‘Research Lab’), and then more systematically in research organisations such as the Zadok Institute for Christianity and Culture (established under the leadership of Claydon as a partnership between Scripture Union and the Australian Fellowship of Evangelical Students), new issues such as ecology, the arts, Aboriginal land rights and a simple communal lifestyle were vigorously explored.85 This occurred within a growing transnational evangelical left. Close links were shared with British and American activists and intellectuals such as Os Guinness, Jim Wallis and Ronald Sider, as well as Latin American evangelicals including René Padilla and Samuel Escobar.86 As with most networks discussed in this book, ideas travelled both ways; publications such as Athol Gill’s radical discipleship studies were widely circulated in the United States, suggesting a new global evangelical left.87 The lack of formal theological or higher research training amongst most members of the Australian Jesus Movement arguably stimulated more vigorous intellectual endeavour and ‘self-theologizing’.88 While experts of a range of theological and political standpoints were regularly called upon for seminars and ‘teachins’, the emphasis was on lay Christians debating and discerning their own answers to the theological and political questions of the 1970s. A prime example of this lay intellectual evangelical radicalism was the launch in December 1974 of the magazine On Being. Coming ‘from almost nowhere’ – or, more accurately, the ‘backroom shambles’ of the West Hawthorn Baptist Church in Melbourne – it was a surprising success, enduring until 1998.89 The opening editorial by Kevin Smith, Information Officer for the newly formed Evangelical Alliance Relief (TEAR) Fund and a Jesus Movement leader, set out its intellectually participative agenda: On Being aims to be a forum for thinking Christians. We encourage you to write back to us with your viewpoint on any issue that is raised or that you wish to raise. . . . We look forward to writers from every sphere of life bringing their own peculiar viewpoint to the Christian public.90 In its inaugural issue, the magazine featured both national political issues (its first article in the ‘Transcultural Mission’ section was entitled ‘The Australian Aboriginal and You’), and global problems with a local focus (such as an interview with young public health researcher Trevor Cutter on global hunger and the comparative gluttony of Australians, calling for ‘The Needed Christian Food Shortage’).91 It included detailed Bible study notes with supplementary excerpts from church historian Eusebius and a panel of experts on the usefulness of various Bible translations.92 It included reviews of books (Jacques Ellul’s The Politics of God and the Politics of Man), films (such as American Graffiti, set in 1962, when ‘the American flag was the flag of the Church’, in ‘apostate America before the apostasy had reaped what it had sown’), and records (by Leo Sayer and Gene Cotton, both commended for not being ‘pretentious’). It featured an extended analysis of the

156

Renewal

1974 federal election, criticising not only the major parties for their lack of vision but also the Festival of Light for its failure to challenge ‘the idolatrous religious roots of today’s society’ and ‘the dominant, determining role of the State in moulding the shape of society’.93 The author, Stewart Fowler, a young Melbourne Baptist pastor and president of the nascent Foundation for Christian Scholarship, expressed the heart of radical evangelicalism’s attitude towards the idea of a Christian Australia: We must expose the myth that beneath our society somewhere, at deepest level, is a Christian foundation, on which we can take a stand. It is a dangerous illusion created by a deadly mixture of Christian jargon giving an air of Christian respectability to thinking rooted in the idolatry of the modern Baal. Till we recognise this we will not make any real progress in the development of a truly Christian alternative that can begin to deal with the sickness of today’s society.94 The Jesus People, at least those of Fowler’s radical evangelical ilk, would not join with laments for a lost Christendom, nor unquestioningly support selfdescribed ‘Christian’ political parties, such as Nile’s Call to Australia Party. A conscientious rethinking of the whole political system, from the ‘radix’ of Jesus’ resurrection and ascension as Lord of a new humanity, shaped their response to the decline of old assumptions about the marriage of Christ and Western culture.

‘Discovering Australian-ness’ One dimension to this conscientiousness and interaction with majorityworld evangelicals was the growing search for a ‘contextualised’, ‘authentic’ Australian spirituality. Decolonisation and the transfer of Church leadership from Western missionaries to indigenous Christians stimulated a questioning of the cultural accretions shaping theology and lifestyle. Nationalism became a potent issue for evangelicals. A particular irony of the Australian experience of this re-evaluation was the simultaneous search for a postimperial national identity; just as Western (especially American) Christians were being impugned for their enmeshment of the gospel with particular cultural values, settler colonies of the West, especially Australia, were wondering what cultural values they could actually claim as their own. Often it was the observation of outsiders that prompted this introspection. Visiting British evangelical Os Guinness’s diagnosis of ‘overseasure’ – the preference for visiting preachers, artists and musicians over Australians – prompted Kevin Smith to ask when his fellow Christians would ‘stop knocking just for the sake of knocking and start listening and appreciating the gifts that God has given in this country’.95 On Being set out to redress that imbalance. In part, it did so by promoting Australian Christian musicians and evangelists, but more significantly by

Renewal

157

providing a forum for the discussion of a distinctive Australian approach to evangelical faith and witness.96 From late 1977, an increasing stream of articles on belief and national identity appeared in On Being, mostly authored by Mal Garvin. A jewellery craftsman converted at 15 through the Sydney City Mission, in 1960 Garvin founded Teen Crusaders as a ministry to unchurched and troubled youth in Hornsby, followed by ‘The Attic’, a counter-culture coffee house.97 In January 1977, he delivered a seminar on ‘Youth in Australian Society’ at the National Christian Youth Convention, an annual gathering of 1,600 Christian adolescents and youth leaders that was also addressed by the Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser. John Walker, a young evangelical attendee, found Garvin’s examination of national identity the most profound aspect of the Convention. ‘This discovery of my “Australianness” was a revelation,’ he wrote, ‘and its implications for me as a Christian are staggering.’98 Others were also intrigued by Garvin’s exploration of national identity in articles such as ‘The National Religion: Sport and the Australian Consciousness’ and ‘The Rise of the Home-Grown Brain’.99 In answer to the question ‘Is a unique Australian form of Christianity possible?’ he claimed that ‘the longer you’re in the Christian Church, the more alienated you tend to become from your Australian peers’. The Greek rationality that dominated Christian thinking was inimical to the more intuitive, Hebraic nature of much of the Australian ‘“currency” consciousness’ (a reference to the free-spirited first generation of Australian-born Europeans, nicknamed ‘currency lads and lasses’), and, Garvin suggested, the Bible itself. Citing Donald Horne’s The Lucky Country, he laid blame not at the foot of the people but their leaders – in this case, the institutional Church. Australians needed practical, not abstract, expressions of Christianity.100 John Magor of Nairne in South Australia took issue with this, finding Garvin’s series ‘interesting’ but a thinly veiled, ungrateful attempt ‘to knock the established Christian Church’, and that by a seemingly elitist ‘intellectual outsider’.101 David Green of Eastern Creek in Sydney’s west disagreed, siding with Garvin and taking aim at ‘other major constituents of the establishment’ beyond the churches who ‘reject the notion of a distinctively Australian cultural mind-set’ (he added the telling concession: ‘Nascent as it may be’).102 Andrew Piper of Ryde in Sydney also found Garvin’s message ‘clear and direct’, pointing to ‘the obvious failure the Australian Church is having in making any meaningful impact on the Australian culture and the vast majority of Australian people’.103 The Jesus People devoted significant energy to apprehending and amending this sense of cultural alienation, and were joined by the broad mainstream of Australian evangelicalism. Often under the umbrella of the newly formed Evangelical Alliance, they participated in a number of conventions in the mid-to-late 1970s focusing on a renewed understanding of the gospel and an exegesis of Australian culture. One of the fruits of such initiatives was the development of a ‘gum-leaf theology’, reflecting some of the

158

Renewal

nativist impulses in the counter-culture and the Jesus Movement.104 Convict origins and Anzac myths became a regular feature of discussions, as at the 1978 Middle Earth Convention which chose as its title ‘Footballs, Meat Pies, Kangaroos & Jesus Christ’.105 Rough and uncultivated Australian ‘Ocker’ paraphrases of the Bible were in an effort to make the scriptures sound more at home in Australia. For instance, see this rendering of the Parable of the Prodigal Son: There once was a man who lived on his old man’s station out in the scrub. He was getting uptight hanging around the station all the time, so he went to his old man and said, ‘Listen Dad, when you kick the bucket, me an’ Joe’s gunna get what’s left of this place after probate. How’s about you give me my share now, so’s I can hit the road?’ The old boy fairly cracked up, but when he cooled down, he sold off half the station and gave the young bloke his cut. The young boy headed straight for the big smoke. Soon as he reached King’s Cross, he hit the booze, got among the sheilas and did the rounds of the casinos. Soon after, the recession hit.106 As entertaining as they were, such renderings, saturated in the bush worker images of the late nineteenth century which had been depicted as quintessentially Australian, were not representative of the vast majority of Australians in the 1970s.107 Such attempts to locate a sufficiently unique Australian expression of Christian truth invariably ran aground on the reality of how foreign rural or military themes were to most Australians. As Charles Sherlock, a young Anglican lecturer at Melbourne’s Ridley College, retorted, before proceeding on ‘an Ocker Ozmaniacal campaign’ proponents of such contextualisation ought to recognise that the majority of Australians, ‘especially women’, had rejected the Ocker ideal as ‘simplistic and sub-human – including the very chauvinistic, maudlin notion of “mateship”’. Australia, he pointed out, was ‘multicultural, multilingual, multi-racial, multi-just-abouteverything’. So was the gospel and the institutional Church, ‘the most varied group in our society’. ‘What we need is not another, new gospel,’ Sherlock concluded, ‘but to take up the challenge of the old, universal gospel in our diverse world.’108 While proponents of such attempts to ‘Australianise’ the scriptures were usually aware of their openness to ridicule and rebuke (‘[s]ome would say it’s sacrilege’, conceded one advocate), they sincerely believed in the need for such a project of contextualisation.109 ‘If we are going to be serious about a distinctively Australian form of Christianity, we must come to terms with these home-grown Australian notions and ideals’, wrote John Harrison in 1978: For in spite of insistent argument to the contrary by many Christians, there has never been any Christian consensus in Australian society. There has never been a golden age when Christian values reigned supreme

Renewal

159

in Australia. The primary values in Australian society since 1788 have been non-Christian values, and those who argued otherwise have either misrepresented Australian history or never read it.110 Chris Walker, son of Australia’s most successful postwar evangelist, the Methodist Alan Walker, wrote: ‘Australia has always been secular. We cannot look back to a time when religion was pre-eminent. The early period of Australia’s history set the tone for the nature of Australia’s social life.’111 Christianity had never really taken root in Australia, argued the radical evangelicals. There was, in effect, no ‘Christian Australia’ to pass away in the 1960s, for it had never properly existed in the first place. The task of ‘renewal’ after the religious crisis of the 1960s appeared to be not so much about ‘re-indigenising’ Christianity, but about indigenising it properly for the first time. As might be expected, this reading of the history of Australian Christianity as dissonant with the prevailing culture drew on similar nationalist language amongst public intellectuals which blamed the nation’s seemingly shallow identity on a persistent colonial deference to Britain. Australia’s was a thwarted nationalism, held back by ‘antiquated British ideas’ or threatened by ‘“new and improved” American ideas of equally dubious validity’.112 The expressions of these old or new ill-suited importations were clear: middleclass materialism and simplistic presentations of the gospel. Anglican clergyman and sociologist Bruce Wilson, who expanded on such themes in his 1983 book Can God Survive in Australia?, wrote of this ‘middle-class straight-jacket’, which made most Australians unable to ‘see much difference between their own worship of Mammon and the Volvo Christians of our suburban churches’.113 David Millikan, the first Director of the Zadok Institute and presenter of the 1981 ABC documentary series The Sunburnt Soul: Christianity in Search of an Australian Identity, argued that Australians were not rejecting the universal gospel so much as an overly simplified and universalised presentation of it. He took as an example the widely distributed Four Spiritual Laws tract produced by Bill Bright and the conservative evangelical American student ministry Campus Crusade for Christ.114 In 1979, Uniting Church minister Bruce Prewer published Australian Psalms, which was widely read, along with his Australian Prayers (1983). He, too, lamented the derivative, ‘less real’ view many Australians held about their native land, yet looked back beyond European settlement in hope that ‘the authentic Australian psalms will be written by our Aboriginals’.115 Wilson, Millikan and Prewer all argued that a distinctively Australian theology was possible without perpetuating the narrow ‘Ocker’ notion of national identity no longer representative of most Australians. Such discussions made a brief but colourful impact on the mainstream media. Editors could not help but run lines such as ‘Praise the Lord, mate’, while cartoonists enjoyed portraying the preacher in his singlet and football shorts welcoming his congregation of ‘dearly beloved mates and sheilas’ (Figure 5.3).116 Despite the protests of those like Wilson and Millikan, even

160

Renewal

Figure 5.3 Jesus People mates and sheilas cartoon Source: The ‘gum-leaf theology’ of the Jesus People was an easy target for parody in the press. ‘Dearly beloved mates and sheilas . . .’. Cartoon by George Molnar, Sydney Morning Herald, 13 January 1979. © Fairfax Media. Used with permission.

the discussion of an indigenised Christianity seemed to confirm the sense of cultural cringe that persistently dogged celebrations of national culture and vocabulary. Lest these attempts at indigeneity be read as examples of evangelicals being out of touch with their culture, two points should be made. First, for all the elite criticism of the ‘gum-leaf theology’, the laity seemed enthusiastic for signs of change. Though only modestly ‘Australian’ – containing, for example, no mention of Aboriginal Australians – the publication in 1978 of An Australian Prayer Book was widely welcomed and utilised as an attempt to express historic Anglican beliefs in the language of modern Australians.117 Portly, singlet-clad Catholic layman Bill Lyall’s 11 television commercials in 1978, in which he played a street cleaner sharing short stories about Jesus ‘for average blokes in ordinary language’, were well-discussed around Australia and were played on the BBC and the NZBC.118 The most successful product in ABC retail outlets at Christmas 1985 was a cassette recording entitled The Day the Grog Ran Out and Other Stories from the Big Book.119 The formation of the Uniting Church in Australia in 1977 was hailed as the arrival of a distinctive Australian expression of the ‘pilgrim people of God’, to use a newly favourite phrase. The relative success of attempts to connect with the ‘average’ Australian in

Renewal

161

‘ordinary language’, freeing the gospel from foreign dress or clerical abstractions, reflected the strong sense of lay activist identity that had so characterised the Jesus People. Second, if the search for an ‘essential’ Australian spirituality was complicated for evangelicals, it was just as ambiguous a quest for all others attempting to define the post-imperial nation. One example of many was the replacement of royal honours with the Order of Australia in February 1975 – announced by the Governor-General, Sir John Kerr, who later that year would dismiss Gough Whitlam’s government in an act which became emblematic for radical nationalists of all that was wrong with constitutional monarchy. The Australian expressed ‘no doubt that the Order of Australia (OA) will be labeled as the Ocker Award’, and was proved right.120 Satirists had a field day. The award ‘stirred a penchant for ridicule even among its supporters’, observed James Curran and Stuart Ward.121 The assumption that no plausible local symbols of nation could be found to replace those bequeathed by Britain was only confirmed by the almost farcical decision a year later, by Malcolm Fraser, to adopt a dual system, reinstating imperial honours while maintaining the new Order of Australia. The urge to find new symbols of a national people and past without the civic culture of Greater Britain, and the persistent struggle to do so, was a problem experienced well beyond the Christian fold. In fact, that the Jesus People and other Christian progressives were experiencing similar challenges affirms just how attuned they were to national questions. Some more conservative evangelical leaders resisted the whole idea of an Australian theology. ‘We don’t talk about contextualising theology, or we shouldn’t,’ said Uniting Church theologian Alan Loy in 1987 – ‘that is arrogant’. ‘And we should never talk about an Australian theology . . . [t]hat’s awful’. The gospel was already contextualised through the incarnation, he argued. The task of the theologian was to ‘go about doing theology in and with the Australian context’ and then ‘let that theology tell us its name eventually’. For Loy, practical, rather than cultural or national, theology was the answer to the urge for relevance.122 The anthropocentric claim by some proponents of contextual theology that the ‘first word in theology [must] be a word about human beings, about the human venture, in particular about the Australian experience’ obviously jarred with the Reformed evangelical emphasis on the sovereignty and supremacy of God, and on the primacy of propositional revelation.123 Yet more culturally complex reasons also existed. Moore College lecturer (and later Archbishop) Peter Jensen’s wariness about the search for an Australian theology was based, in part, on a concern not to minimise Australia’s Western heritage.124 The search for deeper cultural engagement took on a different approach into the 1980s, as the Jesus Movement’s leaders matured and the counterculture faded from view. John Smith’s God Squad ran major missions across a number of Australian towns and cities, and in 1982 spent eight months visiting almost every government high school and university in

162

Renewal

Adelaide.125 In their leathers and Levis, quoting Albert Camus, Bob Dylan and the Apostle Paul, these very different evangelicals were good copy in the mainstream media. Other aspects of the Movement disappeared, in part because of the faltering of Aquarian enthusiasm, arguably embodied in Australia by the dismissal of the Whitlam Labor government in November 1975 and subsequent return to Liberal-Country Party rule until 1983. Many of the Movement’s coffee houses and drop-in centres closed or transitioned into ‘house churches’ or Restorationist fellowships, which tended to be more socially conservative and focus on activism at a local rather than a national level.126 In the lead-up to the 1988 Bicentennial, marking 200 years since the First Fleet of convicts settled in Sydney, a spate of books by Jesus Movement leaders emerged, interpreting Australia’s past and future within mythic Christian frames. They included Smith’s Advance Australian Where? and Garvin’s Us Aussies: The Fascinating History They Didn’t Tell Us at School.127 Both drew deeply on radical nationalists Russel Ward and Manning Clark to account for the seeming lack of a Christian thread to national self-understanding, to the stifling of the spirituality of the ordinary people by their establishmentarian religious leaders. Despite deploying these arguments, Smith was adamant he was not ‘in any sense a nationalist’ (by which he meant a chauvinistic nationalist), just someone who emulated Jesus’ incarnation into the ‘dusty places’ of Palestine, attempting to ‘appreciate every aspect of my environment’.128 Mal Garvin, whose organisation Teen Crusaders had since become Fusion International, helped to organise two large gatherings in Canberra in 1985 and 1988, closely modelled on Kairos. The second of these, the Bicentennial National Prayer Gathering or ‘Aussie Awakening’ on 10–11 May 1988, drew 40,000 Christians to the new Parliament House (over three times larger than the number who turned out for its official opening the following weekend in the presence of the Queen). Once again they joined hands in prayer and marched through the streets ‘to remind the nation that a uniquely Australian church had come into being’.129 The coalition had broadened beyond the ‘radical evangelicals’ and now encompassed all the mainstream Protestant denominations, Roman Catholics, and a number of increasingly active ministries with American origins, such as Youth With a Mission. One of these was the controversial Logos Foundation, started in 1969 by New Zealand Baptist pastor Howard Carter and drawing heavily on the theocratic ideas of Christian Reconstructionism.130 The Awakening also differed in its mainstreaming of the charismatic renewal movement which had made substantial inroads into Protestant and Catholic practice from the mid-1970s. In 1973, Methodist Alan Langstaff had formed the Temple Trust to promote interdenominational and international charismatic renewal, especially through links to the British Fountain Trust established by Michael Harper. In 1977, the Assemblies of God had set a new course of growth under the energetic Commonwealth Superintendent Andrew Evans, laying the foundations for

Renewal

163

the rapid expansion and mainstreaming of Pentecostal churches such as Hillsong in the ensuing decades.131 Warning ‘that all nations rise or fall depending on their relationship to the glory of God’, the Awakening’s leaders pointed to economic stagnation, mental health crises, family breakdown and other negative trends, crowned by the prospect that inclusion of reference to God in the opening of the new Parliament would be ‘an after-thought’. ‘Was God about to be removed from his throne in Australian life?’, they asked. In response, they called upon the ‘grass roots of the Australian Church’ to ‘rise up against the things that would disintegrate, dehumanise and degrade us’. The gathered thousands prayed against spiritual enemies, and, appropriating a phrase attributed to Portuguese navigator Pedro Ferdinand de Quiros in 1606, proclaimed Australia ‘the Great South Land of the Holy Spirit’.132 The nation, they believed, had a special role to play in the providence of God, not as a bastion of Greater Britain, but as a land – distinctly a land, in its particular physicality – set apart for a new outworking of the Spirit in social transformation through revival. At the start of the new millennium, when Mal Garvin chaired Sydney’s involvement in the Global March for Jesus (a celebratory worship and prayer demonstration by seven million Christians around the world), culminating in the ‘Awakening 2000’ festival in the new Olympic stadium, he embraced a mysterious ‘lost verse’ to the national anthem ‘Advance Australia Fair’, which declared: With Christ our head and cornerstone, We’ll build our nation’s might Whose way and truth and light alone Can guide our path aright.133 The verse, which had actually been written by Sri Lankan immigrant and English teacher Ruth Ponniah in 1988, was later sung in the presence of Prime Minister John Howard on two occasions, at Hillsong Church in 2002 and St Andrew’s Cathedral in 2005.134 Though a long way from lounging on the lawns of Parliament, and now singing of building the nation’s might rather than critiquing its materialist hubris, some members of the Jesus People were, in their later years, still seeking to affirm the civic Protestant covenant of their forebears, writing their version of the Christian story into the nation’s song.

Conclusion: advance Australia where? In June 1973, three months after Kairos, the conservative Sydney Anglican evangelical Australian Church Record editorialised on the first months of the Whitlam government. Under the same title as Smith’s later book, ‘Advance Australia Where?’, it catalogued the ‘swarm of social issues’ Whitlam had

164

Renewal

mooted – including abortion on demand and ‘easy divorce’ – and lamented his decisions to dispense with British symbols of nationhood – the replacement of ‘God Save the Queen’ with a new anthem, and the removal of the Sovereign’s official title ‘Defender of the Faith’. The editorial concluded with the sorry claim that ‘[n]ever before have Christians in Australia been so forcibly reminded that they are a despised minority’.135 As the pace of religious change accelerated from the 1960s onwards, and the traditional influence of Christians on political processes became less and less welcomed (particularly in the Whitlam government), Kairos’s tension between prophetic public protest and affirmation of a new, primitivist minority status seemed to offer a creative path for evangelical engagement in the life of the nation. Influenced in part by the increased presence of non-Western evangelical voices (a theme central to the next chapter), a similar pluralisation of evangelical politics was occurring in the United States and Britain, suggesting the rise of what David Swartz has described as an international evangelical left.136 The radical evangelical dimension to this broader movement sought to focus on the call to conversion and a Christian counter-cultural lifestyle in opposition to nominalism and middle-class affluence. In many ways, this was one of the most striking expressions of corporate Protestantism to emerge from the rupture of the Sixties. That said, the Jesus People continued to affirm a civic Protestant sense of national identity and purpose, not eschewing nationalism but seeking to redeem it. Further from the lawns of Parliament, the Movement’s embrace and sanctification of the counter-culture opened up new freedoms for Christian self-expression in clothing, language, music and lifestyle – arguably the most effective, if unplanned, effort at ‘re-indigenising’ Christianity in postChristendom culture. Its echoes in continuing attempts to, for instance, ‘Australianise’ the Bible into the twenty-first century, suggest something of the cultural awareness it helped stimulate.137 Though they prosecuted their call for a return to the teachings of Jesus as the true ‘radix’ of Christian faith with singular zeal, the Jesus People – perhaps inadvertently – also showed that there was more than ‘one way’ to be an evangelical Christian in Australia. And perhaps one of their most novel contributions to that radical renewal of public evangelicalism was their insistence on the first prerequisite for authentic Christianity to flourish in Australia: the dismissal of the idea that there ever was a ‘Christian Australia’ at all.

Notes 1 On the Aboriginal Tent Embassy, see Heather Goodall, Invasion to Embassy: Land in Aboriginal Politics in New South Wales, 1770–1972 (Sydney: Sydney University Press, 2008 [1996]), especially pp. 396–417. On the abortion demonstrations, see ‘Editorial: Abortion on Request’, Canberra Times, 9 May 1973, p. 2; Stuart Fowler, ‘Christian Concern in the Parliamentary Lobbies’, in Harris, Hynd and Millikan (eds), The Shape of Belief, p. 149. 2 Jon Piccini, Transnational Protest, Australia and the 1960s: Global Radicals (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016).

Renewal

165

3 The Australian Church Record gave the number of participants as 1,000 from Canberra and surrounds, over 600 from Sydney, 450 from Melbourne, 60 from Brisbane, four from Tasmania and three from South Australia. ‘Young People Appeal to Nation’s Leaders’, 22 March 1973, p. 1. 4 Unidentified voices, Kairos Live! [sound recording] (Hornsby, NSW: Heaven, 1973). 5 ‘When the Young Saints Went Marchin in . . . on Canberra’, Church Scene, 15 March 1973, p. 8. 6 Dust cover of Kairos Live! 7 Dust cover of Kairos Live! 8 Hutchinson and Wolffe, A Short History of Global Evangelicalism, p. 204. 9 Theodore Roszak, The Making of a Counter-Culture: Reflections on the Technocratic Society and the Making of Its Youthful Opposition (New York: Doubleday, 1969). 10 Horne, Time of Hope, p. 42. 11 Jacques Ellul, The Technological Society, trans. John Wilkinson (New York: Vintage Books, 1969). 12 Martin, A Prophet with Honor, p. 376. 13 I.J. Mikulski, ‘Jesus People Sound Groovy’, Catholic Weekly, 7 May 1971, p. 4, quoted in Larry Eskridge, God’s Forever Family: The Jesus People Movement in America (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013), p. 133. 14 Eskridge, God’s Forever Family, pp. 85–92, and Chapter 6 in general. 15 ‘The New Rebel Cry: Jesus Is Coming!’, Time, 21 June 1971, pp.  56–63; ‘Is God Dead?’, Time, 8 April 1966; ‘The Jesus Movement Is Upon Us’, Look, 9 February 1971, pp. 15–21; ‘The Groovy Christians of Rye, NY’, Life, 14 May 1971, pp. 78–86; Newsweek, 22 March 1971, p. 97; Earl C. Gottschalk, Jr., ‘Hip Culture Discovers a New Trip: Fervent, Foot Stompin Religion’, Wall Street Journal, 2 March 1971, p. 1. 16 Billy Graham, The Jesus Generation (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1971), pp. 11, 22. On the significance of Graham’s endorsement of the Jesus People, see Larry Eskridge, ‘“One Way”: Billy Graham, the Jesus Generation, and the Idea of an Evangelical Youth Culture’, Church History 67 (1998), pp. 83–106. 17 Ronald Enroth, Eric Ericson, and C. Breckenridge Peters, The Jesus People: OldTime Religion in the Age of Aquarius (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1972). 18 Key American works include David Di Sabatino, The Jesus People Movement: An Annotated Bibliography and General Resource (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1999); John Turner, Bill Bright & Campus Crusade for Christ: The Renewal of Evangelicalism in Postwar America (Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press, 2008); Eskridge, God’s Forever Family. On Canada, see Bruce Douville, ‘Christ and Counterculture: Churches, Clergy, and Hippies in Toronto’s Yorkville, 1965–1970’, Social History 47 (November 2014), pp. 747–74. 19 Hutchinson and Wolffe, A Short History of Global Evangelicalism, pp. 204–7; Stanley, The Global Diffusion of Evangelicalism, pp. 195, 206. 20 Preston Shires, Hippies of the Religious Right (Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2007); David Swartz, Moral Minority: The Evangelical Left in an Age of Conservatism (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012). 21 John Smith, The Origins, Nature and Significance of the Jesus Movement as a Revitalization Movement (Lexington, KY: Emeth Press, 2011). Examples of studies of communities and individuals within the Australian Jesus Movement include Marita Munro, ‘A History of the House of the Gentle Bunyip (1975– 90): A Contribution to Australian Church Life’, MA Thesis, University of Melbourne, 2002; Philip Muston, ‘John Smith: A Charismatic and Transformational Religious Leader’, MA Thesis, Edith Cowan University, 2001; John Hirt, ‘Radical Discipleship: Towards the Theology and Socio-Political Implications’,

166

22

23

24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33

34

35 36 37 38 39 40

Renewal PhD Thesis, The University of Sydney, 1998; Jim McKnight, Australian Christian Communes (Cobbity, NSW: Trojan Head, 1990). E.g. ‘Jesus Revolution Now in Queanbeyan’, Canberra Times, 6 November 1971, p. 16; Marie Toshack, ‘Drop-Ins: The Answer to Drop-Outs?’, Sydney Morning Herald, 20 April 1972, p.  25. On previous Christian attempts to engage with youth through ‘drop-in’ centres, see for example, Stuart Barton Babbage’s recollection of his ‘Deano’s Crypt’, a coffee shop operating in the crypt of St Paul’s Anglican Cathedral in Melbourne in the mid-1950s, in Memoirs of a Loose Canon, p. 116. On the emergence of an evangelical ministry amongst the surfing sub-culture, particularly in the late 1970s with Christian Surfers Australia, see David Tyndall, ‘Evangelicalism, Sport and the Australian Olympics’, PhD Thesis, Macquarie University, 2004, pp. 174–6. Christopher Dawson, ‘The Christian Revolutionaries’, Sydney Morning Herald, 15 February 1972, p. 6. John Hirt, Interview with the author, 24 January 2013. John Hirt, ‘True Renewal’, seminar paper in House of the New World Training Resources (West Ryde, NSW.: House of the New World, 1974), n.p. Hirt, ‘Radical Discipleship’, p. 181. Alan Nichols and Philip Muston, ‘Two Views of the House’, Southern Cross, June 1971, pp. 8–9. Dawson, ‘The Christian Revolutionaries’, p. 6; ‘Shane Gould Wants Christian Life’, Spokesman Review, 15 June 1975; Winfred Bisset, ‘What of the Golden Girl of Munich?’, Australian Women’s Weekly (June 1976), pp. 8–9. Shane Gould, Tumble Turns: An Autobiography, second edition (Pymble, NSW: HarperCollins, 2003), pp. 119–21. Don Wright, Mantle of Christ: A History of the Sydney Central Methodist Mission (St Lucia, Qld: University of Queensland Press, 1984), pp. 188–91; ‘The Master’s Workshop’, promotional flyer, n.d., in possession of Peter Corney. Alan Gill, ‘A New Image for Scripture Union’, Sydney Morning Herald, 28 September 1973, p. 15. E.g. ‘Jesus Love Spills Over to Bikies and Outlaws’, Truth & Liberation 1 (c. 1972), p. 4; ‘God’s Squad’, Truth & Liberation 1 (c. 1972), p. 4. On the formation of the God’s Squad in 1972, which initially began in Sydney under Paul Eddison, but expanded under Smith to a Melbourne chapter, see John Smith and Malcolm Doney, John Smith: On the Side of the Angels (Sutherland, NSW: Albatross Books, 1987), pp. 149–61. Os Guinness’s 1973 analysis of the counter-culture, The Dust of Death: A Critique of the Establishment and the Counter Culture, and the Proposal for a Third Way (Downers Grove, IL: Inter-Varsity Press, 1972), was widely influential, according to Smith, The Origins, Nature and Significance of the Jesus Movement, p. 255, n. 18. On the dissemination of strategies, see the range of American, British and Australian Jesus Papers produced in the 1970s. On Hirt’s radio broadcasts, see ‘Radio Parson’, Sydney Morning Herald, 2 September 1972, p. 15. Athol Gill, ‘The Christian Counter Culture: 4 talks by Dr. W.A. Gill Broadcast on the A.B.C. Second Network 25th, 26th, 28th and 29th June, 1973’, transcript, p. 2. John Hirt, Interview with the author, 24 January 2013. Philip Sydenham, ‘Letter to the Editor’, Truth & Liberation 1 (n.d.), p. 7. Dawson, ‘The Christian Revolutionaries’, p. 6. For example, Craig McGregor, ‘What Counter-Culture?’, Meanjin Quarterly 34 (March 1975), pp. 40–4. Cf. Shirleene Robinson, ‘1960s Counter-Culture in Australia’, p. 129. House of the Gentle Bunyip promotional flyer, n.d., Whitley College Archives, Melbourne, House of the Gentle Bunyip Collection (hereafter HGBC). On the

Renewal

41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53

54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61

62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70

167

House, see Munro, ‘A History of the House of the Gentle Bunyip (1975–90)’ and Harold Pidwell, A Gentle Bunyip: The Athol Gill Story (West Lakes, SA: Seaview Press, 2007). ‘Unity at the Centre: Lessons on Diversity in Community: An Interview with Athol Gill’, Sojourners, 22 June 1990, p. 21. Jenny Wagner, illustr. Ron Brooks, The Bunyip of Berkeley’s Creek (Sydney: Puffin Books, 1974). Munro, ‘A History of the House of the Gentle Bunyip’, p. 39. ‘Unity at the Centre’, p. 21. Smith, The Origins, Nature, and Significance of the Jesus Movement, p. 201. Hirt, ‘True Renewal’. E.g. ‘The Master’s Workshop’, promotional flyer, n.d., in possession of Peter Corney. Fred Nile, quoted in Dawson, ‘The Christian Revolutionaries’, p. 6. Hirt, ‘Radical Discipleship’, p. 180. Gill, ‘The Christian Counter Culture’, transcript, p. 10. Ken Rolph, ‘The Environment Crisis’, Kairos ’73, p. 6. Athol Gill, ‘Evangelism and the Counter-Culture’, Address to the South Pacific Congress on Evangelism, Leigh Memorial Church, Parramatta, 15–19 May 1974, in HGBC, Box 2. Gough Whitlam, ‘Transcript from the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) of the Conversation between Edward Gough Whitlam and Lord Chalfont Recorded in Sydney on 16 September 1973’, section 11, p. 17, in Papers of Graham Freudenberg, Whitlam Prime Ministerial Collection, Whitlam Institute, Western Sydney University. John Smith, Interview with the author, 5 April 2013. Frank Bongiorno, ‘Whitlam, the 1960s and the Program’, in Troy Bramston (ed.), The Whitlam Legacy (Annandale, NSW: The Federation Press, 2013), pp. 34–41. ‘What the Government Has Done and Might Do’, Australian Church Record, 5 April 1973, p. 4. Cf. Frank Woods, ‘Presidential Address to the Fourth General Synod of the Church of England in Australia’, p. 16. Keith Hancock, Today, Yesterday and Tomorrow: The 1973 Boyer Lectures (Sydney: The Australian Broadcasting Commission, 1973, p. 15, emphasis in original; Harvey Volke, ‘Quo Vadis Australis?’, Kairos ’73, p. 7. Ross Langmead, Interview with the author, 3 April 2013. Russel Ward, ‘The End of the Ice Age’, Meanjin Quarterly 32 (1973), p. 6. Manning Clark, ‘The Years of Unleavened Bread: December 1949 to December 1972’, Meanjin Quarterly 32 (September 1973), p. 250. A point made by Horne, Time of Hope; Nathan Hollier, ‘From Hope to Disillusion? A Literary and Cultural History of the Whitlam Period, 1966–1975’, PhD Thesis, Victoria University, 2006; Kristy Yeats, ‘Australian New Left Politics, 1956–1972’, PhD Thesis, The University of Melbourne, 2009. ‘Party Viewpoints: Labour [sic], Vision of Development of a Growing Nation’, Mercury, 27 May 1954, p. 5. ‘An Open Letter . . .’, Kairos ’73, p. 3. John Smith, ‘Hey Mr. Prime Minister: What Is the Answer?’, Truth & Liberation 1 (1973), n.p. Smith, The Origins, Nature, and Significance of the Jesus Movement, p. 205. Dust cover of Kairos ’73, and p. 2. David Claydon, ‘Anatomy of Revolution’, Free Slave, no. 1 (1971), p. 2. See especially the following short articles in the Kairos ’73 newspaper: Ken Rolph ‘The Environment Crisis’, p. 6; Volke, ‘Quo Vadis Australis?’, pp. 6–7; Frank Maas, ‘Education and Society’, p. 7. E.g. ‘Sex and Society’, Kairos ’73, p. 1. Ely, ‘Protestantism in Australian History’, pp. 11–20.

168

Renewal

71 Volke, ‘Quo Vadis Australis?’, p. 6. 72 All the preceding quotes are from ‘Australia’s Sons Let  .  .  .’, handbill, n.d. [1972?], in House of the New World Training Resources. 73 Kairos ’73, p. 2. 74 ‘Australia’s “Jesus People”’, Australian Evangelical, July–August 1973, p. 16. Mainstream media attention was limited to brief articles in the Sydney Morning Herald (‘Crusaders gather at Parliament’, 4 March 1973, p.  31) and the Canberra Times (‘Youth Rally to Proclaim Faith’, 24 February 1973, p. 14). 75 ‘SU Plans National Round of Youth Seminars’, Church Scene, 27 September 1973, p. 8. 76 Frank Stewart, Commonwealth Parliamentary Debates, House of Representatives, 5 November 1975, p. 2842. 77 David Claydon, Report and Recommendations from the Australian Frontier Youth Workers’ Consultation, Melbourne, September 24–28, 1973 (unpublished report, 1973), pp. 31–46. 78 H.S. Dean, ‘A Return to the Teaching of Social Values’, Canberra Times, 4 October 1973, p. 2. 79 Kairos ’73, p. 2. 80 Helen Caterer, ‘Festival Brought 10,000 to March in Adelaide’, Church Scene, 8 November 1973, p. 5; Alan Gill, ‘The “Jesus” Invasion: Churches Enthusiastic about Backlash against Permissiveness’, Sydney Morning Herald, 9 January 1974, p. 7. 81 Michael Jacob, Pop Goes Jesus: An Investigation of Pop Religion in Britain and America (London: Mowbrays, 1972), p. 14. 82 Ron Page, ‘Highway Hide’a’way’, Australian Christian Endeavourer, February 1971, p. 14. 83 ‘Would Jesus Smoke Grass?’, R.A.P.: Revolutionary Action Power, no. 1 (February 1971), p. 1. 84 Page, ‘Highway Hide’a’way’, p. 14. 85 For a sample of Zadok’s early work, see the House of the New World’s periodical Research Output: A Resource Bulletin for Thinking Christians (November 1979), pp. 11–2. 86 See for example the 1974 visit of Os Guinness and On Being’s November 1978 cover story on ‘Latin American Christianity: A Talk with Samuel Escobar’, pp. 4–6. 87 David Batstone, ‘A Follower of Jesus: The Living Legacy of Athol Gill’, in David Neville (ed.), Prophecy and Passion: Essays in Honour of Athol Gill (Adelaide: Australian Theological Forum, 2002), p.  24; David Swartz, ‘Embodying the Global Soul: Internationalism and the American Evangelical Left’, Religions 3 (September 2012), pp. 887–901. 88 On this concept of ‘self-theologizing’, see Paul Hiebert, Anthropological Insights for Missionaries (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, 1985), pp. 195–6. 89 Gerald Davis, ‘Australia’s Religious Press’, in Harris, Hynd, and Millikan (eds), The Shape of Belief, p. 191. 90 Kevin Smith, ‘The Baby’s Born!’, On Being, December 1974, p. 3. 91 Jim Taylor, ‘Transcultural Mission: The Australian Aboriginal and You’, On Being, December 1974, pp.  14–5; ‘The Needed Christian Food Shortage’, pp. 8–11. 92 David Boan, ‘On Being Bible Study Guide’, pp. 17–20, 25–6; ‘Which Bible Is Best for YOU?’, pp. 29–33. 93 ‘Mediawise Review’, pp. 34–5; Stewart Fowler, ‘The Myth of Polarized Politics’, pp. 39–40. 94 Fowler, ‘The Myth of Polarised Politics’, p. 39. 95 Kevin Smith, ‘Editorial: We’re Talkin about Ourselves . . . Again!’, On Being, October–November 1975, p. 3.

Renewal

169

96 For examples of On Being’s promotion of Australian Christian music, see its April 1979 ‘C’mon Aussie C’mon!’ music supplement, and an interview with architect and guitarist Peter Campbell, a member of the House of the New World who sang at Kairos and at the Lausanne Congress. Owen Salter, ‘Peter Campbell: The Muso and Christian’, On Being, August 1978, pp. 19–22. 97 Kevin Smith, ‘How Contemporary Youth Work Has Evolved’, Church Scene, 7 June 1973, p. 7. 98 John Walker, ‘One Man’s Opinion’, On Being, February–March 1977, p. 39. 99 On Being, October–November 1977, p. 62; On Being, February–March 1977, p. 35. 100 Mal Garvin, ‘Is a Unique form of Christianity Possible?’, On Being, July 1978, p. 28. 101 John Magor, ‘Being Responsive: Australian Christianity’, On Being, August 1978, p. 58. 102 David Green, ‘Being Responsive: Missing the Boat on Australian Christianity’, On Being, September 1978, p. 49. 103 Andrew Piper, ‘Being Responsive: Head in the Sand’, On Being, September 1978, pp. 49–50. 104 Smith, The Origins, Nature, and Significance of the Jesus Movement, p. 213, and n. 34. Cf. Darren Cronshaw, Credible Witness: Companions, Prophets, Hosts and Other Australian Mission Models (Springvale, Vic.: Urban Neighbours of Hope, 2006), especially ‘Appendix: Australian Theology’, pp. 160–78. 105 Peter Mendham, ‘Communicating the Gospel in Australia today’, On Being, December 1978–January 1979, p. 9. 106 Quoted in John Harrison, ‘The Gospel for Ockers’, On Being, December 1978– January 1979, p. 4. 107 See Russel Ward, The Australian Legend (Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1958). 108 Charles Sherlock, ‘Being Responsive: Ozmania’, On Being, March 1979, p. 50. 109 Harrison, ‘The Gospel for Ockers’, p. 5. 110 Harrison, ‘The Gospel for Ockers’, p. 5. 111 Chris Walker, ‘Five Possible Points of Engagement’, in Hinton (ed.), Being Christian in Australia, p. 53. 112 Harrison, ‘The Gospel for Ockers’, p. 5. On the idea of ‘thwarted nationalism’, see Meaney, ‘Britishness and Australian Identity’, p. 77ff. 113 Bruce Wilson, ‘The Church and Twentieth Century Australia’, On Being, December 1978–January 1979, p. 8. 114 David Millikan, ‘Theology with an Aussie Accent’, On Being, December 1978– January 1979, pp. 12–3. 115 Bruce Prewer, Australian Psalms (Adelaide: Luthern Publishing House, 1979), p. 6. 116 ‘Sheilas’ is Australian slang for ‘woman’. ‘Praise the Lord, Mate . . . : Rector’s Call for Ocker Christianity’, Sydney Morning Herald, 9 January 1979, p.  2; George Molnar, cartoon with caption ‘Dearly Beloved Mates and Sheilas . . . ’, Sydney Morning Herald, 13 January 1979. 117 Rory Shiner, ‘Speaking to God in Australia: Donald Robinson and the Writing of An Australian Prayer Book (1978)’, Studies in Church History 53 (2017), pp. 435–47. 118 Bill Lyall (1981), quoted in David Millikan, The Sunburnt Soul: Christianity in Search of an Australian Identity (Homebush, NSW: Lancer Books, 1981). 119 Alan Gill, ‘For Gawd’s Sake Mate, Ocker It’, Sydney Morning Herald, 14 January 1986, p. 13. 120 ‘Editorial: Why We Need Our Own Honours’, Australian, 19 February 1975, quoted in Curran and Ward, The Unknown Nation, p. 217.

170

Renewal

121 Curran and Ward, The Unknown Nation, p. 218ff. 122 Allan Loy, ‘Doing Theology in an Australian Context’, Address at a meeting of the Theological Students Association 1 January 1987 (Newtown: Moore Theological College), audio recording. 123 This quote is from Victor Hayes, ‘Introduction’, in Victor Hayes (ed.), Toward Theology in an Australian Context (Bedford Park, SA: Australian Association for the Study of Religion, 1979), p. 3. 124 Jensen, Peter, ‘An Agenda for Australian Evangelical Theology’, Reformed Theological Review 42 (1983), pp. 1–9. 125 John Smith, Interview with the author, 5 April 2013. 126 McKnight, Australian Christian Communes. 127 John Smith, Advance Australia Where? (Homebush West, NSW: ANZEA, 1988); Mal Garvin, Us Aussies: The Fascinating History They Didn’t Tell Us at School (Sale, Vic.: Hayzon through Fusion Australia, 1987). 128 Smith and Doney, John Smith, p. 242. 129 Kel Richards, With One Accord: A Record of the National Prayer Gathering, Canberra, 7–8 May 1988, , accessed 18 April 2018. Cf. Mal Garvin, ‘The Long Search for an Aussie Faith’, On Being, December 1997–January 1998, p.  60. Cf. Ann Nanscawen, With One Accord: The Beginning of an Aussie Awakening (Sydney: ANZEA, 1989). 130 Piggin, Spirit, Word and World, p. 191; John Harrison, ‘The Logos Foundation: The Rise and Fall of Christian Reconstructionism in Australia’, unpublished ms. (University of Queensland E-Space, 2006). 131 Alan Langstaff, ‘The Temple Trust: What Is It?’, Vision Magazine, no. 1 (January– February 1974); Denise Austin, ‘“Flowing Together”: The Origins and Early Development of Hillsong Church within Assemblies of God in Australia’, in Tanya Riches and Tom Wagner (eds.), The Hillsong Movement Examined: You Call Me Out Upon the Waters (Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017), pp. 21–37. 132 Richards, With One Accord. 133 ‘Media Release: Lost Verse Puts Christ into the National Anthem’, Awakening, 6 June 2000, , accessed 22 June 2018. On the origins of the Global March for Jesus, see Gerald Ediger, ‘The Proto-Genesis of the March for Jesus Movement, 1970–87’, Journal of Pentecostal Theology 12 (2004), pp. 247–75. 134 Marion Maddox, ‘An Argument for More, Not Less, Religion in Australian Politics’, Australian Religious Studies Review 22 (2009), pp. 358–9; Bethany Hiatt, ‘Unsung Anthem Author Stood for God’, West Australian, 28 September 2011. 135 ‘Editorial: Advance Australia Where?’, Australian Church Record, 14 June 1973, p. 2. 136 Swartz, Moral Minority. 137 For several examples into the 2000s, see Lake, The Bible in Australia, pp. 313–17.

6

World Jack Dain, Athol Gill and the Lausanne Congress on World Evangelisation, 1974

The ‘potential chaos’ of global Christianity The end of Christendom during the long 1960s brought forth a range of different ways in which Australian evangelicals interacted with a more contested national public culture. These responses were diverse and at times contradictory, reflecting the complexity of the changes sweeping the churches and the public square. Lost certainties at home were matched with an increasingly uncertain world abroad. Old verities of race and empire had passed away, leaving ambiguous relationships with America, Britain and Asia. Simultaneously, nationalism had acquired a new vigour in the majority world in connection with decolonisation and Cold War power politics. Evangelicals had to wrestle with such realities as much as their non-evangelical peers, while also comprehending the emergence of increasingly assertive evangelical leaders and movements in the majority world, often self-consciously independent of the mission-sending nations of the West. Globalisation generally, and the globalisation of evangelicalism specifically, raised new issues for Australians. With a rapid decline in civic influence at home, and a lost confidence in the integrity of ‘western civilisation’ abroad, Australian evangelicals had to reconsider their address in what Marshall McLuhan termed ‘the global village’.1 If their claim to inhabit a ‘Christian country’ held less water, what relationship ought they have with those nations that had traditionally stood outside the remit of ‘Christian civilisation’? Challenged by receding cultural influence at home, could evangelical Australians hope for evangelical resurgence abroad? As Mark Hutchinson and John Wolffe ask in their history of global evangelicalism, ‘having often been dispossessed in their own intellectual centres, what did Western evangelicals have to offer the rest of the world?’2 Such questions were brought into sharp relief in July 1974, when over 2,400 evangelical leaders from 150 nations and 135 Protestant denominations met for ten days in Lausanne, Switzerland, to talk, pray and plan for ‘the evangelisation of the world by the end of the twentieth century’. This International Congress on World Evangelisation (hereafter ‘Lausanne’ or ‘the Congress’), initiated by Billy Graham, was the most widely representative

172 World gathering of evangelicals in history.3 Likened in significance to Vatican II for Roman Catholics, it heralded a new era for evangelical identity, unity and influence.4 In the words of Time magazine, the Congress had ‘served notice of the vigour of conservative, resolutely biblical, fervently mission-minded Christianity’.5 The Lausanne Covenant it produced was a clear and carefully crafted 3,000-word statement of evangelical belief. It covered, among other things, the authority of the Bible, the uniqueness of Christ, the purposes of God and the Church relating to evangelism and ‘social concern’, and the particular challenges facing the new world of global Christianity.6 It has become, to quote theologian Valdir Steuernagel, ‘one of the most representative points of reference of contemporary evangelicalism’.7 The Lausanne Movement continued into the twenty-first century, hosting successive even larger congresses in Manila in 1989 and Cape Town in 2010, and acting as a network for global evangelicalism.8 For the 115 Australians who went to Lausanne, this encounter with global Christianity signalled exciting opportunities and daunting problems. Paul Barnett, rector of Holy Trinity Anglican Church, Adelaide, reported on the inspiring sense of unity and purpose he felt there: I cannot tell you how exciting it was for me at Lausanne to sense that I belonged to the world-wide brotherhood of the People of Jesus. That God is working his purposes out. And that I was for a brief fortnight joining hands with brothers and sisters from every nation, tribe and people. And that we were united in bringing the good news of repentance and forgiveness in the name of the risen King to every nation.9 But was a common commitment to ‘bringing the good news’ ‘to every nation’ enough for true unity? Some commentators doubted: Take paternalistic North Americans, radical central Americans; politicallyand-socially-minded South Africans, revivalistic East Africans and Indonesians; pour into a mixture of Indians, Japanese, Europeans and Australians; stir up with the rest of the world: result – potential chaos.10 These differences were not just apparent between nations. They also surfaced within the Australian delegation. Most of the delegates were middle-aged, white, male and clerical leaders of the major denominations. Others, like John Smith, went as self-conscious representatives of the counter-culture, riding the wave from Kairos the year before and eager to challenge the status quo. Still others were further from the traditional centres of authority. Among the delegates were David Kirk, president of the Aborigines Evangelical Fellowship (formed in 1970), and Graham Paulson, the first Aboriginal Baptist minister in Australia. Both were intimately involved in the struggle for Aboriginal land rights. Their involvement in the Congress and subsequent instigation of greater engagement with Aboriginal issues by Australian

World

173

evangelicals signalled how the changing locus of global Christianity was playing out at home as much as abroad. How did Australian evangelicals respond to the ‘potential chaos’ of global Christianity? How did they negotiate the tensions of being both culturally Northern and geographically Southern, of being among the beneficiaries of the imperial and missionary project and trying to distance themselves from it? What role did they play in shaping the course of Lausanne and postChristendom evangelicalism as these complex questions of mission, identity and culture were laid bare? The answers are richly illuminated by the experience of two prominent Australian attendees at the Congress – a cosmopolitan Anglican bishop and a ‘black-bearded’ Baptist radical.11 The first, Bishop Jack Dain (1912– 2003), executive chairman of the Congress, adopted an irenic, conservative approach to cultural and theological differences. One of the most significant mission statesmen of the century, he played a critical role in keeping the increasingly diverse evangelical movement together. In contrast, the second, Dr Athol Gill (1937–1992), the leading theological voice in the Australian Jesus Movement and a late invitee to the Congress, took a subversive stance. Gill was a key voice in the ad hoc Radical Discipleship group that formed at Lausanne and issued the statement ‘A Response to Lausanne’, which challenged Western evangelicals to expand their social mission and confront their complex relationship with national culture. He was also the only Australian to contribute to an international post-Congress symposium on the Lausanne Covenant entitled The New Face of Evangelicalism.12 Most significantly, the chapter he was asked to write centred on the broadening of evangelical social responsibility, one of Lausanne’s most important fruits and a shift to which Gill and other Australians had so decisively contributed. Consensus and subversion, unity and diversity, conservatism and radicalism – such were some of the creative tensions animating the planning and execution of the Lausanne Congress, and challenging the application of its outcome in Australia. The way that Dain, Gill and the other Australians at Lausanne encountered these tensions tells us much about the complex relationship between evangelical religion and national public culture at this critical juncture, between the Western Christendom of so many centuries and the explosion of Christianity (largely evangelical) in the majority world – what Philip Jenkins has termed ‘the next Christendom’.13

The two challenges of worldly evangelicalism The Lausanne Congress was a response to two major currents in world Christianity: the global expansion of evangelicalism, and the ostensible abandonment of orthodoxy in the ecumenical movement. Mission from the evangelical heartlands of Greater Britain and the United States had steadily expanded since the turn of the century, spurred by a belief in both the universal human need for the gospel and the particular providential responsibility of

174 World such nations to take it to them. Delegates to the Edinburgh World Missionary Conference of 1910, for example, heard the call for ‘the evangelisation of the world in this generation’ as an appeal for the nations of ‘Christendom’ to go to the unreached masses of ‘heathendom’.14 Indeed, as Brian Stanley has argued, the strength of the missionary movement was in large part due to the strength of a form of Christian nationalism in the West.15 Come the late 1960s, this divide was starting to fade and the problems inherent to the nationalist-universalist paradox were becoming more obvious as global Christianity’s centre of gravity shifted further away from the traditional centres of Christendom. Whereas in 1900, Europe was home to roughly two-thirds of the world’s nominally Christian population, by 1970, it comprised less than half. Growth had accelerated since the end of the Second World War, inversely mirroring the decline of old empires. As Time magazine reported after Lausanne, in Brazil, Church growth outpaced that of the wider population by a rate of 3 to 1; in Korea, the rate was 4 to 1; in Taiwan, the number of Christians was 20 times larger in 1970 than in 1946.16 This changing situation was visibly demonstrated at the forerunner to Lausanne, the World Congress on Evangelism, convened in Berlin in 1966 by Billy Graham and the editor of Christianity Today, Carl Henry. Modelled on Edinburgh 1910, it gathered over 1,200 evangelistic leaders from 104 nations.17 Seven of the 24 plenary addresses were delivered by non-Western Christians, including Emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia. Berlin was followed by a succession of regional conferences independently initiated by Western and non-Western evangelicals – in Melbourne (1967), Singapore (1968), Bogota (1969), Amsterdam (1971) and Durban (1973). When, in early 1971, Billy Graham wrote to 100 of the world’s most prominent evangelical leaders asking if it was time to call another global gathering, the response was overwhelmingly ‘yes’. In the words of the Sydney Diocese’s media officer, Alan Nichols, in his official account of Lausanne, ‘the tide was in for evangelical witness around the world; the concensus [sic] was that they should move on that tide.’18 But as that tide came in, so too did more open challenges to the traditional marriage of the missionary movement and Western culture. The 1968 AsiaPacific Congress on Evangelism in Singapore, for instance, showed Australian evangelicals a robust and self-confident Asian Church. Appeals to support mission abroad were often matched with questions about whether, in an age of decolonisation, Western mission perpetuated Western imperialism. Wendy Huett, the Church Missionary Society’s Education Secretary, wrote articles for the Sydney Anglican diocesan magazine with titles such as ‘Missionary Motives: Pure or Adulterated?’.19 Contemporaneously, some majority world leaders such as John Gatu, the Kenyan General Secretary of the Presbyterian Church in East Africa and a vocal participant at Lausanne, were calling for a moratorium on the sending of Western missionaries, in the hope that this would encourage not just ecclesial independence but indigenous theological maturity.20

World

175

This challenge to Western evangelical cultural hegemony was shaping up to be a point of acute debate at Lausanne. Two of the 11 plenary papers circulated before Lausanne roundly condemned what they took to be the conflation of the universal gospel with Western (and specifically American middle-class) cultural values. Both were written by young Latin American Baptists, René Padilla and Samuel Escobar, who, while not Marxists, used the loaded language of ‘revolution’, ‘oppression’ and ‘liberation’.21 Padilla’s paper on ‘Evangelism and the World’ aroused ‘either astonishment or sadness’ for its stinging critique of ‘culture Christianity’, specifically ‘the confusion of Christian orthodoxy with socio-economic and political conservatism present in Evangelicalism in the United States’.22 Escobar’s paper on ‘Evangelism and Man’s Search for Freedom, Justice and Fulfillment’, though less openly critical, generated arguably greater controversy given his accidental inclusion of specific condemnations of American political leaders such as Richard Nixon (whom Graham and many of his backers ardently supported).23 The response was overwhelming. Melbourne Baptist John Coleman, reporting from the Congress, suggested that Escobar’s paper had ‘probably been subject to more comment than all the other papers put together’.24 With this assertive and fiercely independent non-Western evangelicalism challenging the outcome of Lausanne before it even began, defining what it meant to be an evangelical – practically and not just doctrinally – was an extremely difficult task. The second major current feeding into the creative tensions at Lausanne was the ostensible abandonment of orthodoxy in the modern ecumenical movement. Many evangelicals had initially been supportive of the World Council of Churches (WCC) and its national expressions. Sydney Anglican Archbishop Howard Mowll had been the inaugural president of its Australian Council. But by the early 1970s, their support had begun to cool.25 At a theological level, the WCC’s Commission on World Mission and Evangelism, meeting in Bangkok in 1973, seemed to define salvation as primarily a matter of reconciliation between people, rather than reconciliation between people and God. Evangelicals reacted negatively to this theology, with John Stott calling it ‘the end of the road which began in Edinburgh 1910’.26 At a political level, the WCC’s Program to Combat Racism, which gave grants to radical liberation movements, also came under serious fire from evangelicals for its reported support of terrorist organisations.27 By the time of Lausanne, many evangelicals had abandoned the formal ecumenical movement altogether.28 Some were anticipating a direct confrontation. In April 1973, Jack Dain told Harold Lindsell, Carl Henry’s successor at Christianity Today, that ‘our own Australian Council [of the WCC] is quite obviously determined to implement the kind of attitudes which Bangkok reflected in a politically oriented programme which will bring them into a head on collision with evangelical interests’.29 Meanwhile the Australian Evangelical faced questions about its editorial stance from concerned readers: ‘This journal seems to support the social gospel. How can this be evangelical?’30 This tense climate

176 World around Lausanne meant that evangelicals were faced with the challenge of clarifying their theological distinctives and determining just what place social and political action ought to have in their mission to the world. These two major currents of change – the global expansion of evangelicalism and the political liberation agenda of the modern ecumenical movement – made for a potent mix at Lausanne. The Congress would only succeed in positioning evangelicalism as ‘a legitimate part of the church’ if it demonstrated that unity and diversity, orthodoxy and generosity, could be synthesised.31 The future of the evangelical movement in a globalised world in many ways depended on whether this delicate balance could be achieved, whether evangelical identity and mission could be clearly defined.

Jack Dain and the challenge of consensus Such were the tasks facing the chairman of the Congress Planning Committee, Arthur John (‘Jack’) Dain. Beyond his personal warmth, evangelical convictions and ‘considerable administrative ability’, Dain was a compelling choice for this role for three key reasons.32 First, he had developed a global evangelical network of missionaries and Church leaders, particularly in his roles as general secretary of the Zenana Bible and Medical Mission from 1947–1959, then federal secretary of the Church Missionary Society in Australia from 1959–1965. In both instances, he had taken eminent evangelical missionary organisations which were struggling to adapt to changing times, and propelled them into the future. As one of the founding members of the World Evangelical Fellowship and as the honorary overseas secretary of the British Evangelical Alliance, he built strong connections, both across the Atlantic and around the world. Second, he was a British-born, Sydney Anglican assistant bishop with a missionary background in India, a sound but decidedly intermediate pedigree in the often-polarised evangelical world. An American, of whatever denomination or disposition, would have struggled to present a unifying front as chairman, given the preponderance of anti-American attitudes surrounding the Congress. John Stott’s Englishness may have proved an ‘ideal broker’ between evangelicals from the United States and the majority world, as his biographer Alister Chapman argues.33 But Dain’s Australian identity was arguably even more useful, not least in being responsible for persuading Stott to support the Congress. In this instance, Antipodean marginality had its advantages. Third, Dain was a close friend and trusted advisor to Billy Graham. He had helped the American evangelist to success in his 1954 Harringay crusade, then arranged his 1956 mission to India (sketching out a map for Graham on the back of a serviette), and served since 1970 as chairman of the Australian Council of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association.34 If, as Olson surmised, ‘Billy also wanted a person in purple at the top of the tree’ – a Church of England bishop – he had that and more with Dain.35 As

World

177

Graham’s Canadian associate and brother-in-law Leighton Ford reflected after Dain’s death in 2003, ‘[h]ere was a man of global influence and understanding, who might have been a UN diplomat, or a high-ranking military officer’.36 Comfortable with both the elites of Anglo-American evangelicalism and the young radicals of Latin America, Dain’s conciliatory approach to the tensions which surfaced at Lausanne cannot be understated. As Brian Stanley notes in his study of the Lausanne Congress, though Dain formally served as co-chairman with Graham, ‘it was Dain who did the crucial spadework of recruiting key evangelical leaders and reconciling their often divergent views of the form the congress should take’.37 Jack Dain did not conceal these divergent views. ‘It would be dishonest of me,’ he wrote in a press release on the eve of Lausanne, ‘not to admit some tensions and problems in planning the Congress.’38 Nevertheless, he persistently sought to reconcile such tensions. When it came to cultural divides, he insisted that non-Western evangelicals be involved in the Congress planning committee and in any post-Congress global evangelical organisation. Indeed, it was through his efforts and the suggestions of American evangelical student worker Charles Troutman (who had led the Inter-Varsity Fellowship in Australia in the 1950s) that Escobar and Padilla were given such prominence at the Congress.39 Dain publicly affirmed their concern for social justice as an outcome of the gospel, possibly through more radical political action. He warned his colleagues not to ‘condemn our brethren in the Third World, many of them truly evangelical, whose political philosophies differ from those of the United States and the United Kingdom’. Pointing out that committed Christians had played a critical role in the formation of the British socialist movement, he concluded that ‘[w]e simply dare not equate the Kingdom of God with any political system’.40 During the Congress he commissioned a colleague to report on how to bring together conservative American and radical majority-world leaders.41 After the Congress, he wrote a very pastoral letter to Escobar, reminding him of the truth that ‘the prophet must always be prepared for a measure of misunderstanding’ and assuring him of the ‘deep gratitude’ for his message which came from a number of quarters, ‘certainly Australia, New Zealand and South Africa’.42 It was curious that Dain cited these former British settler societies, perhaps reflecting his anxiety to distinguish himself (and those from such nations) from those of the former metropoles in Britain and North America. Australians may have been culturally British and white, and Dain an embodiment of the colonial administrator, but in this new environment, they were eager to find solidarity with indigenous leaders in their calls for greater independence from the former centres of the European imperial project. That Escobar and Padilla went on to be leading figures in the Lausanne Movement which grew from the Congress was, to some degree, the result of Dain’s determination to appreciate their more radical contribution. Dain also worked to close the growing divide at the traditional centre of evangelicalism, heading off anti-American critiques emanating from Britain.

178 World Britain’s post-imperial contractive mood was reflected in the cynicism of some English evangelicals who viewed the Congress as ‘an expensive jamboree’ which ought be left ‘to the North Americans’, the money used ‘to evangelise, rather than talk about evangelism’.43 Donald Hoke, director of the Congress and a former missionary to Japan, wrote to Dain expressing his despair at continually hearing from European evangelicals that Lausanne was ‘an American operation primarily because of its relation to Billy Graham’. Hoke was ‘doing everything’ he could ‘to play it down’, but with little success. He reiterated the advice Dain had already given him: ‘avoid any hostilities’ and ‘handle them with care and sensitivity’.44 By January 1974, British negativity was awkwardly unavoidable; it was the only country where more Congress invitations were rejected than accepted, and most invitations still unanswered.45 By June, British evangelicals had not made any financial contribution to the Congress, compared to Australians, who had been the fourth most generous supporters of non-Western scholarships, after the United States, Switzerland and Germany.46 The bishop himself was not free from anti-American sentiments. Dain shared with John Stott his frustration at some evangelicals’ ‘total inability to see behind the cultural and political outlook of the typical well-to-do American Christian’.47 Beside a 1972 letter from Stott which expressed the English evangelist’s ‘horrified’ response to the ‘expansionist, imperialist’ worship of ‘nickels, noise and numbers’ by American parachurch evangelistic organisation Campus Crusade for Christ, Dain scribbled the word ‘Agree!’48 (As it happened, it was only through Dain’s urging that Stott overcame his own reservations about the Congress and decided to lend his crucial support.)49 Some of Dain’s Australian colleagues were also anxious that Lausanne should not display the excesses of conservative American evangelicalism. In a small meeting Dain called in late 1973 to discuss the potential shape of the Congress, the six denominational leaders present expressed to him a ‘strong plea’ that Lausanne would avoid ‘obvious right-wing American speakers with a Nixon image’ and ‘over-powering American leadership’.50 If American expansionism ‘horrified’ Stott, English parochialism was no palatable alternative. Dain found ‘the total picture of disapproval coming from England’, and the ‘strongly held criticisms of everything American’ to be ‘particularly distressing to one who is still in many ways an Englishman’.51 Reviewing British antipathy shortly after Lausanne, A. Morgan Derham, formerly the general secretary of the British Evangelical Alliance, chastised his brethren for their ‘withdrawal’ and ‘insularity’. Entitling his article ‘Post-Imperial Blues’, he asked: ‘Do we feel so rejected by a world that has by and large dismantled our Empire that we in turn must reject it? Have we so lost our sense of global Christian responsibility?’ Derham applauded Dain as ‘part of the British connection’ and integral to the Congress’s presentation of ‘a new and welcome maturity, able to accept divergent viewpoints on many matters, while firmly united in essentials’.52 His determination to, as he had written to Hoke, ‘avoid any hostilities’ proved critical in holding together the trans-Atlantic evangelical family.

World

179

Dain also played a key role in cultivating a more generous attitude towards the ecumenical movement. Confrontation had been urged by German theologian Peter Beyerhaus, who with others in the 1974 Berlin Declaration had launched ‘a radical critique of the recent theological direction of the WCC’.53 Yet Dain stood firm. He told Lindsell, ‘I am determined in as far as I personally have any influence to maintain this positive irenic approach so that to quote your own words we go there to “affirm what we believe” and not to oppose what someone else believes’.54 Such an attitude was evident in the surprise shown by the editor of the British Christian Record on the ‘good impression’ made by Dain when responding to sceptics of the Congress: ‘no posturing, no indignant defensiveness, no lack of respect for the critics’. ‘Unaccustomed as we are to such a gracious and commonsense approach in an evangelical,’ the editor concluded, ‘we commend the bishop for it.’55 Perhaps Dain’s most significant decision, at least as far as the impact of the Congress on Australia is concerned, was the relatively minor one of issuing four last-minute invitations to Lausanne. Anglican layman David Claydon, then federal secretary of Scripture Union and the organiser of the Kairos festival the previous March, upon hearing the list of Australian participants, told Dain that he needed to include some of the young leaders of the Australian Jesus Movement, lest the Congress overlook the new directions they were taking in evangelism and ministry.56 Dain agreed, inviting John Hirt and the Anglican musician Peter Campbell, both from the House of the New World, John Smith from the God’s Squad Christian Motorcycle Club, and Athol Gill. Shortly after the Congress, Dain stressed that he ‘deliberately invited’ such people, and ‘wanted them there’. He recognised the potential for disagreement that their presence brought: ‘Once you have deliberately been honest in the people you have invited, so that you haven’t got a bunch of “yes men”, you must be prepared for that kind of thing to happen’.57 A catholicity of views was essential to Dain’s vision for a new evangelical maturity at Lausanne. Initially, Smith, Hirt and Campbell planned to turn down the invitation, offended that they were only invited as observers and not participants because they were, in Hirt’s opinion, ‘judged by the powers-that-be as too radical’.58 In Smith’s recollection, their exclusion was ‘an indictment on evangelicalism because I would have been doing more itinerant evangelism, at that stage, I believe, than anybody else in the country, and we were packing places out’.59 Gill, ‘much more church-wise than the rest of us’, persuaded them to accept, seeing the Congress as a valuable opportunity to connect with like-minded more radical evangelicals.60 Even if their observer status meant they were not able to participate fully in the Congress (for example, in signing the Covenant), Gill was eager for them still to make an impact, seeing Lausanne as an opportunity not so much for consensus as for subversion. Writing home immediately after the Congress, Gill prefaced his account with the question, ‘Well, what about subversion?’61 Others recognised his approach

180 World too: Gill’s biographer Harold Pidwell shares the story of a young Scotsman who came up to Gill at lunch during the Congress and, seeing his name tag, remarked, ‘You must be one of those fellows subverting the Congress!’62 More than just observers, Gill and his friends went as activists, and proved most significant in defining the identity and mission of evangelicals in the world of the 1970s.

Athol Gill and the call to subversion The roots of Athol Gill’s subversive approach to organised evangelicalism lay primarily in his experiences as a theological student and educator. Like Dain, he had an international background. Though born and raised from 1937 in Wauchope, a small town on the mid-north New South Wales coast, much of his theological formation happened overseas.63 After studying at the New South Wales Baptist Theological College, Gill moved to Europe for a Bachelor of Divinity degree at Spurgeon’s College, London, followed by postgraduate studies at the International Baptist Theological Seminary in Rüschlikon, Switzerland. During six years at Rüschliko,n he encountered three formative influences: a diverse global community of Christians, the radical Anabaptist heritage of nearby Zürich and a subversive understanding of Jesus’ ministry in his doctoral study of the cleansing of the Temple.64 Gill’s farewell speech to the Seminary in 1971 expressed something of his global outlook: Meeting with students from so many different countries has certainly been an experience that we will cherish for the rest of our lives. While we obviously cannot claim to have plumbed the depths of national idiosyncrasies, having rubbed shoulders with so many, we hope we will be able to read the international news with more sympathy and understanding.65 Another student at Rüschlikon, Tim Costello, who went on to be named one of Australia’s ‘National Treasures’ for his advocacy for justice, also found the environment a challenge to his national sensibilities: It was a brilliant experience. There were over 25 nationalities. All the Italian Baptists voted Communist. The Scandinavian Baptists had different views on premarital sex to our Australian Baptists. The British Baptists drank and smoked. So suddenly you had to go, ‘What’s Gospel? What’s culture? How have I just seen my faith as really a hand-medown of an Australian, narrower church experience?’66 Gill’s understanding of difference and conflict was deepened when in 1972 he was controversially dismissed from his first teaching post, at the Queensland Baptist Theological College. While not guilty of heresy, he stood in opposition

World

181

to the cultural and theological conservatism of many Queensland Baptists, who were concerned by his openness to new methods of biblical criticism and his leadership of the experimental evangelism centre The House of Freedom, which one Queensland Member of Parliament labelled ‘a socialist propaganda machine dedicated to debasing, deriding, disrupting and destroying all Christian institutions and objectives’.67 This experience galvanised Gill’s opposition to ecclesiastical conservatism and his self-understanding as a radical. Speaking at the New South Wales Methodist Department of Christian Education’s ‘Culture and Change Conference’ in Sydney in March 1974, he expanded on his understanding of what it meant to be a ‘change agent’. He argued that conflict was inevitable for those desiring to improve on the status quo, and suggested exploiting its ‘potential creativity’.68 Though they did not personally clash at the Congress, the different approaches of Jack Dain and Athol Gill were marked. While both were committed to a classic evangelical emphasis on evangelism, conversion, and the authority of the Bible, if Dain sought to reconcile cultural divisions, Gill seemed eager to emphasise them. The ten days of the Lausanne Congress were full of ideas, discussion and debate. Attendees heard plenary papers and Bible studies, attended a range of seminars on evangelism, discussed their corporate responses in nationbased strategy groups and mingled over meals and leisurely walks in the Palais de Beaulieu’s gardens and on the banks of Lake Leman. Gill wrote that while the official input of the Congress was ‘a very mixed bag’, ‘representative of some of the best and some of the worst aspects of “evangelical” Christianity’, it was in these informal encounters that ‘the best work was done’.69 One small group met ad hoc under the Palais’s clock tower after each plenary paper and seminar session to discuss what they had heard. It included Gill, Smith, Hirt, Campbell and Claydon, as well as comparable British and American young leaders such as Os Guinness, formerly of the L’Abri Fellowship; Jim Punton of the Frontier Youth Trust; and Sharon Gallagher, editor of the Christian World Liberation Front’s paper Right On.70 Feeling somewhat marginal because of their age (all under 40) and involvement with less ‘respectable’ ministries, Hirt recalled how they ‘started to hang around together and get up to some mischief’.71 What had Gill meant by ‘subversion’ and Hirt by ‘mischief’? First, they distributed hundreds of brochures which they had brought to Lausanne detailing ‘Radical Discipleship at Work in Australia’ (Figure 6.1). With a photograph of the Kairos ’73 marchers carrying their ‘The Real Revolution: Jesus’ banner on its cover, and of long-haired young Christians engaged in street theatre evangelism, communal living and social work, it demonstrated the new face of counter-cultural evangelicalism. It included a lengthy description of their understanding of radical discipleship, of what it meant to be ‘a pilgrim people’, ‘the Christian counter-culture’ and ‘a third race’. Radical discipleship – an emphasis on applying the Lordship of Christ in all aspects of life – led them, among other things, to ‘voluntarily renounce

Figure 6.1 Lausanne Radical Discipleship flyer Source: A brochure, distributed by John Hirt, John Smith, Athol Gill and others at the Lausanne Congress, 1974, depicting the 1973 Kairos protest in Canberra and outlining the work of Jesus People groups in Australia. In John Hirt, A New World: House of the New World Training Resources (West Ryde, NSW: House of the New World, 1974). Image courtesy of John Hirt.

World

183

wealth in solidarity with the underprivileged of the world’, to ‘discover Biblical answers to the social evils and omnipresent Technocracy’, and to an attitude ‘so radical as to challenge cultural containment and its substitutes for God’.72 This outlook and the counter-cultural initiatives taken in Australia were, according to Gill, ‘very well received’ with ‘a real appreciation of what we are all trying to do’.73 This enthusiasm to challenge the dominant culture found prominent allies in the South Americans Escobar and Padilla. Their plenary speeches strongly resonated with the Australian radicals. Padilla’s unique decision to address the Congress in Spanish, not English, was an unambiguous gesture at decentring global evangelicalism. Gill, committed to practice informed by theology rather than pragmatism, was no doubt drawn to Escobar’s disavowal of the common belief that social and political engagement lead inexorably to theological liberalism. ‘I do not believe in that statement’, Escobar stressed: the social gospel ‘deteriorated because of poor theology. The sad thing is that those who have the right theology have not applied it to social issues.’74 When the young radicals read the draft of the Lausanne Covenant, they felt it had not sufficiently reflected Escobar and Padilla’s emphases on repentance for evangelical triumphalism, neglect of the biblical call to social justice and ‘culture Christianity’. In response, they arranged with Dain to hold a special late-night meeting to hear more about ‘theology and radical discipleship’, and specifically the place of social action in the mission of evangelicalism. Despite limited publicity, at least 400 people turned up, staying until well after all the hotel buses had left for the night.75 Gill spoke first, sharing reflections on ‘Discipleship in the New Testament’, which he had been refining as the theological basis for The House of Freedom. Padilla and Escobar followed, expanding on their plenary addresses. Finally, John Howard Yoder, whose 1972 book The Politics of Jesus was popular in radical circles, spoke on the political implications of the gospel. The debate was lively. Anglican clergyman John Chapman, emerging as one of the most influential Australian evangelists of the 1970s–1990s, and Paul Barnett, later Bishop of North Sydney, were among the most vocal questioners. Indeed, Alan Nichols recalled Chapman as ‘the chief antagonist, who believed that the justice stuff was going much too far, that it was basically Old Testament’.76 He repeatedly challenged Padilla on how central an understanding of Christian ethics was for someone to respond to the gospel. Barnett, who had spoken so glowingly of the unity at Lausanne, was similarly unafraid to express dissent. Were the speakers inadvertently conflating the preaching of Christ and the evangel with the preaching of the Church and its ethics? His closing remark, describing Padilla’s emphasis as ‘a polarisation from cheap grace to no grace at all’ shocked others – audibly so, in the meeting’s recording – for it amounted to a charge that Padilla had departed from the core of evangelicalism by no longer preaching salvation by grace alone.77

184 World Jim Punton and David Claydon, who chaired this impromptu meeting, sat on the steps of the Palais into the early hours of the morning and wrote up a summary of what they had heard. Claydon took it to John Stott, chairman of the Drafting Committee, who agreed that the Lausanne Covenant ought to reflect more of the radicals’ voices. According to Claydon, while the two men were speaking in Stott’s office, a group of Southern Baptists, ‘wearing their powder-blue outfits’, burst in and announced that they ‘would not allow the Lausanne Movement to come up with a Covenant that reflects on social concern. “You must not do it”’.78 Stott thanked them for their comments and went on with Claydon in re-drafting the Covenant’s fifth clause, on ‘Christian Social Responsibility’. It ended up using some of the language of the radicals’ evening meeting, calling evangelicals to political action against ‘every form of alienation, oppression and discrimination’, not just political quietism and philanthropic social care directed at individual needs.79 In Gill’s estimation, this clause ‘marked a turning point in evangelical thinking’.80 It owed its place in the Covenant in large part to the work of Australians, some of whom, like Gill, had not even been formally invited to the Congress. The Radical Discipleship group did not settle for their concerns being included in the Covenant, as significant an achievement as that was. Against Stott’s advice, they produced ‘A Response to Lausanne’ and circulated over 500 copies.81 When Stott introduced the Lausanne Covenant at the final Congress session, he stressed that the Response was ‘not a rival Covenant’, but ‘a supplementary affirmation of profound concern’ which he was happy to sign himself.82 He also ensured its publication in the official volume of Congress reports, significant given it was the only ad hoc group whose proceedings were included.83 In his closing remarks, Billy Graham spoke of how evangelical social concern had come through ‘loud and clear’, and that the discussion of ‘the contemporary meaning of radical discipleship’ had ‘caught fire’.84 Stott later described its inclusion as critical in holding together the movement, not least because the radicals represented the views of many majority-world evangelicals. Had they been ignored, ‘Lausanne was doomed because they were the leaders of the future’.85 Though they went to Lausanne feeling marginal, the young Australian radicals returned with a strong sense of being in the vanguard of a real change in evangelicalism. Writing home from the Congress, Gill reflected that the ‘theory’ behind the radical discipleship taught and practised at The House of Freedom in Brisbane was ‘well in advance of most evangelical thinking’. Yet he conceded that ‘the Church’ seemed ‘increasingly willing to listen’. ‘The next few years should be exciting’, he predicted.86 The Jesus Movement’s communities were among the most eager students of the Covenant and Congress papers. John Smith led the staff at Melbourne’s Truth and Liberation Concern house church through recordings of the plenary addresses, while the Free Slave newspaper, from Hirt’s House of the New World, published in full ‘A Response to Lausanne’ and Stott’s endorsement of it.87 Larry Eskridge describes the broader recognition of the Jesus

World

185

Movement’s legitimacy by ‘establishment’ figures like Stott, Graham and Dain as something of a ‘bridge back’ into the evangelical fold for those eventually disillusioned with the counter-culture.88 The fact that so many majority-world evangelicals rallied under the ‘radical evangelical’ banner made this bridge of welcome all the more significant in holding together the wider movement in the years ahead.89 Two very different Australians played a decisive role in reshaping the global movement. Dain’s irenic patience and Gill’s subversive persistence proved critical to new definitions of who ‘the evangelicals’ were and what could be included in their mission to a pluriform post-Christendom world.

‘A generous evangelicalism’: the Australian fruits of Lausanne The Lausanne Congress ended on a high note. Open conflict between evangelicals and the WCC had been avoided, majority world and radical voices had been heard, and evangelicals had shown that they could be united on essential beliefs while accepting diversity on matters of secondary importance, such as national culture. Approximately 2,000 of the Congress participants signed the Covenant card (Figure 6.2), showing their commitment

Figure 6.2 Billy Graham and Bishop Jack Dain sign copies of the Lausanne Covenant at the conclusion of the International Congress on World Evangelisation, 25 July 1974. Source: The Billy Graham Center Archives, Collection 46: Records of Lausanne Committee for World Evangelization, 1949, 1969–2007. © Billy Graham Evangelistic Association. Used with permission.

186 World to furthering the ‘spirit of Lausanne’.90 But Stott sounded a note of caution: such congresses were apt to resemble a firecracker – bright and loud for a moment, but quickly fizzling out.91 Australian evangelicals were determined not to let this happen in their own locale. Less than a fortnight after the Congress concluded, the Diocese of Sydney and several parachurch organisations including the Scripture Union sponsored a four-page broadsheet insert in the Australian. It declared to the nation that evangelicals had ‘really come of age’.92 ‘Evangelical confidence is at a very high point’, wrote Gerald Davis, editor of the national Anglican newspaper Church Scene. The movement ‘is no longer, as it has often appeared to be, an introverted monolith living in a world of paper issues and unworthy legalisms’. Instead, Lausanne exhibited a ‘generous evangelicalism’: committed to evangelistic unity, engaging with social problems, ‘isolating essentials from peripherals’, less enamoured with technology and ‘slick methods’, and penitently recognising that ‘Evangelical insights, while vitally important, are only a part of the means by which the kingdom’s purposes are advanced’.93 These themes – unity in evangelism, social concern, and cultural relevance – were the subject of extended discussion and debate in the years following Lausanne, with a range of conferences, organisations and individuals responding to the challenges the Congress had presented for evangelical engagement with the nation and the world. The stakes were high: would this be ‘a new Pentecost’ or just a ‘grand picnic’?94 Would evangelicals actually better articulate their identity and advance their mission in the world? Australian expatriate Anglican Bruce Kaye argued that the Congress would founder if it stood as a solitary event. ‘If the developments so dramatically made at Lausanne can be sustained,’ he wrote, ‘then it is very likely that this congress will come to be regarded as one of the most significant events for evangelicals this century.’ ‘If these developments are not sustained,’ cautioned Kaye, ‘then one really does wonder about the future of evangelicals.’95 In the aftermath of Lausanne, the Australian Evangelical Alliance (EA) provided the main structure for maintaining this momentum. Affiliated with the World Evangelical Fellowship and looking back the formation in 1846 of the British Evangelical Alliance, the EA had been reconstituted in 1972 under the leadership of world-renowned New Testament scholar and Melbourne Anglican Leon Morris. Its creation was, in part, a reflection of the ‘rising national consciousness’ amongst evangelicals, specifically in the desire to present a united front to a ‘confused’ and ‘challenging’ society.96 The question that Lausanne posed to the EA was whether it could be the vehicle for uniting Christians beyond isolated evangelistic campaigns and succeed in ‘stimulating us out of insularity, and into a more dynamic relevance with our culture’.97 Lausanne had at least brought Australian evangelical leaders into the same room. Dain lamented to Stott before the Congress about the lack of

World

187

unified, nationwide strategic thinking.98 John Coleman, Baptist minister and editor of the conservative evangelical journal New Life, saw unity as one of Lausanne’s chief fruits: The ‘National Strategy’ groups have proved beneficial beyond all possible expectation. Unusual things have occurred as folk of various ages, with differing backgrounds and denominational allegiances, have shared together in frank discussion. There has been a new sense of identity for some, as young and old have found that they frequently face the same problems. The need to recognise the integrity of believers whose methods of ministry differ from their own has been irresistibly driven home.99 Others were less sanguine. As organiser of the EA’s interdenominational outreach campaign ‘Encounter ’75’, Sydney Anglican evangelist Geoffrey Fletcher ‘found it rather frustrating to be talking co-operative evangelism in the abstract, while ignoring what the churches had already agreed to attempt together’. Seemingly some had travelled 8000 miles to learn what their own church was doing, or else they were so far removed from the centre of mainline church movement that they were perhaps even unwilling to be a part of what already existed. In Fletcher’s view, there was too much negativity towards the existing institutional churches, ‘in the fond hope that youth, novelty and almost derision of present structures was the only way forward’. He suggested that this attitude came from: a disproportionate number of participants representing groups which purport to serve the church but which are at times critical, rather than helpful, towards that body which one speaker described as ‘a grandmother in a drawing room full of old portraits’. He finished his post-Lausanne report with a pointed criticism: ‘so-called evangelicals will have to re-think their attitude to one another’.100 One wonders if Fletcher had the likes of Athol Gill and other parachurch figures in mind. The Evangelical Alliance, a parachurch organisation itself, attempted to head off this potential division between traditional Church and radical parachurch groups, between older and younger evangelicals, by calling a conference of over 60 ‘radical Christians’ engaged in parachurch ministry among sub-cultures. Jack Dain saw the gathering as having ‘its roots in Lausanne’, pointing to the critical role of Hirt, Smith and Gill in drafting

188 World ‘the radical covenant’. He believed the EA’s initiative was ‘both timely and important’.101 As at Lausanne, Gill and his associates were highly critical of institutional churches for their perceived lack of engagement with Australian culture, particularly youth. But they were also eager not to distance themselves too far from the mainline denominations. Neil McCrae, of Mal Garvin’s non-denominational youth movement Fusion, expressed his desire for greater partnership with the institutional Church: ‘I am tired of feeling the pain of isolation. We need you in the church to be a praying fellowship with us. We regard ourselves as limbs of the body of Christ who perhaps can reach places you can’t get to.’102 Genevieve Cutler observed how the mood had changed since ‘the anger of the sixties’.103 That the EA welcomed this sort of self-criticism provides a positive answer to the question raised by an Australian journalist at Lausanne: ‘whether the Alliance, which at the moment projects rather a middle-aged and “respectable” image, can rise to the challenge of harnessing the initiatives which will undoubtedly spring from this congress’.104 Local efforts to implement ‘the spirit of Lausanne’ also faced a fresh challenge from the top. The Lausanne Continuation Committee, meeting in Mexico City in January 1975, came to heated debate over how strongly social concern ought to feature in the future of the Movement. Billy Graham urged the Committee to focus primarily on evangelism, lest it be distracted. But John Stott openly opposed him, believing this narrowing to be a ‘betrayal’ of the Covenant and particularly the concerns of the majority-world evangelicals. When Stott said such a move would force him to resign, Jack Dain, the Committee’s chairman, concurred: ‘I’m afraid that I too would resign  .  .  . since I couldn’t possibly return to Australia with the narrower concept. Australian participants are already implementing the broader vision.’105 Under the leadership of the EA, this broader vision was being unfolded through a succession of congresses, conferences and consultations. A weekend workshop on social concern was run at Belgrave Heights in Victoria in September 1975 as ‘a further outcome of concerns expressed by Australians at the Lausanne Congress’.106 In February 1976, the EA gathered 54 evangelical leaders from all Australian states for a Lausanne Consultation in Melbourne, presided over by Sydney Bishop John Reid, who went on to be vice-chairman of the second major Congress in 1989.107 Topics ranged from the nature of the Church to the sociology of 1970s Australia. The speakers agreed with the Lausanne Covenant’s call to evangelical social engagement, but had different interpretations of how it ought be advanced. Melbourne Baptist pastor Rowland Croucher, a member of the EA’s commission on social action, lamented the Church’s traditional response to social evils: To many people there is something pathetic about the way assemblies, synods and conferences pass resolutions calling on the State to enforce

World

189

certain Christian principles of conduct when it is common knowledge that most major Protestant denominations are losing congregations. Rather than making policy pronouncements upon which the Church’s judgement ‘may be no better than anyone else’s’, Christians needed to think harder about their philosophy of social concern. They also needed to work with secular advocacy organisations like Amnesty International, said Croucher, lest such groups become ‘infiltrated by persons having a vested interest in influencing them to be “selective in their indignation”’.108 Perhaps a rejoinder to Croucher’s critique, West Australian Baptist scholar Noel Vose, who had chaired the Australian strategy group at Lausanne, noted how social changes in the world outside the Church had produced within it ‘some rather ostentatious breast beating’. ‘One suspects that there is sometimes as much catharsis as penitence in these general confessions,’ he mused.109 The idea that evangelicals were pietistically indifferent to unjust social structures was a caricature; after all, a strongly premillennial eschatology could prompt activism. Even so, Vose agreed with Croucher about the need for a new style of public evangelicalism. Books on social responsibility were all well and good, but confident political engagement was needed. ‘Evangelical Christianity must thrust up its Ralph Naders’, he said, referring to the American consumer advocate who, by 1976, had launched campaigns against unsafe cars, nuclear energy and pollution.110 Structural injustices, not just individual immorality, should be conservative evangelicals’ concern. This kind of broader vision gradually filtered down to the parishes. In 1981, the Sydney Diocesan Board of Education published a set of ten studies on the biblical basis for social involvement. In the preface, Bishop Reid described the Lausanne Covenant as emblematic of a new awareness among Christians of the problem of separating evangelism from social responsibility.111 The studies outlined a mandate for Christian engagement and suggested a practical programme: hosting Vietnamese refugees, establishing homeless housing offices and running infant play groups.112 Asking probing questions like ‘What are the problems that might be encountered in seeking a purely Christian school, political party, welfare system?’ and emphasising a nuanced biblical theology of transformation from creation to new creation as the framework for action, the studies indicated a substantial outworking of the themes raised at Lausanne.113 Social action had a new centrality for the evangelicals shaped by Lausanne, even in the conservative Diocese of Sydney. But not all Australian evangelicals agreed about the appropriateness of socio-political involvement. Some saw it as futile in a pluralist society soon to face the judgement of God. ‘It is true that there is a great deal about the national way of life in the teachings of Jesus and of the early church,’ editorialised the Victorian Baptist Witness in early 1975, ‘but when the social activists quote these passages to support their attitudes they forget two basic concepts’. First, that Old and New Testament exhortations to a

190 World renewed society applied only to the conduct of the people of God – Israel or the Church – and could not provide a mandate to change the structures of surrounding societies that were ‘not voluntarily committed to God’s way’. Second, to act for change would be futile, because of the control of Satan over the world and the innate corruption of humankind.114 Others had more nuanced reasons for questioning Lausanne’s call to a broader vision for Christian mission. The Church and Nation Committee of the Presbyterian Church of Australia in the State of New South Wales suggested that giving should shift away from the Australian Council of the World Council of Churches’ ‘Christmas Bowl Appeal’ and to ‘aid groups with a greater evangelical emphasis such as TEAR’.115 Charity still needed to be wedded to orthodoxy, and preferably to evangelism as well. At the centre of the Diocese of Sydney, another participant at Lausanne, Broughton Knox, Principal of Moore College, was a persistent critic of the broader vision. He argued in 1979 that there is no New Testament basis for pursuing ‘social justice’, pointing to Jesus’ silence when asked for justice (for example, by the over-worked Martha). Rather, ‘compassion’ was Jesus’ motivation, and should thus be the Christian’s motivation. Knox seemed to equate ‘social justice’ with socialism, for he defined it as ‘pulling down the one in order to equal up the other’. When faced with poverty, ‘action should be taken’, but ‘a Christian is not called upon to campaign for a closer equalization of incomes either within our own society or between nation and nation. Christ’s Gospel is not concerned with equality but with relationships.’116 Knox did not seem to hold this view consistently. On racial segregation, he claimed that in a nation’s domestic and foreign policies, ‘the principle must always be that of justice’, by which he meant ‘treating people as persons and giving them what is due to them’.117 On inflation, he rebuked the Fraser government (albeit a conservative Liberal-Country Party one) and large corporations for ‘robbing the weak to increase the wealth of the rich and the strong’. Inflation was not morally neutral, but rather was ‘sinful’, and ‘should be denounced as sinful’.118 Knox’s criticism seemed particularly directed at the young radicals of Lausanne. In a broadcast on 4 April 1976 entitled ‘The Gospel and Society’, he urged evangelicals to ‘avoid the temptation to be “in the swim”’. ‘The modern fad and current temptation is Christian radicalism in which a consequence of the gospel – namely, social concern – is elevated to be part of the gospel itself, thus detracting from the uniqueness of the gospel.’119 This was the essence of Barnett and Chapman’s challenges at the Radical Discipleship meeting. Urging social transformation as part of the gospel message, and not just a consequence of it, proved to be a point upon which ‘the spirit of Lausanne’ was divided. In Chapman’s opinion, embracing this broader vision was ‘the evangelical equivalent of the social gospel of the liberals’.120 Still other evangelicals, while not sharing Knox’s fears of a decline into theological liberalism, interpreted the call to social engagement in a different light. Lance Shilton, one of the nation’s most media-savvy Christian leaders

World

191

as dean of Sydney’s St Andrew’s Cathedral (1973–1988), commended Lausanne’s new confidence in addressing social injustice without the fears of a lapse into the old social gospel. ‘It is pleasing to see that this is so,’ he said, although I detect a certain amount of uncertainty about that. . . . I think people from the African and Asian continents, who are in the midst of poverty and need, must relate the propagation of the Gospel to compassion in those areas. I think that in our so-called Western civilisation, perhaps, we ought to be relating it more to the challenges which are coming to traditional Christianity, which has been passed on to us.121 Given Shilton’s central role in the Australian Festival of Light, his comments could well be read as a call to channel the social reform energies of Lausanne not so much into redressing poverty, but fighting ‘permissiveness’. Certainly, Shilton’s public evangelical hero was more a Malcolm Muggeridge than a Ralph Nader. Indeed, he pointed to Muggeridge’s keynote address at Lausanne on the decomposition of Western civilisation as ‘a real inspiration’ for the Festival.122 According to Shilton’s emphasis on ‘the challenges which are coming to traditional Christianity’, social concern, for Australian evangelicals, could mean apologetics more than social action – or at least social action primarily on ‘moral’ issues. A point on which evangelicals did find strong consensus after Lausanne was the need to share the gospel in a form that resonated with Australians. The stinging critiques at Lausanne of syncretistic ‘culture Christianity’, especially on the part of Western missionaries, produced a new awareness of the relativism of national cultures, and the difference between normative and relative theology.123 Indeed, the Congress programme included papers on ‘How to Evaluate Cultural Practices by Biblical Standards in Maintaining Cultural Identity’, with one for each region of the world. That on ‘The Anglo-Saxon World’ was delivered by an Australian, Neville Andersen, Principal of the Melbourne Bible Institute. He drew in part on the lessons from Asian evangelicals to argue for an evangelism which was sensitive to the exigencies of particular sub-cultures and a gospel brought to hearers ‘in meaningful ways’.124 In addition to the ‘gum-leaf theology’ of the Jesus People, one dimension of this concern to ‘contextualise the gospel’ was a greater desire to understand the state of urbanised, pluralist 1970s Australian society, driven by a sense of the loss of civic Protestant assumptions of familiarity. This was a broader concern for Australian Christians. The Australian Council of Churches decided in 1976 to establish a Commission on Church and Society, aiming to reflect on the nature of Australian society and particularly the injustices and discrimination within it. The Commission published its report in 1977 with the title How Lucky Are We? Australia in the Seventies, drawing on the language of Donald Horne’s The Lucky Country published 13 years before.125

192 World Evangelicals, too, were quick to draw on the language of mainstream cultural critique. ‘With every year that passes this “lucky country” of ours is becoming more pagan, more secularised in attitude’, editorialised the Australian Evangelical at the start of 1976. ‘Church memberships are declining, and few local fellowships are seeing numbers of people brought to personal faith in Christ.’126 They were under no illusion as to their declining cultural capital and the need for new strategies. At the Post-Lausanne Consultation in that same year, Bruce Wilson – later to publish a similar critique in Can God Survive in Australia? – reflected at length on the challenge of postwar pluralism, the new ‘mind milieu’ of relativism created by Australia’s growing awareness of the ‘global village’. Evangelical mission needed ‘a theology that has undergone the “agony” of relativism’: a theology which, at the personal level, has searched its own psychological depths; a theology which, at the social level, is discovering its demonic associations with nationalism, race, social class, economic and political ideologies. Then, but only then, we can and must relativize the relativizers. Such soul-searching, for Wilson, necessitated a new Christian approach to national identity: There is a contradiction in presenting a universal gospel from a church base coloured with alien nationalism. . . . We have recently entered a period when Australians are beginning to search for national identity: the task of evangelism is only made more difficult if, say, the churches appear to be tied to increasingly alien forms of outside culture.127 This sort of appeal for indigeneity and, it seems, the shedding of British cultural traditions, an increasingly familiar note amongst some evangelicals, was reminiscent of ‘A Response to Lausanne’. It too implied evangelicals’ failure to ‘incarnate the Gospel and to come to men as servants for Christ’s sake’, and their ignorance of ‘the language, thought-forms and imagery appropriate to differing cultures’.128 But it had also been a concern of the more traditional figure Jack Dain, arguing a decade earlier at the 1966 Berlin Congress on Evangelism that ‘[f]ar too many Christians have isolated themselves from the world of today; they do not understand their language and find it impossible to “sit where they sit”. Their clichés and religious terminology constitute a foreign language to people outside the church.’129 John Stott, too, had suggested in Australia the need for a regional or national Church, albeit not necessarily established or recognised by the state.130 Such moves imbibed Lausanne’s scepticism towards inherited cultural patterns of Christian belief: ‘no theological statement is culture free’.131 In thinking more deeply about indigenising the gospel, Lausanne also forced Australians to grapple with the complex relationship between the

World

193

nation’s white and Aboriginal populations. In a post-Congress feature for the Australian Evangelical, David Kirk (Figure 6.3), the young president of the Aborigines Evangelical Fellowship, described the previous decade as ‘the period in which the spirit of nationalism emerged within Aboriginal society’. He likened Aboriginal self-confidence with similar moves towards independence by former colonial peoples, for he ‘had wonderful opportunities at the congress to mix and exchange information with coloured brethren from many places’. Deliberately sitting in on Indian and African national strategy sessions (and presumably skipping some concurrent Australian sessions), he found that ‘their situation and background was obviously very similar to ours’, though he was prompted to wonder why so few Aboriginal leaders of comparable ability had emerged.132 This had been a persistent cause for Kirk. Ten years before Lausanne, while working as a ‘Native Missionary’ for the Aborigines Inland Mission, he had written in its journal, Australian Evangel, of an ‘indigenous’ Church as one which ‘shares the life of the country in which it is planted, and finds within itself the ability to govern itself, support itself, and reproduce itself’. Aboriginal Christian leaders, he believed, were ready to form their own indigenous Church. ‘It’s now, or never!’133

Figure 6.3 Billy Graham with Aboriginal pastors David Kirk and Bill Bird during the 1968 Graham crusade. In 1974, Kirk attended the Lausanne Congress on World Evangelisation, representing the Aborigines Evangelical Fellowship. Source: © Ramon Williams. Used with permission.

194 World Either through Kirk and fellow Aboriginal leader Graham Paulson’s initiative or that of others like Neville Andersen, who advocated at Lausanne for racially diverse theological education, the Australian National Strategy Group’s first charge to the EA was ‘to initiate discussions with the leaders of the Aboriginal church’.134 Kirk had stressed that ‘[p]aternalism and apathy towards Aboriginal work must disappear’.135 The EA got to work. ‘Challenged by the Lausanne congress’s emphasis on social concern,’ its Tasmanian council investigated Christian work amongst Aboriginal communities in that state ‘and discovered it was non-existent’.136 It subsequently arranged for a meeting with leaders of the Aborigines Evangelical Fellowship. The Australian Evangelical’s July–August 1975 cover story considered the future of evangelical Aboriginal missions in light of the Whitlam Government’s policy of self-determination. It picked up on Paulson’s initiatives to train Aboriginal evangelical leaders and articulated the opinion of other Aboriginal Christians that ‘European’ missionary involvement ought to continue, ‘but the day of mission control is over’. Ron Williams, an Aboriginal Christian leader, analogised: ‘if you want to see your children grow up into maturity then you must take away the scaffolding’.137 This ‘Peter Pan’ motif closely echoed that of African and Asian Church leaders at Lausanne such as John Gatu, who urged the development of self-sustaining indigenous ministries, a principle embraced by Dain and stressed in the Lausanne Covenant.138 This was not a new idea for Indigenous Australian evangelicals. William Cooper, who famously instigated a Day of Mourning on 26 January 1938 to mark 150 years of British settlement, had argued that ‘[t]he Aboriginal must be a partner in his own uplift’.139 Yet it was an idea forcibly advanced by majority-world leaders at Lausanne, and reaffirmed by Aboriginal leaders like Paulson and Kirk. In the same way that the visit of black East African bishops to Aboriginal communities in the Northern Territory in 1959 had encouraged Aboriginal leadership and affirmed localised cultural expressions of Christianity, encounters at Lausanne stimulated a greater self-confidence amongst Aboriginal evangelicals.140 Paulson and Kirk saw one of those bishops, Festo Kivengere, give the stirring closing sermon at Lausanne, a very public sign that non-white evangelical leaders could occupy the front ranks in the global movement. Kivengere visited Australia again in 1978 to travel through the territory and speak at an Aboriginal Christian leadership conference in Adelaide. According to Colin Reed in his history of the East African revival and its Australian links, Kivengere’s visits ‘strengthened the twin movements of indigenisation and revival already observable’ in Aboriginal communities.141 In this further contextualisation of the gospel, the groundwork was being laid for the significant Aboriginal chain revivals that broke out in Elcho Island in 1979, and the ongoing development of a putatively distinctive Aboriginal theology, in which Paulson played a leading role.142 White Australian evangelicals also looked to majority-world leaders for increasing inspiration after Lausanne. Visits in 1975 by African evangelical

World

195

leaders prominent at the Congress such as Gottfried Osei-Mensah, a young Kenyan pastor and inaugural executive officer of the Lausanne Continuation Committee, and Indian leaders including Dr Ben Wati, who had been president of the World Evangelical Fellowship from 1968–1974, indicated an increasing ‘reverse evangelisation’ by majority-world leaders to traditional ‘sending’ countries like Australia.143 They now had timely truths to teach Western Christians hungry for spiritual inspiration. In plans for an evening public meeting at the La Trobe Conference (chaired by Athol Gill and featuring John Smith), EA Secretary, Howard Knight, wrote to OseiMensah about the potential evangelistic value of the Kenyan speaking. ‘It is thought,’ he wrote, ‘that this might be of an evangelistic nature as a person from the Third World, such as yourself, might have an appeal to some on the fringe of the Christian faith who might not be so responsive to one of their own countrymen.’144 Knight’s letter gave voice to the new way in which evangelicals were looking to majority-world leaders – not just for news of success in foreign lands, but for responses to the de-Christianisation of their own culture. The contrasting trajectories of the two Christendoms was becoming more obvious in the decade after Lausanne. One Sydney Morning Herald headline in 1986 read, ‘Onward Christian Soldiers: But Now the Missionaries Are Coming to Convert Heathen Australians’.145 John Mallison, a leading Methodist evangelical and Lausanne delegate, expressed a common Australian reaction to encountering this ‘broader panorama’ of global Christianity after ‘stepping out of the depressed state of the church in Australia’. ‘Our patronising spirit must go as we work hand in hand with the 3rd world,’ he declared, ‘and it seems it shall be their hands leading us in the future!’146 Just as the Jesus Movement was both a transnational and a selfconsciously national expression of the counter-culture, Lausanne brought global ideas and leaders in contact with local ideas and leaders, creating a new urgency for change.

Conclusion The Lausanne Congress came at a critical point in Australia’s shift away from British, white and Christian nationhood. Australians were searching for a new role in the world, no longer comfortably ensconced within the British Empire, and increasingly aware that Christendom’s centre of gravity was shifting further away from the West. They were also coming to terms with a reduced cultural authority at home and a lost confidence in their mission to the nation. Lausanne shaped their response to these global and national challenges in three ways. First, it brought Australian evangelicals together, creating an impetus for more serious, coordinated reflection on the nature of Australian culture. Scale helped. In the same way that the size of the Graham crusades had helped stimulate renewed thinking about evangelism, so the breadth and significance of the Lausanne Congress provided a big enough tent abroad under which Australians could gather to focus

196 World on their shared mission at home. In developing a national strategy report, for instance, they were compelled to formulate a response to the declining attachment of Australians to the churches (leading to conferences on contextualisation), the relationship between evangelism and social action (leading to new publications), and mission to and with Aboriginal Australians (leading to consultations with Aboriginal leaders). Second, Lausanne highlighted the differences among Australian evangelicals. Along lines of age and politics, race and culture, it showed that the evangelical family was anything but uniform. The ongoing divisions between more radical and more conservative Australian evangelicals – between the Athol Gills and the John Chapmans – showed the challenge of maintaining a consensus around the nature of evangelical identity and mission at a local level. It appeared that those of either camp could find more in common with certain evangelicals in other parts of the world than with their fellow Australians. Yet division was not necessarily a bad thing. Those stronger links with evangelicals around the world, especially between the young radicals of South America, Britain, the United States and Australia, provided fruitful channels for visiting speakers and shared resources. These divisions also stimulated further discussion and debate about how evangelicals could work through their diversity, aided by representative bodies such as the EA Having come together at Lausanne and aired their differences, evangelicals were generally content to pursue their mission as a fellowship of diverse emphases rather than a coherent movement, stronger in their separate parts than as a whole. Third, it further turned Australian evangelicals outwards. While they had always been concerned with supporting global mission, it showed them that they had a critical role to play in steering it. Being a British settler society located in the Global South had its advantages, allowing them to speak to both the traditional centres in Britain and North America, and to new voices from the majority world. Jack Dain’s desire for consensus made sure these non-Western voices were included, and Athol Gill’s subversiveness helped ensure they were heard. Lausanne showed that the sense of a lost role in the world brought on by the end of empire and the end of Christendom, while palpable, need not be paralysing. After 1974, Australians continued to contribute to the Lausanne Movement out of proportion to their size, with leaders such as John Reid, David and Robyn Claydon, and Alan Nichols all playing critical roles in the continuation of ‘the spirit of Lausanne’. As Australians kept looking abroad to the new face of global Christianity at Lausanne, they were encouraged that despite their sense of alienation and marginality at home, their gospel was bearing new fruit around the world, if they only had eyes to see.

Notes 1 Marshall McLuhan, The Gutenberg Galaxy (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1962), p. 31. 2 Hutchinson and Wolffe, A Short History of Global Evangelicalism, pp. 186–7.

World

197

3 For a good contemporary introduction to the Lausanne Congress, see Alan Nichols, Evangelicals: Report of the International Congress on World Evangelization, Lausanne (Sydney: AIO Publishing, 1975). All addresses and papers at the Congress were subsequently published in the 1,500-page volume edited by Scotsman J.D. Douglas, Let the Earth Hear His Voice: Official Reference Volume, Papers and Responses of the International Congress on World Evangelization, Lausanne, Switzerland (Minneapolis, MN: World Wide Publications, 1975). 4 On comparisons to Vatican II, see Nichols, Evangelicals, p. 9. 5 ‘A Challenge from Evangelicals’, Time, 5 August 1974, p. 48. 6 John Stott, ‘The Lausanne Covenant with Exposition and Commentary’, September 1974, reprinted in John Stott (ed.), Making Christ Known: Historic Mission Documents from the Lausanne Movement 1974–1989 (Carlisle: Paternoster Press with the Lausanne Committee for World Evangelization, 1996), pp. 5–55. 7 Valdir Steuernagel, ‘Social Concern and Evangelization: The Journey of the Lausanne Movement’, International Bulletin of Missionary Research 15 (1991), p. 53. 8 Robert Hunt, ‘The History of the Lausanne Movement, 1974–2010’, International Bulletin of Missionary Research 35 (2011), pp. 81–4; Rose Dowsett, ‘Evangelicals and the Lausanne Movement’, in Brian Stiller, Todd Johnson, Karen Stiller, and Mark Hutchinson (eds.), Evangelicals Around the World: A Global Handbook for the 21st Century (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2015), pp. 58–62. 9 Paul Barnett, ‘Great Problems; Exciting Possibilities’, in Paul Barnett and John Court (eds.), The Message of Lausanne (Adelaide: Trinity Publishing Society, 1974), n.p. 10 Ian Knox, ‘Lausanne–and after: Practical outcomes of Congress on World Evangelisation’, Life of Faith, 3 August 1974, p. 1. 11 ‘A Two-State Revolution’, Australian, 2 October 1972, quoted in Pidwell, A Gentle Bunyip, p. 48. 12 Athol Gill, ‘Christian Social Responsibility’, in C. René Padilla (ed.), The New Face of Evangelicalism: An International Symposium on the Lausanne Covenant (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1976), pp. 87–102. 13 Jenkins, The Next Christendom. 14 Brian Stanley, The World Missionary Conference, Edinburgh 1910 (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Pub. Co., 2009). 15 Brian Stanley, ‘Introduction: Christianity and the End of Empire’, in Brian Stanley (ed.), Missions, Nationalism and the End of Empire, Studies in the History of Christian Missions (Grand Rapids, MI: W.B. Eerdmans Publishing, 2003), p. 5. 16 ‘A Challenge from Evangelicals’, Time, quoted in Martin, A Prophet with Honor, p. 440. 17 Balbier, ‘The World Congress on Evangelism 1966 in Berlin’; Carl F.H. Henry and W. Stanley Mooneyham (eds.), One Race, One Gospel, One Task. 18 Nichols, Evangelicals, p. 16. 19 Wendy Huett, ‘Missionary Motives: Pure or Adulterated?’, Southern Cross, July 1962, p. 12. 20 Stanley, The Global Diffusion of Evangelicalism, pp. 167–8. 21 C. René Padilla, ‘Evangelism and the World’, in Douglas (ed.), Let the Earth Hear His Voice, pp. 116–33; Samuel Escobar, ‘Evangelism and Man’s Search for Freedom, Justice and Fulfillment’, in Douglas (ed.), Let the Earth Hear His Voice, pp. 303–18. On Padilla and Escobar, see Daniel Salinas, Latin American Evangelical Theology in the 1970s: The Golden Decade (Leiden: Brill, 2009), Chapter 5. 22 For ‘astonishment’: Nichols, Evangelicals, p. 62; Padilla, ‘Evangelism and the World’, p. 125. 23 Escobar, ‘Evangelism and Man’s Search for Freedom, Justice and Fulfillment’, pp.  303–18. On the unintended inclusion of the names of these American

198 World

24 25 26 27 28 29

30 31 32

33 34 35 36

37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45

leaders, see Alister Chapman, Godly Ambition: John Stott and the Evangelical Movement (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), pp. 138–9. Quoted in Swartz, Moral Minority, p. 124. Ian Breward, A History of the Australian Churches (St Leonards, NSW: Allen & Unwin, 2004 [1993]), p. 138; Timothy Yates, Christian Mission in the Twentieth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), pp. 193–200. Stott to Dain, 15 June 1973, BGCA Collection 46: Records of the Lausanne Committee for World Evangelization, Box 29, Folder 35: ‘ICOWE: Convening Committee–Stott, John R.W.; 1972–1974’. On the complexities of evangelical criticism of the WCC’s Program to Combat Racism, see ‘Editorial: Liberation Movements and the World Council’, Church of England Newspaper (UK), 23 August 1974. Such organisations include the International Fellowship of Evangelical Students (1947), the World Evangelical Fellowship (1951) and the Evangelical Fellowship in the Anglican Communion (1961). Dain to Lindsell, 27 April 1973, BGCA CN 46, Box 30, Folder 10: ‘ICOWE: Executive Committee–Lindsell, Harold; 1972–1974’. On Dain’s view of Bangkok ’73, see Alan Gill, ‘Define the Phrase “Salvation Today”’, Sydney Morning Herald, 20 July 1973, p. 13. Australian Evangelical, July–August 1973, p. 46. Warwick Olson, Interview with the author, 24 October 2012. ‘Biographical Sketch: Bishop A. Jack Dain, Executive Chairman, International Congress on World Evangelization’, n.d., BGCA, CN 46, Box 33 Folder 12, ‘LCWE; Administrative Committee Meeting, Lausanne, 1974; 1974’. See also on Dain’s biography, Mark Hutchinson, ‘Dain, Arthur John “Jack” (1912–2003)’, ADEB Online, , accessed 19 April 2018, and Marcus Loane, Men to Remember (Canberra: Acorn Press, 1987), pp. 116–23. Chapman, Godly Ambition, p. 148. Interview with Jack Dain, 1 December 1971, in BGCA CN 141, Box 3, Folder 12: ‘Dain, #52’. Cf. Loane, Men to Remember, pp. 120–1. Warwick Olson, Interview with the author, 24 October 2012. ‘Recollections from Leighton Ford, Former Chairman of the LCWE’, in ‘Memories of Bishop Dain by friends and colleagues’, Billy Graham Center Archives, Wheaton, IL, , accessed 3 June 2018. Stanley, The Global Diffusion of Evangelicalism, pp. 157–8. Dain, ‘Why Another Congress on World Evangelization?’, Press Release, International Congress on World Evangelization, n.d., in BGCA CN 46, Box 33, Folder 12: ‘LCWE: Administrative Committee meeting, Lausanne, 1974; 1974’. Stanley, The Global Diffusion of Evangelicalism, pp. 158–60. Dain, ‘Why Another Congress on World Evangelization?’. Ed Dayton to Dain, 22 July 1974, in BGCA CN 46, Box 29, Folder 40: ‘ICOWE: Criticisms; 1973–1974’. Dain to Escober, 17 October 1974, in BGCA CN 46, Box 30, Folder 5: ‘ICOWE: Executive Committee–Escobar, Samuel; 1972–1975’. David Winter, ‘Letter to the Editor: Today’s Jet-Set Evangelicals’, Church of England Newspaper, 2 November 1973. Donald E. Hoke to Dain, 30 October 1973, in BGCA CN 46, Box 29, Folder 40: ‘ICOWE: Criticisms; 1973–1974’. Hoke drew attention to the low British response, putting it down to ‘a complex of reasons’ including the ‘angry young Anglicans’ who were boycotting the Congress. ‘December-January Congress Report of the Director’, 31 January 1974 in BGCA, CN 46, Box 33, Folder 12: ‘LCWE; Administrative Committee Meeting, Lausanne, 1974; 1974’.

World

199

46 Stanley, The Global Diffusion of Evangelicalism, p. 163. On the donations, see Dain to Berryman, 17 March 1975; Berryman to Dain, 20 March 1975, both in BGCA CN 245, Box 13, Folder 46: ‘International Congress on World Evangelization – Dain, A. J. – Correspondence; 1972–1975’. 47 Dain to Stott, 15 December 1975, quoted in Chapman, Godly Ambition, p. 147. 48 Stott to Dain, 27 November 1972, in BGCA CN 46, Box 29, Folder 35: ‘ICOWE: Convening Committee–Stott, John R.W.; 1972–1974’. 49 Stanley, ‘“Lausanne 1974”’, pp. 537–8. 50 ‘Minutes of informal meeting held in Bishop Dain’s Office, 6 November 1973 at 12:30pm’, in BGCA CN 245, Box 46, Folder 13: ‘International Congress on World Evangelization–Dain, A. J.–Correspondence; 1972–1975’. 51 Dain to Stott, 11 September 1972, in BGCA CN 46, Box 29, Folder 35: ‘ICOWE: Convening Committee–Stott, John R.W.; 1972–1974’. 52 A. Morgan Derham, ‘Post-Imperial Blues’, Life of Faith, 24 August 1974, p. 4. 53 W. Künneth and Peter Beyerhaus, Reich Gottes oder Weltgemeinschaft? (1975), quoted in Yates, Christian Mission in the Twentieth Century, pp. 199–200. 54 Dain to Lindsell, 20 July 1973. 55 ‘Editorial: No Lack of Respect for Critics’, Christian Record, 5 April 1974, p. 5. 56 David Claydon, Interview with the author, 15 January 2013. 57 Jack Dain, ‘After the Congress with Jack Dain’, Interview with Bruce Kaye, unpublished ms., in BGCA CN 46, Box 32, Folder 2: ‘ICOWE: Press Articles; 1974’. 58 John Hirt, Interview with the author, 24 January 2013. 59 John Smith, Interview with the author, 5 April 2013. 60 John Hirt, Interview with the author, 24 January 2013. 61 Athol Gill, ‘The Congress–Amsterdam, Netherlands’, Newsletter no. 2 sent to the House of Freedom, Brisbane, 27 July 1974, ms. in possession of author. 62 Pidwell, A Gentle Bunyip, p. 67. 63 Biographical details drawn from Pidwell, A Gentle Bunyip; ‘Rev. Dr Athol Gill’, HGBC, Folder: ‘CVs and Potted Biographies’; David Neville, ‘Introduction’, in David Neville (ed.), Prophecy and Passion: Essays in Honour of Athol Gill, ATF Series, vol. 5 (Hindmarsh, SA: ATF Press, 2002), pp. xiv–ix; Munro, ‘A History of the House of the Gentle Bunyip (1975–90)’; Ken Manley, From Woolloomooloo to ‘Eternity’: A History of Australian Baptists, Vol. 2: A National Church in a Global Community (1914–2005) (Milton Keynes, UK: Paternoster, 2006), pp. 685–9. 64 Pidwell, A Gentle Bunyip, pp. 29–40. 65 Quoted in Pidwell, A Gentle Bunyip, p. 40. 66 Tim Costello, interviewed by Peter Thompson, Talking Heads, ABC1, 15 June 2009, , accessed 8 June 2013. 67 John Lockwood, Queensland Parliamentary Debates, Legislative Assembly, 28 November 1975, p. 2386. On Gill’s dismissal, see Pidwell, A Gentle Bunyip, pp. 42–58. Cf. Neville Buch, ‘Under the Bondage of Religious Conservatism: Athol Gill and the Baptist Union of Queensland’, Dayspring 11 (1992). 68 Athol Gill, ‘The Change Agent in a Changing World’, p. 5, paper delivered at the Culture and Change Conference, Methodist Church Department of Christian Education, 8–10 March 1974, Elanora, NSW, in HGBC, Box 4. 69 Gill, ‘The Congress’. 70 Gill, ‘The Congress’. 71 John Hirt, Interview with the author, 24 January 2013. 72 ‘Radical Discipleship at Work in Australia’, brochure produced by the House of the New World, 1974, HGBC, Whitley College Archives. 73 Gill, ‘The Congress’.

200 World 74 Escobar, ‘Evangelization and Man’s Search for Freedom, Justice and Fulfillment’, p. 324. 75 The following account of this meeting draws on: the recordings of the meeting, 21 July 1974, Tapes 180–4, in BGCA CN 53, Subseries D; Gill, ‘The Congress’; Gill, ‘Christian Social Responsibility’, pp. 91–2; David Claydon, Interview with the author, 15 January 2013; Tim Chester, Awakening to a World of Need: The Recovery of Evangelical Social Concern (Leicester: IVP, 1993), pp. 80–1; Stanley, ‘“Lausanne 1974”’, p. 546. 76 Alan Nichols, Interview with the author, 16 January 2013. David Claydon corroborates this assessment. Interview with the author, 15 January 2013. 77 Tape 181, in BGCA CN 53, Subseries D. The sense of shock at Barnett’s statement can be clearly heard in the recording. Moreover, a participant with an African accent immediately leapt to Padilla’s defence, challenging Barnett over his understanding of the political context in which the Apostle Paul originally stated that ‘We preach Christ as Lord’. 78 David Claydon, Interview with the author, 15 January 2013. 79 On the differences between the original draft presented to the Congress for feedback and the final product, see Stanley, The Global Diffusion of Evangelicalism, p. 171. Escobar was one of the five members of the Drafting Committee. 80 Gill, ‘Christian Social Responsibility’, p. 89. 81 Gill, ‘The Congress’. 82 Quoted in Pidwell, A Gentle Bunyip, pp. 66–7. 83 ‘Theology Implications of Radical Discipleship’, in Douglas (ed.), Let the Earth Hear His Voice, pp. 1294–6. 84 Quoted in, ‘Polarised–or Partners?’, Australian Evangelical, September–October 1974, p. 8. 85 Quoted in Chester, Awakening to a World of Need, p. 85. 86 Gill, ‘The Congress’. 87 Genevieve Cutler, ‘Radicals Meet the Establishment’, See (Melbourne), July 1976, p. 12; ‘A Response to Lausanne’, Free Slave 2 (November 1974), pp. 4–5. 88 Larry Eskridge, ‘“One Way”, pp. 105–6. 89 On the nature of radical evangelicalism in majority world theological and missionary networks, see Al Tizon, Transformation after Lausanne: Radical Evangelical Mission in Global-Local Perspective (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2008). 90 Martin, A Prophet With Honor, p. 449. 91 John Stott, ‘Foreword’, in Padilla (ed.), The New Face of Evangelicalism, p. 5. 92 Gerald Davis, ‘Movement Really Comes of Age’, Australian (Advertising Supplement), 3 August 1974, p. 12. 93 Davis, ‘Movement Really Comes of Age’, p. 12. 94 Alan Gill, ‘A New Pentecost or Just a “Grand Picnic”?’, Sydney Morning Herald, 9 July 1974, p. 6. 95 Bruce Kaye, ‘Freedom and Maturity for Evangelicals’, CWN Series, 16 August 1974, p. 9. 96 Leon Morris, ‘Looking Ahead’, Australian Evangelical, July–August 1973, p. 2. 97 Morris, ‘Looking Ahead’, p. 2. 98 Dain to Stott, 26 July 1973, in BGCA CN 46, Box 29, Folder 35: ‘ICOWE: Convening Committee – Stott, John R.W.; 1972–1974’. 99 John Coleman, ‘Congress on World Evangelization: Is History in the Making?’, New Life, 1 August 1974, p. 3. 100 Geoffrey Fletcher, ‘Lausanne Congress’, n.d., [1974?], manuscript in BGCA CN 141, Box 3, Folder 42: ‘Fletcher, #75, 1974’. 101 Dain to Ford, 19 July 1976, in BGC CN 46, Box 20, Folder 2: ‘Country File: Australia; 1976’. 102 Quoted in Cutler, ‘Radicals Meet the Establishment’, p. 12.

World

201

103 Cutler, ‘Radicals Meet the Establishment’, p. 12. 104 Alan Kerr, ‘How Will Lausanne Benefit Australia?’, Church Scene, 29 August 1974, n.p. 105 According to the recollection of Stott, as quoted in Timothy Dudley-Smith, John Stott: A Global Ministry (Leicester: Inter-Varsity Press, 2001), pp. 221–2. 106 ‘Evangelical Alliance Report: Social Concerns’, Australian Evangelical, July– August 1975, p. 4. 107 ‘Fanning the Fires Lit at Lausanne’, Australian Evangelical, March–April 1976, p. 21. 108 Rowland Croucher, ‘Evangelicals and Social Concern’, Proceedings of the Lausanne/Australia Consultation, February 1976, in BGCA CN 46, Box 20, Folder 2: ‘Country File: Australia; 1976’. 109 Noel Vose, ‘The Church and Social Action: Post-Lausanne ’76’, Proceedings of the Lausanne/Australia Consultation. 110 Vose, ‘The Church and Social Action’. 111 John Reid, ‘Preface’, in Ian Mears (ed.), The Christian and Social Concern: A Set of Ten Studies on a Biblical Basis for Social Involvement (Sydney: The Board of Education, Diocese of Sydney, and Care Force, 1981), p. 2. 112 Mears (ed.), The Christian and Social Concern, pp. 53–63. 113 Mears (ed.), The Christian and Social Concern, pp. 19, 67–8. 114 ‘Editorial: Social Action–Where’, Victorian Baptist Witness, 5 February 1975, p. 2. 115 Presbyterian Church of Australia in the State of New South Wales, ‘Report of Church and Nation Committee 1978’, , accessed 19 November 2012. 116 D. Broughton Knox, ‘“Social Justice” or Compassion: What Is the Christian Motivation?’, 5 February 1978, reprinted in Payne and Beilharz (eds.), D. Broughton Knox, 165. 117 D. Broughton Knox, ‘Race’, The Protestant Faith radio broadcast, 11 July 1971, reprinted in Payne and Beilharz, D. Broughton Knox, p. 195. 118 D. Broughton Knox, ‘Inflation: A New Sin?’, The Protestant Faith radio broadcast, 9 December 1979, reprinted in Payne and Beilharz, D. Broughton Knox, pp. 207–8. 119 D. Broughton Knox, ‘The Gospel and Society’, The Protestant Faith radio broadcast, 4 April 1976, reprinted in Payne and Beilharz, D. Broughton Knox, p. 157. 120 Orpwood, Chappo, p. 209. 121 John Coleman, ‘Aftermath of Lausanne!: Evangelism in a Changing World’, New Life, 29 August 1974, p. 5. 122 Shilton, Speaking Out, pp. 93–4, 109. Muggeridge’s address at Lausanne, ‘Living Through an Apocalypse’, is reprinted in Douglas (ed.), Let the Earth Hear His Voice, pp. 449–56. 123 On this distinction, I am indebted to a personal recording by Grant Wacker of his interview with Leighton Ford, Duke University, March 2011, replayed at Regent College, Vancouver, July 2011. 124 Neville P. Andersen, ‘Biblical Theology and Cultural Identity in the AngloSaxon World’, in Douglas (ed.), Let the Earth Hear His Voice, p. 1291. 125 Peter Dwyer, How Lucky Are We? Australia in the 1970s (Carlton, Vic.: Pitman Publishing, 1977), p. 3. 126 ‘Editorial: Whither Evangelism?’, Australian Evangelical, January–February 1976, p. 3. 127 Bruce Wilson, ‘Communicating the Gospel in Australia Today’, Proceedings of the Lausanne/Australia Consultation. 128 ‘Theology Implications of Radical Discipleship’, p. 1295.

202 World 129 Dain spoke on ‘The Church and the World’, as part of a panel entitled ‘Parochialism, Self-Containment and Isolation’, later published in Henry and Mooneyham (eds.), One Race, One Gospel, One Task: World Congress on Evangelism, pp. 194–6. 130 ‘Man in Question: To many Australians, He’s Become . . . Mr Evangelical!– Peter Clouston Talks with John R. W. Stott’, Australian Evangelical, March– April 1976, p. 10. 131 The Willowbank Report: Consultation on Gospel and Culture, Lausanne Occasional Papers, no. 2 (1978), , accessed 18 April 2018. 132 David Kirk, ‘Allelujah! Do It Again, Lord! Again . . . Again . . . ’, Australian Evangelical, September–October 1974, p. 34. 133 David Kirk, ‘The Indigenous Church’, Australian Evangel, May 1964, pp. 7, 10. 134 ‘Australia National Strategy Group Report’, in Douglas (ed.), Let the Earth Hear His Voice, p. 1341; Interview with Neville P. Andersen at Lausanne, July 1974, BGCA CN 141, Box 2, Folder 1: ‘Andersen, 1974’. 135 Kirk, ‘Allelujah!’, p. 34. 136 ‘Evangelical Alliance Report’, Australian Evangelical, July–August 1975, p. 4. 137 ‘Evangelical Alliance Report’, p. 4. 138 Ogbu Kalu, ‘The Peter Pan Syndrome: Aid and Selfhood of the Church in Africa’, Missiology 3 (January 1975), pp. 15–30. 139 Lake, The Bible in Australia, p. 276. 140 Anne Coomes, The Authorised Biography of Festo Kivengere (Eastbourne, UK: Monarch, 1990), pp. 185–90. 141 Reed, Walking in the Light, pp. 223–4. 142 John Blacket, ‘Rainbow or the Serpent?: Observing the Arnhem Land Aboriginal Revival, 1979 and Now’, in Mark Hutchinson, Edmund Campion, and Stuart Piggin (eds.), Reviving Australia: Essays on the History and Experience of Revival and Revivalism in Australian Christianity (Sydney: Centre for the Study of Australian Christianity, 1994), pp. 291–301; Graham Paulson, ‘Towards an Aboriginal Theology’, Pacifica 19 (October 2006), pp. 310–20. 143 Martin E. Marty, ‘Reverse Evangelization’, Context 36 (February 2004), pp. 4–5. On Osei-Mensah’s April 1975 visit, see Dain to undisclosed Australian ICOWE participants, 22 April 1975, BGCA CN 245, Box 13, Folder 46: ‘International Congress on World Evangelization – Dain, A. J.–Correspondence; 1972–1975’. On Ben Wati’s visit, see ‘Indian Leader in Melbourne’, Australian Evangelical, November–December 1975, p. 21. 144 Knight to Osei-Mensah, 4 March 1976 in BGCA CN 46, Box 20, Folder 2: ‘Country File: Australia; 1976’. 145 Owen Craig, Sydney Morning Herald, 30 March 1986. 146 John Mallison, ‘Lights from Lausanne’, Methodist, 31 August 1974, n.p.

Conclusion Evangelicals and the end of Christendom

In the two decades between Billy Graham’s first Australian crusade in 1959 and his last in 1979, the long-held idea of ‘Christian Australia’ came to a rather abrupt and unexpected end. Amidst a number of profound changes to the social, political and cultural fabric of public life, Australians lost their defining narratives of nationhood. They could no longer plausibly call themselves ‘British’, ‘white’ and ‘Christian’, and no longer rely on the certainties of Christendom. While the endurance and subsequent erosion of these ethnic and racial markers of national identity is increasingly recognised and debated among historians, the third part of this trinity of identity – religion – has thus far been seriously neglected. So, too, has the experience of Australian evangelicals engaging with these significant cultural reorientations. This has left understandings of contemporary debates over the relationship between nation and religion in Australia, during the long 1960s and since, somewhat impoverished. Drawing comparisons with similar changes in Britain, Canada and the United States, Evangelicals and the End of Christendom has aimed to situate Australian evangelicals’ experience of this pivotal period of change within a wider and richer context. This book has been concerned with the relationship between Christianity and culture in general, and evangelical Christianity and Australian national public culture in particular. Focusing on a period in which the identities of both these entities – evangelicalism and Australian nationalism – were being significantly contested, it has argued that the connection between them deserves greater attention. If Australians had mediated their national experience through the language, symbols, traditions and ideals of civic Protestantism, how would they encounter the loss of these commonalities? And what might come to fill their place? Two questions were asked at the outset. First, what happened to the idea of ‘Christian Australia’, so long and widely held, and so quickly abandoned? The probable answers – woven throughout this study and explored in depth in a burgeoning international literature on secularisation and deChristianisation during the ‘long 1960s’ – are complex and multidimensional. The first point to be reiterated is that the destabilising changes experienced in the 1960s were also the outworking of trends towards stability in the

204

Conclusion

1950s that seemed to augur well for the continuation of religious vitality. The Cold War dualism of the 1950s and the expansion of the population through a baby boom and massive European immigration had intensified the utility of religious discourse in national self-understanding and in social cohesion. Postwar affluence, for example, did not, in itself, bring about a decline in the churches; in fact, wedded to the notion of an ‘Australian way of life’ with its familial motifs, affluence in the 1950s seemed to bolster the social significance of the churches, at least in terms of membership and finances. Given these trends in the 1950s that buttressed the idea of Christian nationhood, the changes of the 1960s and 1970s appear all the more profound and unexpected. This period can aptly be labelled one of ‘religious crisis’. Indeed, one of the difficulties in discerning causes of the collapse of Christendom is the fact that, in Donald Horne’s words, ‘everything seemed to be changing’.1 Australians experienced much the same raft of revolutions – intellectual, social, political and ecclesiastical – affecting other Western countries, albeit often with a time lag and in less violent ways. New ideas, most notably the belief in the primacy of the individual and the rejection of received authorities (in protests, satires, clothes, music and so on), were given greater platforms through the expansion of tertiary education, the ‘paperback revolution’ and the rise of television. This challenged the authority of the churches as well as the ethic of citizenly duty and responsibility they had tended to affirm. Economic changes could militate against the social centrality of the churches, most especially through increased access to new consumer goods such as televisions and cheaper cars, and alternative forms of leisure and social fulfilment. Banal changes, such as the introduction of the Sunday evening movie, were arguably as disruptive to the patterns of churchgoing that underwrote Christendom as were the much-discussed radical calls for a new morality. New social patterns were emerging. Massive postwar migration of nonBritish Europeans engendered greater social diversity, as well as expanding the Catholic proportion of the population. Greater access to sex information and contraceptives meshed with a libertarian impulse that challenged traditional Christian moral authority. Most significantly, parents of the baby boomers were less inclined to send their children to Sunday school, rupturing long-established patterns of transmitting the faith. New visions of the role of the state were being enacted. Governments were increasingly debating and legislating on issues that had previously been accepted as social absolutes, including censorship, homosexuality and divorce. Ironically, the spirit of libertarianism and debate in the late 1960s and early 1970s also issued in greater control of the state over moral norms, to the point that the Whitlam government set up a Royal Commission on Human Relationships in 1974, and the state was also taking new responsibility for the fostering of nationalism, though struggling to give it compelling content in the wake of lost British certitudes.

Conclusion

205

This period also witnessed significant changes within the churches. Perhaps most important, novel and easily forgotten was the way mainstream religious leaders were increasingly prone to publicly question both the form and the content of much Christian belief and practice, and the substantial attention religious issues received in the popular press. In calling for the Church to focus on social ‘relevance’ and embrace a ‘new reformation’ replacing dogmas and religious language with ‘secular’ thought-forms, Christians themselves (especially, but not exclusively, liberal Christians) played a central role in the undermining of Christendom and the weakening cultural significance of the churches. In this mix, evangelicals were particularly challenged by the need to listen to their critics, defending when necessary and adjusting when appropriate – all without being diverted from wider cultural engagement into the cul-de-sac of a ‘religious’ conversation. Of course, faith and nation were not the only determinants of Australians’ identity and aspiration in this period. And for all the anxious appeals of political and cultural elites to develop the trappings and substance of ‘real’ national feeling, or the warnings by civic Protestants of national decay if the people forgot their God, Australians still seemed to get by living relatively enjoyable lives. It was easy for Don Aitkin and his classmates who graduated from Armidale High School in 1953 to assert that declining public adherence to biblical standards of morality had not issued in self-evidently less moral or fulfilling lives.2 They may have been, in Manning Clark’s words, ‘stripped bare of all faith, to be left comfortless on Bondi Beach’.3 But they were still on Bondi Beach, the sun and the surf comfort enough. Even so, given the centrality of civic Protestant ideas to the way many Australian leaders had imbued ‘national character’ with a sense of dignity and destiny, and the extent to which what Callum Brown has termed ‘discursive Christianity’ had shaped, for good or ill, the ‘way of life’ of most Australians, the loss of these commonalities cannot be lightly dismissed.4 Just as the shift from ‘British race patriotism’ to a ‘new nationalism’ was no clean or straightforward shedding of the old for the new, so too the transition from ‘Christian country’ to ‘secular society’ was not as simple as the overthrowing of outdated and ill-suited ‘foreign’ faiths. The end of Christendom was a much more complex and unexpected affair than many historians, accustomed to the normative narrative of the secularisation thesis, have been inclined to recognise.

Evangelicals and Australian national public culture This brings us to the book’s central question. How did evangelical Christian leaders respond to the end of Christendom? Evangelicals had to reconsider their relationship to culture in three significant ways. First, how they ought to relate to Australian national public culture. Second, how they understood their place in relation to other national cultures. And third, how they considered the culture of their own movement.

206

Conclusion

Since the emergence of evangelicalism in the 1730s, engagement with the nation has been important to its character. It was a protest movement against British cultures in the North Atlantic that were Christian only in name, to which it addressed the call for individuals to be ‘born again’ that, in turn, they might bring about the moral and spiritual renewal of the nation. Accordingly, evangelicals tended to see the nation as an important entity in which they were vitally invested. They were all, to some degree, concerned to practice Christian citizenship, and they conceived of their culture in national terms. Australia was, in Hans Mol’s classic estimate, ‘a Christian nation in search of a religion or a heathen nation in flight from one’.5 For some evangelicals, their faith was explicitly couched within nationalist language. Fred Nile conceived of himself as a ‘Christian citizen’, and persisted in seeing evangelicals as responsible for guarding the moral integrity of the nation. For others, such as Billy Graham and his Australian hosts, revival was both a personal and a national necessity. National crises were integral to appeals for personal and national regeneration. Even those who eschewed the idea of nationalism – such as the Jesus People – sought to speak explicitly to the nation. ‘Quo Vadis Australis?’ asked the radical evangelicals at Kairos as they reflected on a Christian approach to war, environmental conservation, drug abuse, trade unionism and the materialism of ‘the great Australian dream’. Their concern was increasingly the presentation of born-again faith as a socially relevant, culturally appropriate solution to national problems. Some evangelicals had fixed and essentialist ideas about Australia, to which they held fast in the post-1960s identity void. Some developed these views as outsiders. Mol and Graham both imagined Australia as a place of newness and opportunity, in some ways idealising it in contrast to the conflict, scepticism and moral decline of Europe and North America. Insiders also had somewhat idealised images of the nation, fixed in the past. The first Australian-born Anglican Archbishop, Marcus Loane, maintained that the essence of national character lay in the cultural heritage bequeathed by Britain. Even if Australians could no longer share strategic and economic intimacy with Britain, nor draw as strongly on the symbols of empire, they ought to remember the heritage of liberty and culture that their Protestant forebears had won. According to Nile, the moral character of the nation as an instrument of divine action in the world remained a constant, despite declining public piety. Australians ought to ‘return’ to the faith of their forefathers, rather than articulate a new understanding of their national identity. Yet even as these leaders looked to conserve the cultural heritage of the past, they were very aware of the new demands of the present. Loane, for example, had a nuanced understanding of the changing geopolitical climate in which Australians negotiated the end of empire, calling for greater strategic engagement with Asia. If evangelicals could be ardently and explicitly nationalist, they could also be highly critical of the claims of Christian nationhood, and in ways not experienced before. The new evangelical left, embodied in the Jesus People

Conclusion

207

and the journal On Being, openly criticised the idea of a ‘Christian Australia’, not only its maintenance in the present or extension in the future (as typified in Nile’s moral reform crusade), but its existence in the past. Scepticism towards the Durkheimian, integrative role of religion in national life also marked their approach. Hans Mol pointed to the internal incoherence of much public discourse, and especially the putative evolution of a ‘secular society’. Cultural relevance and influence were not attained by those seeking after them as ends in themselves. Rather, churches that sought to educate their members in a holistic, distinctive worldview, embracing their commitment to a transcendent eschatology, were much more capable of competing for loyalty in a pluralistic culture. To some degree, they saw through both the secularist appeals from Church leaders in the early and mid-1960s, and the broader utopian attitudes of the late 1960s and early 1970s. In generally being less enamoured with the quest for ‘relevance’ than their liberal Protestant peers, they were arguably more cognisant of the ephemeral and ambiguous nature of cultural change in the period and more capable of weathering the disillusionment to which this ‘time of hope’ gave way in the mid-1970s.6 Yet even as evangelicals maintained this commitment to difference and marginality, they persistently sought to speak into the centres of cultural formation. They wanted to be part of the national conversation. The Jesus People took their counter-culture protest to Parliament in 1973 and penned open letters to the Prime Minister. As they matured, they wrote books on the national character and returned to the seat of power again at the Bicentennial ‘to remind the nation that a uniquely Australian church had come into being’.7 The Evangelical Alliance published a multi-page insert on the Lausanne Congress in the national newspaper, a prospect almost unthinkable now. Hans Mol, despite his appeal to the virtues of a minority ethic, still attempted to offer a universal theory of identity and sacredness, and was still frustrated at not receiving the sort of mainstream academic recognition he so desired. This paradox of a narrative of marginality and an eagerness to be at the centre of cultural debates probably had as much to do with the social activism of evangelicals, intent on reforming the world without being beholden to it, as it did with the persisting establishmentarian assumptions of cultural authority and social buoyancy afforded by Christendom. For Anglican evangelicals in particular, this tension between belonging in Australian public life as a ‘church for the nation’, and maintaining distance and group identity as ‘the people of God’, continues to be felt. Common to all the evangelicals in this book was a persistent anxiety to present evangelicalism as intellectually credible, socially engaged, nonsectarian and, perhaps most significantly, at home in Australian climes. The charge that evangelical Protestantism was somehow not ‘authentically’ Australian was, of course, not new in the 1960s, but it was raised and received with more intensity as the spirit of the ‘new nationalism’ became ascendant. What is often overlooked, however, is that such charges were most often made by Christians themselves, either critics outside or reformers inside the

208

Conclusion

evangelical fold. As we might expect, this rhetoric closely paralleled that of broader cultural debate over the development of a ‘real’, ‘distinctive’ or ‘authentic’ nationalism to replace the supposedly ill-suited and second-hand civic architecture of Britishness. Some evangelicals responded to this with great earnestness, as in the case of the many conferences on culture and ‘contextualisation’ following Lausanne, or in the colourful ‘gum-leaf theology’ produced by the Jesus People in the mid-late 1970s. The irony of this search for a distinctive Australian form of Christianity was that the dominant national culture which evangelicals were trying to understand and relate to was very much in a state of uncertainty and flux. Contrary to the nostalgic Whitlamite view of the late 1960s and early 1970s as a time of the unproblematic flowering of ‘mature’ post-imperial nationalism, this was, even in the words of a new nationalist as fervent as Manning Clark, a ‘great age of confusion’ in which nobody was ‘very clear as to what he believes’.8 Much of this uncertainty centred on the collapse of ‘British race patriotism’ as the symbolic storehouse of Australian identity. As Geoffrey Serle observed in 1967, there had been ‘such a vacuum since the decline of standard imperial patriotic rhetoric’ that it was ‘difficult to make any sure statement’.9 That evangelicals felt the tension between derived and local so pointedly is, if anything, a mark of the extent to which their gospel had been contextualised in the Australian setting. These evangelicals, and the movement they represented, were interpreting a changing Australia in ways both similar to and notably different than that of their secular peers. For while much discussion of the end of empire and the new nationalism was conducted amongst elites – the Hornes, Clarks and Serles – and many of the ‘solutions’ to the identity void were advanced by politicians and bureaucrats, religious leaders were reaching an arguably wider audience in more resonant ways as they spoke and wrote to their parishioners and supporters. In addresses to synods, in conferences, workshops and prayer rallies, in the extensive circulation of official and ‘underground’ evangelical newspapers and journals, through the new medium of television, and in week-by-week sermons, these leaders were shaping the cultural outlooks of thousands of Australians. Closer study of the reception of new ideas about the nation at the parish and parachurch levels could open up more rich perspectives on the experience of both the end of Christendom and the end of empire during the long 1960s. In various ways, each of these figures enacted their own versions of themes of the new nationalism. Fred Nile styled himself and his Christian Endeavour ‘recruits’ as a ‘new breed of Anzacs’, standing up to be counted for the ‘silent majority’. Though Anzac Day was widely believed to be declining towards extinction in the 1960s and 1970s, Nile was prescient in tapping into the muscular militarist language that would come, by the 1990s, to form the strongest motif of national feeling.10 Hans Mol, wary of the problems of sacralising the nation, imbibed the wider concern in the late 1960s and early 1970s for national self-knowledge, exploring the notion of

Conclusion

209

collective ‘identity’ at a time when this was becoming a major focus amongst politicians and cultural critics in Australia and across the disintegrating British World.11 Billy Graham seemed caught between the old image of Australia as a land of bush pioneers and sporting heroes, and the new anxiety to ‘project’ the nation into Asia and critically distance itself from British and American cultural influences. Marcus Loane embodied the same concern for regional responsibility, matched with an unease about the strategic and sentimental retreat of British imperialism. The Jesus People shared in much of the enthusiasm for ‘newness’ centred on the election of Gough Whitlam in 1972, as well as the determined search for fresh symbols and idiom of ‘Australian-ness’. In their different ways, Jack Dain and Athol Gill both demonstrated a concern for Australians to develop a ‘mature’, cosmopolitan and socially responsible sense of national identity, very much in line with Whitlam’s own approach to defining Australia’s place in the world. Evangelicals were reflecting, as much as critiquing, their milieu.

Australian evangelicals and global culture A second aspect of the way Australian evangelicals considered culture in the wake of Christian Australia was their reappraisal of relations with other national cultures. One of the backdrops to the end of Christendom highlighted in this book has been the shifting geopolitical climate in which Australians have conceived of their place in the world. The retreat of Britain from empire into Europe, the rising hegemony of the United States, decolonisation and new nationalisms in Asia and Africa, and the perception of expansionist Southeast Asian nationalist and communist movements in Australia’s ‘Near North’ – all these affected the evangelical movement. Australian evangelicals, contrary to the convenient pietistic stereotype, have always been concerned about the world. Nourished from earliest days by a stream of British (and then, increasingly, American) books, sermons, reprinted news, and visiting speakers, they have been well aware of the global evangelical family’s conquests and controversies. Never merely oriented to worlds Old and New, however, they were also vitally interested in the progress of the gospel in the Unreached World. The political topography of China and the cultural networks of East Africa were common topics of evangelical discussion, given the centrality of missionary societies in the evangelical imagination. The depth and breadth of understanding about the shape of global affairs generally, and global evangelicalism specifically, was dramatically intensified in the postwar period by the tides of decolonisation, the advent of jet air travel and, most significantly, the introduction of television. In the midst of the globalising, ‘cosmopolitan’ 1960s and 1970s, evangelicals struggled, along with their non-evangelical contemporaries, in developing a balanced relationship with Britain and America, Australia’s erstwhile ‘great and powerful friends’.12 They were well aware of the charge of being culturally derivative and dependent. As it seemed the nation was looking

210

Conclusion

more intently to the United States than the United Kingdom for both strategic protection and economic integration, evangelicals were aware of the possibility of translating spiritual allegiances from one centre to another – to use Methodist evangelist Alan Walker’s words in 1961, swapping ‘the swaddling clothes of British church life for the looser garments of American Christianity’.13 To be sure, Australian evangelicals were deeply influenced by overseas ideas and methods, and these seemed increasingly to come from the United States. But as eminent Australian religious historian Bruce Mansfield has argued, they invariably adapted them for local use.14 Often, their awareness of the temper of new nationalism made them highly critical of American society and American evangelicalism. Fred Nile and Marcus Loane both pointed to American and British social changes as warnings of what might happen should Australians abandon traditional Christian visions of moral order and cultural homogeneity. The Jesus People were determined to demonstrate that their movement was authentically Australian, not merely a ‘pale imitation of an American prototype’.15 So, too, were older and more conservative evangelicals like Jack Dain prone to point out a culturally imperialist tone within much American evangelical enterprise. But equally often, evangelicals were distinguishing between different types of Americans. Billy Graham was no Elmer Gantry, nor was John Howard Yoder to be lumped with the powder-blue-suited Southern Baptists who so strenuously opposed the Radical Discipleship group’s social justice agenda in the Lausanne Covenant. Rather than speak of a radical break with Britain and a new devotion to all things American, as with wider understandings of Australia’s cultural and political relations with Britain and America, it is best to view cultural influence within the movement as more organic and multi-directional, evidence of the way evangelicalism was becoming even more diffuse. The globalisation of evangelicalism and the challenges this presented for rethinking the relationship between faith and culture were brought home to Australians as they encountered evangelicals from the majority world, especially at the Lausanne Congress in 1974. The discovery of evangelicalism’s rapid expansion in the non-Western world was both an encouragement and a challenge. It showed that evangelicalism was not as threatened and marginalised as it might appear in the twilight of Western Christendom. The conviction and charisma of non-Western evangelicals like René Padilla, Samuel Escobar and Gottfried Osei-Mensah inspired black and white Australian evangelicals, who often invited such figures to speak in Australia. But this encounter with global evangelicalism also highlighted the way Western evangelicals had tended uncritically to wed their cultural assumptions to their mission, producing both penitence and perplexity. Such encounters abroad reflexively catalysed questioning at home, issuing in a series of conferences and conventions exploring the lifestyle and worldview of Australians (as a whole and in sub-cultures) and the best way of communicating the gospel to them. In their influence on global Christianity and response to it, Australians sat somewhere between North and South. They

Conclusion

211

were culturally closest to the English-speaking North, and particularly the Commonwealth. Yet as representatives of a settler society located in Asia they could join with Africans, Asians and South Americans in challenging the perceived imperialism of Britain and the United States. This intermediate position made questions of identity more complex than binaries of North and South allow. Yet it also created a distinctive intermediary perspective that deserves further consideration if we are to understand the multi-centric nature of post-imperial evangelical networks of influence.

Australian evangelicalism’s own culture A third aspect of the response of Australian evangelicals to the end of Christian Australia was a reconsideration and reconfiguration of the movement’s own internal culture (however difficult it might be to speak of a distinct ‘evangelical culture’).16 A number of questions were raised by this period of ferment. Would evangelicalism become sub-cultural, surviving beneath the major currents of national life, content in its self-affirming marginality? Could it present a counter-cultural vision of national life, a genuine ‘third way’ between capitalism and communism, as the Jesus People so fervently believed? Or should its proponents seek to reclaim its traditional attachment to the dominant culture, arguing for the continuation of the idea of Christian Australia, as did Fred Nile? Their answers were neither uniform nor straightforward. Indeed, even recent configurations of the relationship between Christ and culture, such as H. Richard Niebuhr’s classic 1951 book by that title, seemed insufficient guides for navigating a path through the ruins of Christendom.17 The problem was identifying just what ‘culture’ one was speaking of; in this case, what constituted Australia’s national public culture after the collapse of British race patriot symbols and rhetoric.18 Certainly, the period signalled the weakening of a number of traditional boundary markers of evangelical identity. The currents of formal and informal reform and ecumenism – accelerated most significantly by Vatican II and the introduction of state aid for Catholic schools in 1965 – had seriously eroded sectarian divides. Evangelicals, to a previously unimaginable degree, were left without the Catholic ‘other’. They were also increasingly left without the liberal ‘other’, as denominations of liberal persuasion (especially the Methodists) seemed to be losing both members and wider cultural traction. And, perhaps most significantly, they were increasingly left without the nominal Protestant ‘other’, towards which their message of conversion had primarily been directed. At the same time, the decline and disappearance of interdenominational evangelical organisations such as Christian Endeavour, in parallel with a wider retreat from civic participation in voluntary societies such as the Freemasons, left evangelicals with less opportunity to represent their true size and potential cultural and political influence. New attempts to revive this form of evangelical activism, such as the Australian Festival of Light, had mixed success in presenting a widely representative evangelical

212

Conclusion

presence in national life, and found more traction when they broadened their constituency and aimed to speak for wider conservative interests such as ‘family values’. Perhaps as a result of this loss of clear markers of identity and otherness, evangelicals became increasingly divided amongst themselves over just what their mission to the nation ought to look like. Fissures over the relationship between evangelism and social concern, brought to the fore by Lausanne, were in many ways more about differences of style and disposition between younger and older evangelicals, and between social conservatives and social progressives. Though often unacknowledged, cultural attitudes tended to be even more important than theology in fuelling divisions in the movement, both within Australia and globally. As conciliatory patriarchs such as Marcus Loane and Jack Dain retired at the start of the 1980s, and as many evangelicals after Church union tended to become more iconoclastic and exhibit less attachment to their denominational identity, it became easier for members of the movement to locate themselves more exclusively within conservative, progressive or Pentecostal streams.19 Commitment to pan-evangelicalism was in some ways weakened. However, as Stuart Piggin observes of the movement’s tenor in the early twentieth century, this internal fragmentation may have actually strengthened each stream’s engagement in civic and political life.20 Evangelicals’ persistent activism in a less congenial setting has made them arguably more creative and resourceful, if less cooperative. Given that memories of sectarianism still carry weight, and that, according to a 2013 survey, Australians warm to Christians who describe themselves as ‘ordinary’ or ‘practising’ while having a mild dislike for those who are ‘born again’ or ‘evangelical’, the movement is still faced with the perennial challenge of demarcating its identity and defining its place in the national conversation.21 *** What now of the place of Christianity in Australian civic culture? The distinction made in this book between the end of ‘Christian Australia’ and the idea of a ‘post-Christian Australia’ has been deliberate and important. To be sure, the dominant forms of Christian belief and practice in Australia have markedly changed. ‘Christian Australia’ as a shared imagined community, part of the larger Western mental map of ‘Christendom’, has well and truly gone. Its revival is almost inconceivable. Moreover, the collapse of the Sunday school movement in the 1970s, and disruption of traditional patterns of the socialisation of children into Christian belief and behaviour, means that the Christian faith is more and more foreign to most Australians. If Hans Mol found in 1966 that in Australia, as in Britain, ‘the goodwill towards religion is counter-balanced by a massive woolliness of thinking about it’, the plausibility of Christian faith has only been further weakened by a profound decline in biblical literacy coupled with decreased trust in church leaders (due in large part to revelations of systemic child sexual abuse).22

Conclusion

213

Nevertheless, it may be presumptuous at the present time to say that Australia is a ‘post-Christian’ nation. Not only do Census figures still indicate that a majority – albeit a shrinking majority – of Australians identify themselves with a Christian denomination, a substantial proportion (18 per cent) still attend church monthly (more than twice as many as attend games of all codes of Australian football combined), and Christian organisations such as schools and charities are increasingly critical to the functions of the welfare state.23 As Fred Nile’s Christian Democratic Party found, the diffusion of national identity wrought by official multiculturalism also brought with it new opportunities for non-Western Christian immigrants to express their support for the ‘Judeo-Christian’ heritage of the nation. Australian civic discourse continues to draw deeply, if usually unconsciously, on Christian language and motifs. Indeed, the invocation of Christian terminology in parliamentary speeches rose from 9.1 per cent in 2000 to 21.6 per cent in 2006.24 That the explicit connection between such language and its Christian origins has been first subsumed and then forgotten since the rupture of the Sixties makes the study of this period especially significant, for the issues of identity raised in the 1960s continue to animate contemporary controversies. As Australian political leaders navigate the challenge of greater cultural and religious diversity (in perception as much as reality), it becomes increasingly important to apprehend the significance of Christianity to past and present ideas about national identity and vocation, and the way these have changed since the 1960s. A central recommendation of the federal government’s 2014 review of the new national curriculum, calling for it to focus more on ‘the impact of Western civilisation and Judeo-Christianity on Australia’s development, institutions and broader society and culture’ and its highly contested reception, reinforces the need to develop a nuanced understanding of these intersections.25 That claims about Australian national identity as ‘Christian’, ‘secular’, or something else, continue to generate such heated debate in the press, in the Parliament, in the academy and in new media suggests that questions of religion and national public culture are not going away.26 To reprise the central propositions of this book. First, the period between Billy Graham’s first Australian crusade in 1959 and his last in 1979 marked a profound shift in the way Australians conceived of their national identity, not least because of the collapse of the idea of civic Protestantism and the lost social imaginary of Greater Britain. This created new challenges for all Christian leaders, but perhaps especially evangelicals, given their historic assumptions about inhabiting a shared British Protestant culture, in which its citizens were familiar with Christianity but needed to be converted – to make a ‘personal decision for Christ’, to be ‘born again’. Second, the evangelical leaders surveyed here, broadly representative of the diversity of the movement across denominations and locations, clerical and lay, were deeply aware of this changed environment and sought to respond as best they could to it. They were

214

Conclusion

seriously engaged in national and global reorientations, unsurprising given the activism and internationalism inherent to the movement’s character. That said, their engagement was by no means monochrome, and exposed contradictions and conflicts within the movement. Third, as evangelicals struggled to agree on their identity and mission in an increasingly pluralist culture, they were not markedly out of step with their contemporaries. Indeed, at several points, they seemed to have a distinctly developed grasp of the illusory nature of calls for a ‘new nationalism’ or claims of a ‘secular society’. To better understand both the identity politics of post-imperial settler societies and the nature of religious commitments in a pluralist public culture, we need to pay closer attention to the relationship between religion and nation during the long 1960s. Evangelicals are a significant part of this story. Their continued resilience and growth in Australia, the West and (especially) the majority world, makes understanding their navigation of this critical period of change an important dimension to the ongoing project of apprehending and articulating identities, national and religious, in contemporary public life.

Notes 1 Horne, Time of Hope, p. 6. Emphasis in original. 2 Don Aitkin, What Was It All For? The Reshaping of Australia (Crows Nest, NSW: Allen & Unwin, 2005), pp. 141–8. 3 Clark, A Short History of Australia, p. 265. 4 Brown, The Death of Christian Britain. 5 Mol, Religion in Australia, p. 302. 6 For the resilience of evangelicalism in this period and since, see Joseph B. Tamney, The Resilience of Conservative Religion: The Case of Popular, Conservative Protestant Congregations (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002); Christian Smith, American Evangelicalism: Embattled and Thriving (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998). 7 Richards, With One Accord. 8 Manning Clark, New Accent, 22 March 1974, p. 11, quoted in Curran and Ward, The Unknown Nation, p. 63. 9 Serle, ‘Godzone 6: Austerica Unlimited?’, p. 244. 10 Hugh Chilton, ‘Battling for the Nation’s Soul: The RSL vs. the Churches, Anzac Day 1965’, Teaching History 49, no. 1 (March 2015), pp. 34–7. 11 Curran and Ward, The Unknown Nation, pp. 16–7. 12 Tanja Luckins, ‘Cosmopolitanism and the Cosmopolitans: Australia in the World, the World in Australia’, in Robinson and Ustinoff (eds.), The 1960s in Australia, pp. 51–68. 13 Alan Walker, ‘The Church in the New Australia’, Australian Quarterly, September 1961, p. 75. 14 Bruce Mansfield, ‘The Church’s Voice: Australian Churches as Social Critics Over Two Centuries’, in Andrew Dutney (ed.), From Here to Where? Australian Christians Owning the Past, Embracing the Future (Melbourne: Uniting Church Press, 1988), pp. 13–24. 15 Gill, ‘The Christian Counter Culture’. 16 Andrew Atherstone and David Ceri Jones, ‘Evangelicals and Evangelicalisms: Contested Identities’, in Andrew Atherstone and David Ceri Jones (eds.), The Routledge Research Companion to the History of Evangelicalism (Abingdon: Routledge, 2019), pp. 1–21.

Conclusion

215

17 H. Richard Niebuhr, Christ and Culture (New York: Harpe & Row, 1951). This image of the ruins of Christendom is drawn from Stanley Hauerwas, ‘Leaving the Ruins: The Gospel and Cultural Formation’, in Tom Frame and Geoffrey Treloar (eds.), Agendas for Australian Anglicanism: Essays in honour of Bruce Kaye (Adelaide: ATF Press, 2006), pp. 271–85. 18 Richard Mouw, ‘Christian Theology and Cultural Plurality’, The Scottish Bulletin of Evangelical Theology 5, no. 2 (1986), pp. 185–6. 19 Stuart Piggin, ‘Historical Streams of Influence on Evangelical Piety’, Lucas: An Evangelical History Review no. 18 (1994), pp. 5–19; Rob Warner, Reinventing English Evangelicalism, 1966–2001: A Theological and Sociological Study (Milton Keynes, UK: Paternoster, 2007). 20 Piggin, Spirit, Word and World, p. 252. 21 In a survey of 1,129 Australians in 2013, net positive responses were registered for the labels ‘practicing’ Christian (28 per cent) and ‘ordinary’ Christian (18 per cent), while negative sentiments were recorded for ‘born again’ (−5 per cent), ‘evangelical’ (−11 per cent) and ‘fundamentalist’ (−31 per cent). McCrindle Research, ‘Church Attendance in Australia’, , updated 28 March 2013, accessed 20 April 2018. 22 Mol, Religion in Australia, p. 302. Mark McCrindle, Faith and Belief in Australia: A National Study on Religion, Spirituality and Worldview Trends (Baulkam Hills, NSW: McCrindle Research, 2017). 23 Ruth Powell and Miriam Pepper, ‘Local Churches in Australia: Research Findings from NCLS Research’, in 2016 NCLS Church Life Pack Seminar Presentation (Sydney: NCLS Research, 2017); Mark McCrindle, ‘A Demographic Snapshot of Christianity and Church Attenders in Australia’, , updated 18 April 2014, accessed 20 April 2018; Penny Knight and David Gilchrist, Australia’s Faith-Based Charities: A Study Supplementing the Australian Charities 2013 Report (Melbourne: Australian Charities and Not-forprofits Commission, 2015). 24 Annabel Crabb, ‘Invoking Religion in Australian Politics’, Australian Journal of Political Science 44, no. 2 (June 2009), p. 263. The Christian terms Crabb searched for across 2,422 parliamentary speeches were ‘Christ, church, faith, pray, Jesus, Bible, spiritual, God and/or religion’. Cf. Stuart Piggin, ‘Power and Religion in a Modern State: Desecularisation in Australian History’, Journal of Religious History 38, no. 3 (September 2014), pp. 320–1. 25 Kevin Donnelly and Kenneth Wiltshire, Review of the Australian Curriculum: Final Report (Canberra: Australian Government Department of Education, 2014), p. 5. 26 For example, see the running debate over what the founding ideal of ‘free, compulsory and secular’ public education actually entailed and what its implications might be for contemporary religious activity in public schools, in Catherine Byrne, ‘“Free, Compulsory and (Not) Secular”: The Failed Idea in Australian Education’, Journal of Religious History 37 (March 2013), pp. 20–38; and response: David Hastie, ‘The Latest Instalment in the Whig Interpretation of Australian Education History: Catherine Byrne’s JORH Article “Free, Compulsory and (not) Secular”’, Journal of Religious History 41 (September 2017), pp. 386–403.

Bibliography

Interviews Alan Nichols, 16 January 2013, telephone interview. David Claydon, 15 January 2013, Sydney. Donald Cameron, 1 May 2012, Sydney. Fred Nile, 12 December 2012, Sydney. Hans Mol, 8 December 2012, Canberra. John Hirt, 24 January 2013, Sydney. John Smith, 5 April 2013, Ocean Grove. Roderick and Janet West, 2 May 2012, Sydney. Ross Langmead, 3 April 2013, Melbourne. Stuart Barton Babbage, 22 May 2012, Sydney. Warwick Olson, 24 October 2012, Sydney.

Manuscripts and archival collections Billy Graham Center Archives, Wheaton College, Illinois Collection 19: BGEA: Papers of Robert O. Ferm. Collection 24: BGEA: Records of News Conferences. Collection 26: BGEA: Audio Tapes. Collection 46: Records of the Lausanne Committee for World Evangelization. Collection 53: Records of the International Congress on World Evangelization. Collection 141: BGEA: Oral History Project. Collection 245: BGEA: Records of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association’s Australian Affiliate.

National Library of Australia, Canberra Papers of Hans Mol, MS Acc00.203 and Acc00.207.

Samuel Marsden Archives, Moore Theological College, Sydney Anglican Historical Society Papers.

Bibliography

217

Loy, Allan, ‘Doing Theology in an Australian Context’, Address at a meeting of the Theological Students Association, Moore Theological College, Newtown, 1 January 1987, audio recording.

State Library of New South Wales, Sydney Australian Christian Endeavour Union further records, ca. 1880–1996, MLMSS 8089. Australian Christian Endeavour Union further records, 1892–1995, being mainly New South Wales Christian Endeavour Union further records, MLMSS 8092. Papers of the New South Wales Council of Churches, MLMSS 8103. Records of the NSW Christian Endeavour Union, MLMSS 6753. Royal Visit 1970: Re-Enactment: the landing at Botany Bay 1770, video recording, (n.d.)

Whitlam Institute, University of Western Sydney, Sydney. Papers of Graham Freudenberg.

Whitley College Archives, Melbourne House of the Gentle Bunyip Collection.

Parliamentary papers Commonwealth Parliamentary Debates, House of Representatives and Senate, Canberra, 1975. New South Wales Parliamentary Debates, Legislative Council, Sydney, 1981. Queensland Parliamentary Debates, Legislative Assembly, Brisbane, 1975.

Newspapers and periodicals ABC News (online). Advertiser. Advocate. Age. Anglican. Argus. Australian. Australian Christian Endeavourer. Australian Church Record. Australian Evangel. Australian Evangelical. Australian Women’s Weekly. Bulletin. Canberra Times. Catholic Weekly. Challenge (NZ). Christianity Today.

218

Bibliography

Christian Record (UK). Church Chronicle. Church of England Newspaper (UK). Church Scene. Courier. Courier-Mail. Current Affairs Bulletin. CWN Series (UK). Daily News. Daily Mirror (UK). Daily Telegraph (UK). Evening News (US). F.A.M. News Bulletin. Free Slave. Guardian (UK). Honi Soit. House of the Gentle Bunyip Newsletter. Independent (UK). Interchange. Kairos. Labor Daily. Life (US). Life of Faith. Look (US). Melbourne Herald. Mercury. Methodist. Nation. New Life. Newcastle Morning Herald. News Bulletin of the Australian Festival of Light. Newsweek (US). N.S.W. Presbyterian. On Being. Queensland Times. R.A.P. Research Output. Roll Call: The Voice of Christian Endeavour in NSW. S.A. Farmer. Saturday Evening Post (US). See. Sojourners (US). Southern Cross. Spokesman Review. Sun. Sun-Herald. Sydney Morning Herald. Telegraph (UK). Time (US).

Bibliography

219

Times (UK). Times Daily (US). Truth. Truth & Liberation. T.V. Times. Victorian Baptist Witness. Vigil: The Official Publication of the Order of Knights (NSW). Vision Magazine. Wall Street Journal (US). West Australian.

Other primary sources Andersen, Neville P., ‘Biblical Theology and Cultural Identity in the Anglo-Saxon World’, in J.D. Douglas (ed.), Let the Earth Hear His Voice: Official Reference Volume, Papers and Responses of the International Congress on World Evangelization, Lausanne, Switzerland (Minneapolis, MN: World Wide Publications, 1975), p. 1291. AnAustralian Prayer Book (Sydney: The Standing Committee of the General Synod of the Church of England in Australia, 1978). Archibald, Helen, ‘Review of Christianity in Chains: A Sociologist’s Interpretation of the Churches Dilemma in a Secular World by Hans Mol’, Review of Religious Research 15, no. 1 (October 1973), p. 58. Babbage, Stuart Barton, Memoirs of a Loose Canon (Canberra: Acorn Press, 2004). Babbage, Stuart Barton, and Ian Siggins, Light Beneath the Cross: The Story of Billy Graham’s Crusade in Australia (Melbourne: The World’s Work, 1960). Barnett, Paul, ‘Great Problems; Exciting Possibilities’, in Paul Barnett and John Court (eds.), The Message of Lausanne (Adelaide: Trinity Publishing Society, 1974), n.p. Berton, Pierre, The Comfortable Pew: A Critical Look at the Church in the New Age, British edition (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1966). Blainey, Geoffrey, ‘Godzone 7: The New Australia: A Legend of the Lake’, Meanjin Quarterly 26, no. 3 (December 1967), pp. 365–81. Boyd, Robin, The Australian Ugliness (Melbourne: F.W. Cheshire, 1960). Bureau of Transport and Communications Economics, ‘Statistical summary of the Communications, Entertainment and Information Industries’, 1994, online at Australian Bureau of Statistics, updated 10 April 2007, , accessed 26 May 2018. Burgmann, E.H., ‘Religion’, in C. Hartley Grattan (ed.), Australia (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1947), pp. 326–36. Bush, Henry, and Walter J.E. Kerrison (eds.), First Fifty Years: The Story of Christian Endeavour Under the Southern Cross (Sydney: National Christian Endeavour Union of Australia and New Zealand with The Epworth Printing and Publishing House, 1938). Chaplin, W. Knight, and M. Jenie Street, Fifty Years of Christian Endeavor: A Jubilee Record and Forecast, 1881–1931 (London: British Christian Endeavour Union, 1931). ChristianEndeavour: The National Handbook, fifth edition (Melbourne: National Christian Endeavour Union of Australia, 1955).

220

Bibliography

The Christian Endeavour Society: What It Is! How It Works! (Melbourne: National Christian Endeavour Union of Australia and New Zealand, 1936). Clark, C.M.H., ‘Faith’, in Peter Coleman (ed.), Australian Civilization: A Symposium (Melbourne: Cheshire, 1962), pp. 78–88. Clark, Francis, The Christian Endeavour Manual (Boston: United Society of Christian Endeavor, 1903). Clark, Francis, Memories of Many Men in Many Lands: An Autobiography (Boston: United Society of Christian Endeavour, 1922). Clark, Manning, ‘The Years of Unleavened Bread: December 1949 to December 1972’, Meanjin Quarterly 32, no. 3 (September 1973), pp. 245–50. Claydon, David, Report and Recommendations from the Australian Frontier Youth Workers’ Consultation, Melbourne, September 24–28, 1973 (no publication details, 1973). Cleaver, Richard, Australian Christian Endeavour Union National President’s Charter 1968–1970: ‘Fitness Australia’ Programme (Australian Christian Endeavour Union, 1968). Cleaver, Richard (ed.), For Christ and the Church: The Official Manual of the National Christian Endeavour Union of Australia, second edition (Melbourne: National Christian Endeavour Publications Board, 1967). Cleaver, Richard, interviewed by John Ferrell, Parliament of Australia Oral History Project, 1992, online recording hosted by the National Library of Australia, , accessed 24 April 2018. Costello, Tim, interviewed by Peter Thompson, Talking Heads, ABC1, 15 June 2009, , accessed 8 June 2013. Court, John, Singapore Congress: A Layman’s View (Adelaide: Holy Trinity Publishing Society, 1969). Cox, Harvey, The Secular City: Secularization and Urbanization in Theological Perspective (Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin Books, 1965). Cox, Harvey (ed.), The Situation Ethics Debate (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1968). Crowley, Frank, Modern Australia in Documents, Volume 2: 1939–1970 (Melbourne: Wren Publishing, 1973). Dain, A. Jack, ‘Billy Graham: Prophet of the Gospel’, in 20th Century Prophets (Sydney: Anglican Information Office, 1975), pp. 11–20. Dain, A. Jack, ‘The Church and the World’, in Carl Henry and W. Stanley Mooneyham (eds.), One Race, One Gospel, One Task: World Congress on Evangelism, Berlin 1966: Official Reference Volumes: Papers and Reports, Vol. 1 (Minneapolis, MN: World Wide Publications, 1967), pp. 194–6. David, Claydon, ‘Australia National Strategy Group Report’, in J.D. Douglas (ed.), Let the Earth Hear His Voice: Official Reference Volume, Papers and Responses of the International Congress on World Evangelization, Lausanne, Switzerland (Minneapolis, MN: World Wide Publications, 1975), pp. 1340–1. Dingle, R.S.C. (ed.), This Decisive Hour: The Official Report of the 26th National Christian Convention, Brisbane September 1955 (no publication details, 1955). Donnelly, Kevin, and Kenneth Wiltshire, Review of the Australian Curriculum: Final Report (Canberra: Australian Government Department of Education, 2014), p. 5. Douglas, J.D. (ed.), Let the Earth Hear His Voice: Official Reference Volume, Papers and Responses of the International Congress on World Evangelization, Lausanne, Switzerland (Minneapolis, MN: World Wide Publications, 1975).

Bibliography

221

Dwyer, Peter, How Lucky Are We? Australia in the 1970s (Carlton, VIC: Pitman Publishing, 1977). Ellul, Jacques, The Technological Society, trans. John Wilkinson (New York: Vintage Books, 1969). Escobar, Samuel, ‘Evangelism and Man’s Search for Freedom, Justice and Fulfillment’, in J.D. Douglas (ed.), Let the Earth Hear His Voice: Official Reference Volume, Papers and Responses of the International Congress on World Evangelization, Lausanne, Switzerland (Minneapolis, MN: World Wide Publications, 1975), pp. 303–18. Fallding, Harold, ‘Review of Religion in Australia: A Sociological Investigation by Hans Mol’, Contemporary Sociology 3, no. 2 (March 1974), p. 169. Fletcher, Joseph, Situation Ethics: The New Morality (London: SCM Press, 1967). Frankl, Viktor, Man’s Search for Meaning, trans. Ilse Lasch (Boston: Beacon Press, 2006). Frappell, Ruth, Leighton Frappell, Raymond Nobbs, and Robert Withycombe (eds.), Anglicans in the Antipodes: An Indexed Calendar of the Papers and Correspondence of the Archbishops of Canterbury, 1788–1961, Relating to Australia, New Zealand, and the Pacific (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1999). Garvin, Mal, Us Aussies: The Fascinating History They Didn’t Tell Us at School (Sale, VIC: Hayzon through Fusion Australia, 1987). Gill, Athol, ‘The Christian Counter Culture: 4 Talks by Dr. W.A. Gill Broadcast on the A.B.C. Second Network 25th, 26th, 28th and 29th June, 1973’, transcript in House of the Gentle Bunyip Collection, Whitley College Archives, Melbourne. Gill, Athol, ‘Christian Social Responsibility’, in C. René Padilla (ed.), The New Face of Evangelicalism: An International Symposium on the Lausanne Covenant (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1976), pp. 87–102. Glock, Charles, and Rodney Stark, American Piety: The Nature of Religious Commitment, Patterns of Religious Commitment Series, Vol. 1 (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1968). Gould, Shane, Tumble Turns: An Autobiography, second edition (Pymble, NSW: HarperCollins, 2003). Graham, Billy, The Jesus Generation (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1971). Graham, Billy, ‘Personal Discipline’, Hour of Decision Radio Broadcast, Sydney, Australia, 28 April 1968, The Billy Graham Audio Archives, , accessed 13 May 2018. Graham, Billy, ‘Signs of Christ’s Return’, Hour of Decision Radio Broadcast, Sydney, Australia, 21 April 1968, The Billy Graham Audio Archives, , accessed 13 May 2018. Graham, Billy, ‘Turning Point of the Nation’, Hour of Decision Radio Broadcast, 17 March 1968, The Billy Graham Audio Archives, , accessed 16 May 2018. Graham, Billy, ‘Why the Berlin Congress?’, in Carl Henry and W. Stanley Mooneyham (eds.), One Race, One Gospel, One Task: World Congress on Evangelism, Berlin 1966, Official Reference Volumes: Papers and Reports, Vol. 1 (Minneapolis, MN: World Wide Publications, 1967), pp. 22–34. Graham, Billy, ‘Why Lausanne?’, in J.D. Douglas (ed.), Let the Earth Hear His Voice: Official Reference Volume, Papers and Responses of the International Congress on World Evangelization, Lausanne, Switzerland (Minneapolis, MN: World Wide Publications, 1975), pp. 22–36.

222

Bibliography

Graham, Billy, Just As I Am: The Autobiography of Billy Graham (San Francisco: HarperCollins, 1997). Grattan, C. Hartley (ed.), Australia (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1947). Guinness, Howard (illustr.), Benier, I Object . . . to Billy Graham (Sydney: Ambassador Press, 1959). Guinness, Os, The Dust of Death: A Critique of the Establishment and the Counter Culture, and the Proposal for a Third Way (Downers Grove, IL: Inter-Varsity Press, 1972). Hancock, Keith, Today, Yesterday and Tomorrow: The 1973 Boyer Lectures (Sydney: The Australian Broadcasting Commission, 1973). Hayes, Victor, ‘Introduction’, in Victor Hayes (ed.), Toward Theology in an Australian Context (Bedford Park, SA: Australian Association for the Study of Religion, 1979), pp. 1–6. Henry, Carl F.H., and W. Stanley Mooneyham (eds.), One Race, One Gospel, One Task: World Congress on Evangelism, Berlin 1966: Official Reference Volumes: Papers and Reports, 2 vols. (Minneapolis, MN: World Wide Publications, 1967). Hirt, John, ‘True Renewal’, in A New World: House of the New World Training Resources (West Ryde, NSW: House of the New World, 1974). Horne, Donald, ‘The British and Us 1: Mates in the Empire’, Quadrant 9 (January– February 1965), pp. 9–13. Horne, Donald, The Next Australia (Sydney: Angus & Robertson, 1970). Ivan Southall, ‘Preface’, in Ivan Southall (ed.), The Challenge: Is the Church Obsolete? An Australian Response to the Challenge of Modern Society (Melbourne: Lansdowne Press, 1966), pp. v–viii. Jacob, Michael, Pop Goes Jesus: An Investigation of Pop Religion in Britain and America (London: Mowbrays, 1972). Jarrott, Reginald, ‘Australasia’, in Carl Henry and W. Stanley Mooneyham (eds.), One Race, One Gospel, One Task: World Congress on Evangelism, Berlin 1966: Official Reference Volumes: Papers and Reports, Vol. 1 (Minneapolis, MN: World Wide Publications, 1967), pp. 236–8. Jensen, Peter, ‘An Agenda for Australian Evangelical Theology’, Reformed Theological Review 42, no. 1 (1983), pp. 1–9. Johnstone, Ronald, ‘Review of Hans Mol, The Breaking of Traditions’, American Sociological Review 34, no. 6 (December 1969), pp. 1005–6. Judge, Edwin, ‘Editorial: Interchange of What?’, Interchange 1, no. 1 (April 1967), p. 2. KairosLive! [sound recording] (Hornsby, NSW: Heaven, 1973). Kalu, Ogbu, ‘The Peter Pan Syndrome: Aid and Selfhood of the Church in Africa’, Missiology 3, no. 1 (January 1975), pp. 15–30. Knöpfelmacher, Frank, and Douglas Armstrong, ‘The Relation between Authoritarianism, Ethnocentrism and Religious Denomination among Australian Adolescents’, American Catholic Sociological Review 24, no. 2 (Summer 1963), pp. 99–114. Langstaff, Alan, ‘The Temple Trust: What Is It?’, Vision Magazine no. 1 (January– February 1974). Lewis, Sinclair, Elmer Gantry: A Novel (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1927). Loane, Marcus, Archbishop Mowll: The Biography of Howard West Kilvinton Mowll, Archbishop of Sydney and Primate of Australia (London and Southampton: Hodder and Stoughton, 1960). Loane, Marcus, Cambridge and the Evangelical Succession (London: Lutterworth Press, 1952).

Bibliography

223

Loane, Marcus, Decade of Decision: The Archbishop of Sydney writes about Billy Graham . . . the Man and the Message (Sydney: Information and Public Relations Office, Church of England, Diocese of Sydney, c.1966). Loane, Marcus, This Goodly Heritage: A Historical Interpretation of the Origins and Traditions of the King’s School: 1832–1982 (North Parramatta, NSW: The King’s School, 1990). Loane, Marcus, Makers of our Heritage: A Study of Four Evangelical Leaders (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1967). Loane, Marcus, Masters of the English Reformation (London: The Church Book Room Press, 1954). Loane, Marcus, Oxford and the Evangelical Succession (London: Lutterworth Press, 1950). Mansfield, Bruce, ‘Foreword’, Journal of Religious History 1, no. 1 (June 1960), pp. 1–2. ‘The Master’s Workshop’, promotional flyer, n.d., in possession of Peter Corney. McCrindle Research, ‘Church Attendance in Australia’, updated 28 March 2013, , accessed 20 April 2018. McGregor, Craig, ‘What Counter-Culture?’, Meanjin Quarterly 34, no. 1 (March 1975), pp. 40–4. McLuhan, Marshall, The Gutenberg Galaxy (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1962). ‘Media Release: Lost Verse Puts Christ into the National Anthem’, Awakening, 6 June 2000, , accessed 22 June 2018. ‘Memories of Bishop Dain by Friends and Colleagues’, Billy Graham Center Archives, Wheaton, Illinois, , accessed 3 June 2018. Menzies, Robert, ‘Speech Welcoming Queen Elizabeth, Canberra, 18 February 1963’, reprinted in Sally Warhaft (ed.), Well May We Say: The Speeches that Made Australia (Melbourne: Black Inc., 2004), pp. 546–7. Miller, J.D.B., ‘Godzone 5: Other Places’, Meanjin Quarterly 26, no. 2 (June 1967), pp. 117–26. Moberg, David O., The Great Reversal: Evangelism Versus Social Concern (Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1972). Mol, Hans, The Breaking of Traditions: Theological Convictions in Colonial America (Berkeley: Glendessary Press, 1968). Mol, Hans, Calvin for the 3rd Millennium (Canberra: Australian National University E-Press, 2008). Mol, Hans, Christianity in Chains: A Sociologist’s Interpretation of the Churches’ Dilemma in a Secular World (Melbourne: Thomas Nelson, 1969). Mol, Hans, ‘The Church as Community’, Journal of Christian Education 8, no. 1 (1965), pp. 31–44. Mol, Hans, Churches and Immigrants: A Sociological Study of the Mutual Effect of Religion and Immigrant Adjustment, Research Group for European Migration Problems Bulletin, Vol. 9, Supplement 5 (The Hague: Albani, 1961). Mol, Hans, ‘A Collation of Data About Religion in Australia’, Social Compass 14, no. 2 (January 1967), pp. 117–32. Mol, Hans, How God Hoodwinked Hitler (Sutherland, NSW: Albatross Books, 1987). Mol, Hans, Identity and the Sacred: A Sketch for a New Social-Scientific Theory of Religion (Oxford: Blackwell, 1976).

224

Bibliography

Mol, Hans, ‘Introduction’, in Hans Mol (ed.), Identity and Religion: International, Cross-Cultural Approaches (London: Sage Publications, 1978), pp. 1–17. Mol, Hans, ‘Pride and Prejudice in Denominational Divisions’, in Ivan Southall (ed.), The Challenge: Is the Church Obsolete? An Australian Response to the Challenge of Modern Society (Melbourne: Lansdowne Press, 1966), pp. 221–7. Mol, Hans, ‘Religion and Competition’, Sociological Analysis 33, no. 2 (July 1972), pp. 67–73. Mol, Hans, ‘Religion and Education in Sociological Perspective’, Journal of Christian Education 7, no. 1 (1964), pp. 22–9. Mol, Hans, Religion and Race in New Zealand: A Critical Review of the Policies and Practices of the Churches in New Zealand Relevant to Racial Integration (Christchurch: National Council of Churches, 1966). Mol, Hans, Religion in Australia: A Sociological Investigation (Melbourne: Thomas Nelson, 1971). Mol, Hans, ‘The Social Relevance of the Australian Churches’, Journal of Christian Education 8, no. 3 (1965), pp. 155–67. Mol, Hans, ‘The Social Relevance of the Australian Churches’, Social Compass 13, no. 2 (January 1966), pp. 139–50. Mol, Hans, ‘Sociological Determination and the Christian Faith’, Journal of Christian Education 7, no. 1 (1964), pp. 30–3. Mol, Hans, Tinpot Preacher (Queanbeyan, ACT: Talpa Publishing, 2003). Morris, Leon, The Abolition of Religion: A Study in Religionless Christianity (London: Inter-Varsity Press, 1964). Mowll, H.W.K., ‘President’s Address to Synod’, in Summary of Proceedings of the General Synod of the Dioceses in Australia and Tasmania, Session 1950 (Sydney: Diocese of Sydney, 1951), pp. 19–22. Muggeridge, Malcolm, ‘Living through an Apocalypse’, in J.D. Douglas (ed.), Let the Earth Hear His Voice: Official Reference Volume, Papers and Responses of the International Congress on World Evangelization, Lausanne, Switzerland (Minneapolis, MN: World Wide Publications, 1975), pp. 449–56. Nanscawen, Ann, With One Accord: The Beginning of an Aussie Awakening (Sydney: ANZEA, 1989). Nichols, Alan, The Communicators: Mass Media and the Australian Church (Sydney: Pilgrim Productions, 1972). Nichols, Alan, Evangelicals: Report of the International Congress on World Evangelization, Lausanne (Sydney: AIO Publishing, 1975). Nichols, Alan (ed.), Move in For Action: Report of the Commission on Evangelism of the Church of England Diocese of Sydney (Sydney: ANZEA Publishers, 1971). Nichols, Alan, and Warwick Olson, Crusading Down Under: The Story of the Billy Graham Crusades in Australia and New Zealand (Minneapolis, MN: World Wide Publications, 1970). Nile, Fred, Fred Nile: An Autobiography (Sydney: Strand Publishing, 2001). Olson, Warwick (ed.), 14th World’s Christian Endeavour Convention, Sydney, Australia, August 1962, Official Report (Sydney: Ambassador Press, c. 1962). Padilla, C. René, ‘Evangelism and the World’, in J.D. Douglas (ed.), Let the Earth Hear His Voice: Official Reference Volume, Papers and Responses of the International Congress on World Evangelization, Lausanne, Switzerland (Minneapolis, MN: World Wide Publications, 1975), pp. 116–33. Padilla, C. René (ed.), The New Face of Evangelicalism: An International Symposium on the Lausanne Covenant (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1976).

Bibliography

225

Payne, Tony, and Karen Beilharz (eds.), D. Broughton Knox: Selected Works, Vol. 3 (Kingsford, NSW: Matthias Media, 2006). Pollock, John, Crusade ’66: Britain Hears Billy Graham (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1966). Powell, Gordon, foreword to, Tell Australia by Harold Whitney (Brisbane: WR Smith and Paterson Pty Ltd, 1957), pp. 8–9. Presbyterian Church of Australia in the State of New South Wales, ‘Report of Church and Nation Committee 1978’, , accessed 19 November 2012. Prewer, Bruce, Australian Psalms (Adelaide: Lutheran Publishing House, 1979). Pringle, J.D., Australian Accent (London: Chatto and Windus, 1958). ‘Radical Discipleship at Work in Australia’, in A New World: House of the New World Training Resources (West Ryde, NSW: House of the New World, 1974). Ramsey, Michael, Sacred and Secular: A Study in the Otherworldly and This-Worldly Aspects of Christianity (London: Longmans, 1965). Reid, John, ‘Preface’, in Ian Mears (ed.), The Christian and Social Concern: A Set of Ten Studies on a Biblical Basis for Social Involvement (Sydney: The Board of Education, Diocese of Sydney, and Care Force, 1981), p. 2. Richards, Kel, With One Accord: A Record of the National Prayer Gathering, Canberra, 7–8 May 1988, , accessed 18 April 2018. Roszak, Theodore, The Making of a Counter-Culture: Reflections on the Technocratic Society and the Making of Its Youthful Opposition (New York: Doubleday, 1969). Serle, Geoffrey, From Deserts the Prophets Come: The Creative Spirit in Australia 1788–1972 (Melbourne: Heinemann, 1973). Serle, Geoffrey, ‘Godzone 6: Austerica Unlimited?’, Meanjin Quarterly 26, no. 2 (September 1967), pp. 237–50. Shilton, Lance, First-Hand Singapore Report (Adelaide: Holy Trinity Publishing Society, 1969). Shilton, Lance, Speaking Out: A Life in Urban Mission (Sydney: Centre for the Study of Australian Christianity, 1997). Smith, John, Advance Australia Where? (Homebush West, NSW: ANZEA, 1988). Smith, John, and Malcolm Doney, John Smith: On the Side of the Angels (Sutherland, NSW: Albatross Books, 1987). Stewart, Stan, The Church’s Ministry with Children Report (Canberra: Commission on Christian Education, Australian Council of Churches, 1976). Stott, John, ‘Foreword’, in C. René Padilla (ed.), The New Face of Evangelicalism: An International Symposium on the Lausanne Covenant (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1976), pp. 5–6. Stott, John, ‘The Lausanne Covenant with Exposition and Commentary’, September 1974, reprinted in John Stott (ed.), Making Christ Known: Historic Mission Documents from the Lausanne Movement 1974–1989 (Carlisle: Paternoster Press with the Lausanne Committee for World Evangelization, 1996), pp. 5–55. ‘Theology Implications of Radical Discipleship’, in J.D. Douglas (ed.), Let the Earth Hear His Voice: Official Reference Volume, Papers and Responses of the International Congress on World Evangelization, Lausanne, Switzerland (Minneapolis, MN: World Wide Publications, 1975), pp. 1294–6. Wagner, Jenny (illustr.), Ron Brooks, The Bunyip of Berkeley’s Creek (Sydney: Puffin Books, 1974).

226

Bibliography

Walsh, Maximilian, ‘You Ain’t Seen Nothing Yet’, Quadrant (November–December 1968), pp. 16–23. Ward, Russel, The Australian Legend (Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1958). Ward, Russel, ‘The End of the Ice Age’, Meanjin Quarterly 32, no. 1 (1973), pp. 5–13. Wileman, W.G., Report on the Decline in Church-Going (Newcastle: Church of England in Australia and Tasmania, Diocese of Newcastle, 1951). Williams, Colin, What in the World? (New York: Department of Publication Services, National Council of the Churches of Christ in the U.S.A., 1964). Williams, Colin, Where in the World? Changing Forms of the Church’s Witness (New York: Department of Publication Services, National Council of the Churches of Christ in the U.S.A., 1963). The Willowbank Report: Consultation on Gospel and Culture, Lausanne Occasional Papers, no. 2, 1978, , accessed 18 April 2018. Wilson, Bryan, Religion in Secular Society: A Sociological Comment (London: C.A. Watts & Co., 1966). Winter, Gibson, The Suburban Captivity of the Churches: An Analysis of Protestant Responsibility in the Expanding Metropolis (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1961). Woods, Frank, ‘Presidential Address to the Fourth General Synod of the Church of England in Australia’, 21 May 1973, in Proceedings of the Fourth General Synod of the Church of England in Australia (Sydney: Anglican Press, 1974), pp. 17–27. Woods, Frank, Sermons and Addresses: Forward in Depth (Melbourne: Joint Board of Christian Education, 1987). YearBooks of the Diocese of Sydney, 1958–1981 (Sydney: Anglican Information Office, 1959–1982).

Secondary sources Ahlstrom, Sidney, ‘The Radical Turn in Theology and Ethics: Why It Occurred in the 1960s’, Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 387, no. 1 (January 1970), pp. 1–13. Aitkin, Don, What Was It All For? The Reshaping of Australia (Crows Nest, NSW: Allen & Unwin, 2005). Aldrich, Robert, ‘Life Down Under!’, Gay Community News 9, no. 19 (November 1981), p. 8. Alomes, Stephen, A Nation at Last? The Changing Character of Australian Nationalism, 1880–1988 (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1988). Amstutz, Mark, Evangelicals and American Foreign Policy (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013). Arrow, Michelle, The Seventies: The Personal, the Political and the Making of Modern Australia (Sydney: NewSouth Publishing, 2019). Atherstone, Andrew, ‘The Canonisation of the Forty English Martyrs: An Ecumenical Dilemma’, Recusant History 30 (October 2011), pp. 573–87. Atherstone, Andrew, ‘Christian Family, Christian Nation: Raymond Johnston and the Nationwide Festival of Light in Defence of the Family’, in John Doran, Charlotte Methuen, and Alexandra Walsham (eds.), Religion and the Household (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2014), pp. 456–68. Atherstone, Andrew, ‘The Keele Congress of 1967: A Paradigm Shift in Anglican Evangelical Attitudes’, Journal of Anglican Studies 9 (September 2011), pp. 17597.

Bibliography

227

Atherstone, Andrew, ‘Rescued from the Brink: The Collapse and Resurgence of Wycliffe Hall, Oxford’, in Kate Cooper and Jeremy Gregory (eds.), Revival and Resurgence in Christian History: Papers Read at the 2006 Summer Meeting and the 2007 Winter Meeting of the Ecclesiastical History Society (Woodbridge, Suffolk: The Boydell Press for the Ecclesiastical History Society, 2008), pp. 354–64. Atherstone, Andrew, and David Ceri Jones, ‘Evangelicals and Evangelicalisms: Contested Identities’, in Andrew Atherstone and David Ceri Jones (eds.), The Routledge Research Companion to the History of Evangelicalism (Abingdon: Routledge, 2019), pp. 1–21. Atkinson, Alan, The Commonwealth of Speech: An Argument about Australia’s Past, Present and Future (Melbourne: Australian Scholarly Publishing, 2002). Atkinson, Alan, The Europeans in Australia: A History, 3 vols. (Melbourne: Oxford University Press; Sydney: UNSW Press, 1997–2014). Austin, Denise, ‘“Flowing Together”: The Origins and Early Development of Hillsong Church within Assemblies of God in Australia’, in Tanya Riches and Tom Wagner (eds.), The Hillsong Movement Examined: You Call Me Out Upon the Waters (Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017), pp. 21–37. Balbier, Uta T., ‘“Billy Graham’s Cold War Crusades”: Rechristianization, Secularization, and the Spiritual Creation of the Free World in the 1950s’, in David Hempton and Hugh McLeod (eds.), Secularization and Religious Innovation in the North Atlantic World (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017), pp. 234–52. Balbier, Uta T., ‘The World Congress on Evangelism 1966 in Berlin: US Evangelicalism, Cultural Dominance, and Global Challenges’, Journal of American Studies 51 (2017), pp. 1171–96. Batstone, David, ‘A Follower of Jesus: The Living Legacy of Athol Gill’, in David Neville (ed.), Prophecy and Passion: Essays in Honour of Athol Gill (Adelaide: Australian Theological Forum, 2002), pp. 22–8. Bebbington, David, Evangelicalism in Modern Britain: A History from the 1730s to the 1980s (London: Unwin Hyman, 1989). Bebbington, David, Victorian Religious Revivals: Culture and Piety in Local and Global Contexts (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012). Belich, James, Replenishing the Earth: The Settler Revolution and the Rise of the Anglo-World, 1780s–1920s (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009). Bell, Duncan, The Idea of Greater Britain: Empire and the Future of World Order, 1860–1900 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2007). Bell, Roger, and Phillip Bell (eds.), Americanization and Australia (Sydney: UNSW Press, 1998). Bellah, Robert, ‘Civil Religion in America’, Daedalus 96 (1967), pp. 1–21. Berger, Peter (ed.), The Desecularization of the World: Resurgent Religion and World Politics (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1999). Berger, Peter, The Sacred Canopy: Elements of a Sociological Theory of Religion (New York: Anchor Books, 1967). Berger, Peter, Grace Davie, and Effie Fokas (eds.), Religious America, Secular Europe? A Theme and Variations (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008). Billy Graham Center Archives, ‘Billy Graham Australia and New Zealand Crusades’, updated 25 September 2009, , accessed 7 August 2013. Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, ‘World Wide Pictures: Shadow of the Boomerang’, online at Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, , accessed 11 November 2013.

228

Bibliography

Black, Alan, and Peter Glasner (eds.), Practice and Belief: Studies in the Sociology of Australian Religion (Sydney: George Allen & Unwin, 1983). Blacket, John, ‘Rainbow or the Serpent? Observing the Arnhem Land Aboriginal Revival, 1979 and Now’, in Mark Hutchinson, Edmund Campion, and Stuart Piggin (eds.), Reviving Australia: Essays on the History and Experience of Revival and Revivalism in Australian Christianity (Sydney: Centre for the Study of Australian Christianity, 1994), pp. 291–301. Blaikie, Norman, The Plight of the Australian Clergy: To Convert, Care or Challenge? (St Lucia, Qld: University of Queensland Press, 1979). Blanch, Allan, From Strength to Strength: A Life of Marcus Loane (North Melbourne: Australian Scholarly Publishing, 2015). Blauw, P. Wim, ‘Explanations of Post-War Dutch Emigration to Australia’, in Nonja Peters (ed.), The Dutch Down Under: 1606–2006 (Nedlands, WA: University of Western Australia Press, 2006), pp. 168–83. Bongiorno, Frank, ‘January 1961: The Release of the Pill: Contraceptive Technology and the “Sexual Revolution”’, in Martin Crotty and David Andrew Roberts (eds.), Turning Points in Australian History (Sydney: UNSW Press, 2008), pp. 157–70. Bongiorno, Frank, The Sex Lives of Australians: A History (Collingwood, VIC: Black Inc., 2012). Bongiorno, Frank, ‘Whitlam, the 1960s and the Program’, in Troy Bramston (ed.), The Whitlam Legacy (Annandale, NSW: The Federation Press, 2013), pp. 34–41. Bouma, Gary, ‘Australian Religiosity: Some Trends Since 1966’, in Alan Black and Peter Glasner (eds.), Practice and Belief: Studies in the Sociology of Australian Religion (Sydney: George Allen & Unwin, 1983), pp. 16–7. Bouma, Gary, Australian Soul: Religion and Spirituality in the Twenty-First Century (Melbourne: Cambridge University Press, 2006). Braga, Stuart, A Century Preaching Christ: Katoomba Christian Convention, 1903– 2003 (Sydney: Katoomba Christian Convention, 2003). Breward, Ian, A History of the Australian Churches (St Leonards, NSW: Allen & Unwin, 2004). Brewitt-Taylor, Sam, Christian Radicalism in the Church of England and the Invention of the British Sixties, 1957–1970: The Hope of a World Transformed (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018). Brewitt-Taylor, Sam, ‘The Invention of a “Secular Society”? Christianity and the Sudden Appearance of Secularization Discourses in the British National Media, 1961–4’, Twentieth Century British History 24, no. 3 (June 2013), pp. 327–50. Brown, Callum G., The Death of Christian Britain: Understanding Secularisation 1800–2000, second edition (London: Routledge, 2009). Brown, Callum G., and Michael Snape, ‘Introduction: Conceptualising Secularisation 1974–2010: The Influence of Hugh McLeod’, in Callum G. Brown and Michael Snape (eds.), Secularisation in the Christian World: Essays in Honour of Hugh McLeod (Farnham, Surrey: Ashgate, 2010), pp. 1–12. Bruce, Steve, Secularization: In Defence of an Unfashionable Theory (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011). Buch, Neville, ‘American Influence on Queensland Protestantism since World War II’, PhD Thesis, The University of Queensland, 2007. Buch, Neville, ‘Under the Bondage of Religious Conservatism: Athol Gill and the Baptist Union of Queensland’, Dayspring 11, no. 3 (1992).

Bibliography

229

Buckner, Phillip, and R. Douglas Francis, ‘Introduction’, in Phillip Buckner and R. Douglas Francis (eds.), Rediscovering the British World (Calgary: University of Calgary Press, 2005), pp. 9–20. Byrne, Catherine, ‘“Free, Compulsory and (Not) Secular”: The Failed Idea in Australian Education’, Journal of Religious History 37 (March 2013), pp. 20–38. Calhoun, Craig, ‘Introduction: On Merton’s Legacy and Contemporary Sociology’, in Craig Calhoun (ed.), Robert K. Merton: Sociology of Science and Sociology as Science (New York: Columbia University Press, 2010). Cameron, Marcia, Phenomenal Sydney: Anglicans in a Time of Change, 1945–2013 (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2016). Campbell, Neil, Jude Davies, and George McKay, ‘Introduction: Issues in Americanisation and Culture’, in Neil Campbell, Jude Davies, and George McKay (eds.), Issues in Americanisation and Culture (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2004), pp. 1–38. Capon, John, . . . And There Was Light: The Story of the Nationwide Festival of Light (London: Lutterworth, 1972). Carey, Hilary, God’s Empire: Religion and Colonialism in the British World, c. 1801– 1908 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011). Carey, Hilary, ‘Introduction’, in Hilary Carey (ed.), Empires of Religion (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), pp. 1–21. Carey, Hilary, and John Gascoigne, ‘Introduction: The Rise and Fall of Christendom’, in Hilary Carey and John Gascoigne (eds.), Church and State in Old and New Worlds (Leiden: Brill, 2011), pp. 1–27. Carpenter, Joel, Revive Us Again: The Reawakening of American Fundamentalism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997). Carwardine, Richard, Transatlantic Revivalism: Popular Evangelicalism in Britain and America, 1795–1865 (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1978). Champion, Christian, The Strange Demise of British Canada: The Liberals and Canadian Nationalism, 1964–68 (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2010). Chapman, Alister, ‘Evangelical International Relations in the Post-Colonial World: The Lausanne Movement and the Challenge of Diversity, 1974–89’, Missiology: An International Review 37, no. 3 (July 2009), pp. 355–68. Chapman, Alister, Godly Ambition: John Stott and the Evangelical Movement (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012). Chapman, Alister, ‘Intellectual History and Religion in Modern Britain’, in Alister Chapman, Jeffrey Coffey, and Brad S. Gregory (eds.), Seeing Things Their Way: Intellectual History and the Return of Religion (South Bend: University of Notre Dame Press, 2009), pp. 226–39. Chapman, Alister, ‘The International Context of Secularization in England: The End of Empire, Immigration, and the Decline of Christian National Identity, 1945– 1970’, Journal of British Studies 54 (2015), pp. 163–89. Chapman, Alister, ‘Secularisation and the Ministry of John R. W. Stott at All Souls, Langham Place, 1950–1970’, The Journal of Ecclesiastical History 56, no. 3 (August 2005), pp. 496–513. Chavura, Stephen, John Gascoigne, and Ian Tregenza, A Secular State? Reason, Religion, and the Australian Polity (Abingdon: Routledge, 2019). Chester, Tim, Awakening to a World of Need: The Recovery of Evangelical Social Concern (Leicester: IVP, 1993).

230

Bibliography

Chilton, Hugh, ‘Battling for the Nation’s Soul: The RSL vs. the Churches, Anzac Day 1965’, Teaching History 49, no. 1 (March 2015), pp. 34–7. Chilton, Hugh, ‘Billy Graham: 1959 and 1979’, Ethos, Special Issue: ‘The End of Evangelicalism?’, December 2014. Chilton, Hugh, ‘How Billy Graham Got under Our Secular Skin’, Centre for Public Christianity, , accessed 5 March 2018. Chilton, Hugh, ‘Religious Royals in the New Australia: The Queen, the Pope, and the 1970 Cook Bicentenary’, Royal Studies Journal 5, no. 1 (June 2018), pp. 147–56. Christie, Nancy, ‘“Belief Crucified Upon a Rooftop Antenna”: Pierre Berton, The Comfortable Pew, and Dechristianization’, in Nancy Christie and Michael Gauvreau (eds.), The Sixties and Beyond: Dechristianization in North America and Western Europe, 1945–2000 (Toronto: Toronto University Press, 2013), pp. 321–50. Christie, Nancy, and Michael Gauvreau, ‘Introduction: “Even the Hippies Were Only Very Slowly Going Secular”: Dechristianization and the Culture of Individualism in North America and Western Europe’, in Nancy Christie and Michael Gauvreau (eds.), The Sixties and Beyond: Dechristianization in North America and Western Europe, 1945–2000 (Toronto: Toronto University Press, 2013), pp. 3–38. Clark, Manning, A Short History of Australia, revised edition (London: Heinemann, 1969). Clements, Keith, Lovers of Discord: Twentieth-Century Theological Controversies in England (London: SPCK, 1988). Coble, Christopher, ‘Where Have All the Children Gone? The Christian Endeavour Movement and the Training of Protestant Youth, 1881–1918’, ThD thesis, Harvard Divinity School, 2001. Cole, Douglas, ‘The Crimson Thread of Kinship’ Ethnic Ideas in Australia. 1870– 1914’, Historical Studies 14, no. 56 (1971), pp. 511–25. Colley, Linda, Britons: Forging the Nation, 1707–1837 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992). Colyer, Nick, ‘Sunday’s Soldiers: The Political Struggle of the Protestant Churches in New South Wales to Defend the Christian Sunday, 1930–1988’, BA Honours Thesis, The University of Sydney, 2005. Coomes, Anne, The Authorised Biography of Festo Kivengere (Eastbourne, UK: Monarch, 1990). Crabb, Annabel, ‘Invoking Religion in Australian Politics’, Australian Journal of Political Science 44, no. 2 (June 2009), pp. 259–79. Cronshaw, Darren, Credible Witness: Companions, Prophets, Hosts and other Australian Mission Models (Springvale, VIC: Urban Neighbours of Hope, 2006). Curran, James, ‘Beyond the Euphoria: Lyndon Johnson in Australia and the Politics of the Cold War Alliance’, Journal of Cold War Studies 17 (2015), pp. 64–96. Curran, James, The Power of Speech (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 2004). Curran, James, and Stuart Ward, The Unknown Nation: Australia after Empire (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 2010). Curthoys, Ann, ‘The Anti-War Movements’, in Jeffrey Grey and Jeff Doyle (eds.), Vietnam: War, Myth and Memory (St Leonards, NSW: Allen & Unwin, 1992), pp. 90–104. Davidson, Allen, and Peter Lineham, Transplanted Christianity: Documents Illustrating Aspects of New Zealand Church History (Auckland: College Communications, 1987).

Bibliography

231

Davie, Grace, Religion in Britain since 1945: Believing without Belonging (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 1994). Davie, Grace, and Effie Fokas (eds.), Religious America, Secular Europe? A Theme and Variations (Aldershot, Surrey: Ashgate, 2008). Davies, Douglas J., and Adam J. Powell (eds.), Sacred Selves, Sacred Settings: Reflecting Hans Mol (Abingdon: Routledge, 2015). Davis, Gerald, ‘Australia’s Religious Press’, in Dorothy Harris, Douglas Hynd, and David Millikan (eds.), The Shape of Belief: Christianity in Australia Today (Homebush West, NSW: Lancer, 1982), pp. 189–93. Davison, Graeme, Car Wars: How the Car Won our Heart and Conquered Our Cities (Crows Nest, NSW: Allen & Unwin, 2004). Davison, Graeme, ‘Driving to Austerica: The Americanisation of the Postwar Australian City’, in Approaching Australia: Papers from the Harvard Australian Studies Symposium (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998), pp. 159–83. Dicker, Gordon, ‘A Genuinely Evangelical Church’, in Vaughan Hinton (ed.), Being Christian in Australia (Melbourne: Joint Board of Christian Education, 1983), pp. 28–30. Dickey, Brian (ed.), Australian Dictionary of Evangelical Biography (Sydney: Evangelical History Association, 1994). Dickey, Brian, ‘Evangelical Anglicans Compared: Australia and Britain’, in George A. Rawlyk and Mark A. Noll (eds.), Amazing Grace: Evangelicalism in Australia, Britain, Canada and the United States (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1994), pp. 215–40. Di Sabatino, David, The Jesus People Movement: An Annotated Bibliography and General Resource (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1999). Dobbelaere, K., ‘Trend Report of the State of the Sociology of Religion: 1965–1966’, Social Compass 15, no. 4 (January 1968), pp. 329–65. Douville, Bruce, ‘Christ and Counterculture: Churches, Clergy, and Hippies in Toronto’s Yorkville, 1965–1970’, Social History 47 (November 2014), pp. 747–74. Dowsett, Rose, ‘Evangelicals and the Lausanne Movement’, in Brian Stiller, Todd Johnson, Karen Stiller, and Mark Hutchinson (eds.), Evangelicals Around the World: A Global Handbook for the 21st Century (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2015), pp. 58–62. Dudley-Smith, Timothy, John Stott: A Global Ministry (Leicester: Inter-Varsity Press, 2001). Duyker, Edward, The Dutch in Australia (Melbourne: AE Press, 1987). Ediger, Gerald, ‘The Proto-Genesis of the March for Jesus Movement, 1970–87’, Journal of Pentecostal Theology 12, no. 2 (2004), pp. 247–75. Edwards, Benjamin, WASPS, Tykes and Ecumaniacs: Aspects of Australian Sectarianism, 1945–1981 (Brunswick East, VIC: Acorn Press, 2008). Edwards, Maxwell, ‘Moral Reform Organisations in Australia: A Political Response to the Sexual Revolution’, PhD Thesis, The University of Melbourne, 1997. Ellis, Ian, A Century of Mission and Unity: A Centenary Perspective on the 1910 Edinburgh World Missionary Conference (Blackrock, Dublin: Columba Press, 2010). Ely, Richard, ‘The Forgotten Nationalism: Australian Civic Protestantism in the Second World War’, Journal of Australian Studies 11, no. 2 (May 1987), pp. 59–67. Ely, Richard, ‘Protestantism in Australian History: An Interpretative Sketch’, Lucas: An Evangelical History Review no. 5 (1989), pp. 11–20.

232

Bibliography

Engel, Frank, 21 Years of Australian Frontier: An Extraordinary Organisation for Extraordinary Times, 1962–1983 (Carlton, VIC: Australian Frontier, 1988). Enroth, Ronald, Eric Ericson, and C. Breckenridge Peters, The Jesus People: OldTime Religion in the Age of Aquarius (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1972). Erdozain, Dominic, ‘“Cause Is Not Quite What It Used to Be”: The Return of Secularisation’, English Historical Review 127 (April 2012), pp. 377–400. Eskridge, Larry, ‘God’s Forever Family: The Jesus People Movement in America’, PhD Thesis, The University of Stirling, 2005. Eskridge, Larry, God’s Forever Family: The Jesus People Movement in America (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013). Eskridge, Larry, ‘“One way”: Billy Graham, the Jesus Generation, and the Idea of an Evangelical Youth Culture’, Church History 67, no. 1 (1998), pp. 83–106. Evans, Robert, ‘The Contribution of the Christian Endeavour Movement to Australian Revivals and Evangelism, 1883–1914’, Church Heritage 13, no. 4 (September 2004), pp. 143–67. Faase, Karl, Remembering ’59: Billy Graham’s Legacy: 50 Years On, documentary (Sydney: Olive Tree Media with the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, 2009). Fedorowich, Kent, and Andrew S. Thompson (eds.), Empire, Migration and Identity in the British World (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2013). Field, Clive, Britain’s Last Religious Revival? Quantifying Belonging, Believing and Behaving in the Long 1950s (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015). Field, Clive, Secularization in the Long 1960s: Numerating Religion in Britain (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017). Finstuen, Andrew, Original Sin and Everyday Protestants: The Theology of Reinhold Niebuhr, Billy Graham, and Paul Tillich in an Age of Anxiety (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2009). Finstuen, Andrew, Anne Blue Wills, and Grant Wacker (eds.), Billy Graham: American Pilgrim (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017). Fischer, David Hackett, ‘Response to Yerxa, Kersh, Glenn, and Morone’, Historically Speaking (September–October 2005), pp. 25–31. FitzGerald, Frances, The Evangelicals: The Struggle to Shape America (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2017). Fletcher, Brian, An English Church in Australian Soil: Anglicanism, Australian Society and the English Connection since 1788 (Canberra: Barton Books, 2015). Fowler, Stuart, ‘Christian Concern in the Parliamentary Lobbies’, in Dorothy Harris, Douglas Hynd, and David Millikan (eds.), The Shape of Belief in Australia (Sydney: Lancer, 1982), pp. 147–58. Fozdar, Farida, ‘The Importance of Christianity in Australian National Identity Construction’, in Proceedings of the International Conference on Migration, Citizenship and Intercultural Relations (Melbourne: Institute for Citizenship and Globalisation, Faculty of Arts and Education, Deakin University, 2009). Frady, Marshall, Billy Graham: A Parable of American Righteousness (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1979). Frame, Tom, Church and State: Australia’s Imaginary Wall (Sydney: UNSW Press, 2006). Frame, Tom, ‘Local Differences, Social and National Identity 1930–1966’, in Bruce Kaye (ed.), Anglicanism in Australia: A History (Carlton South, Vic.: Melbourne University Press, 2002), pp. 100–23. Frame, Tom, Losing My Religion: Unbelief in Australia (Sydney: UNSW Press, 2009).

Bibliography

233

Furse-Roberts, David, ‘Keepers of the Flame: A History of the Australian Festival of Light 1974–1981’, Lucas: An Evangelical History Review ns. 2, no. 2 (Spring 2010), pp. 47–66. Gerster, Robin, and Jan Bassett, Seizures of Youth: The Sixties and Australia (South Yarra, VIC: Hyland House, 1991). Gifford, Laura, and Daniel Williams, ‘Introduction: What Happened to Conservatism in the 1960s?’, in Laura Gifford and Daniel Williams (eds.), The Right Side of the Sixties: Reexamining Conservatism’s Decade of Transformation (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), pp. 1–18. Giles, Paul, Antipodean America: Australasia and the Constitution of U.S. Literature (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014). Gin, Willie, ‘Jesus Q. Politician: Religious Rhetoric in the United States, Australia and Canada’, Politics and Religion 5 (2012), pp. 317–42. Godman, Patrick, ‘“Mission Accomplished?”: The Rise and Decline of the Christian Endeavour Movement, 1878–1988’, MA Thesis, The University of Queensland, 1989. Goldsworthy, David, Losing the Blanket: Australia and the End of Britain’s Empire (Carlton South, VIC: Melbourne University Press, 2002). Goodall, Heather, Invasion to Embassy: Land in Aboriginal Politics in New South Wales, 1770–1972 (Sydney: Sydney University Press, 2008 [1996]). Goot, Murray, ‘Public Opinion’, in Wray Vamplew (ed.), Australians: Historical Statistics (Broadway, NSW: Fairfax, Syme & Weldon Associates, 1987), pp. 436–46. Green, S.J.D., The Passing of Protestant England: Secularisation and Social Change, c. 1920–1960 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011). Gregory, J.S., Church and State (Melbourne: Cassell, 1973). Gregory, J.S., ‘State Aid to Religion in the Australian Colonies 1788–1895’, Victorian Historical Journal 70, no. 2 (November 1999), pp. 128–44. Grimley, Matthew, ‘Anglican Evangelicals and Anti-Permissiveness: The Nationwide Festival of Light 1971–1983’, in Andrew Atherstone and John Maiden (eds.), Evangelicalism and the Church of England in the Twentieth Century: Reform, Resistance and Renewal (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2014), pp. 183–205. Grimley, Matthew, ‘Law, Morality and Secularisation: The Church of England and the Wolfenden Report, 1954–1967’, The Journal of Ecclesiastical History 60, no. 4 (October 2009), pp. 725–41. Grimley, Matthew, ‘The Religion of Englishness: Puritanism, Providentialism, and “National Character”, 1918–1945’, Journal of British Studies 46 (2007), pp. 884–906. Grosby, Steven, ‘Max Weber, Religion, and the Disenchantment of the World’, Society 50, no. 3 (June 2013), pp. 301–10. Harding, Susan, ‘The Book of Jerry Falwell: Fundamentalist Language and Politics’ (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000). Harris Alana, and Martin Spence, ‘“Disturbing the Complacency of Religion”? The Evangelical Crusades of Dr Billy Graham and Father Patrick Peyton in Britain, 1951–54’, Twentieth Century British History 18 (December 2007), pp. 481–513. Harris, Dorothy, ‘Counting Christians’, in Dorothy Harris, Douglas Hynd, and David Millikan (eds.), The Shape of Belief: Christianity in Australia Today (Homebush West, NSW: Lancer Books with the Zadok Centre, 1982), pp. 229–33. Harrison, John, ‘The Logos Foundation: The Rise and Fall of Christian Reconstructionism in Australia’, unpublished ms. (University of Queensland E-Space, 2006).

234

Bibliography

Hastie, David, ‘The Latest Instalment in the Whig Interpretation of Australian Education History: Catherine Byrne’s JORH Article “Free, Compulsory and (Not) Secular”’, Journal of Religious History 41 (September 2017), pp. 386–403. Hatch, Nathan, The Democratization of American Christianity (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989). Hauerwas, Stanley, ‘Leaving the Ruins: The Gospel and Cultural Formation’, in Tom Frame and Geoffrey Treloar (eds.), Agendas for Australian Anglicanism: Essays in Honour of Bruce Kaye (Adelaide: ATF Press, 2006), pp. 271–85. Hempton, David, Religion and Political Culture in Britain and Ireland: From the Glorious Revolution to the Decline of Empire (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996). Herzog, Jonathan P., The Spiritual-Industrial Complex: America’s Religious Battle against Communism in the Early Cold War (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011). Hiebert, Paul, Anthropological Insights for Missionaries (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, 1985). Hilliard, David, ‘Australian Anglicanism and the Radical Sixties’, in Susan Emilsen (ed.), Mapping the Landscape: Essays in Australian and New Zealand Christianity: Festschrift in Honour of Professor Ian Breward (New York: Peter Lang, 2000), pp. 99–117. Hilliard, David, ‘Church, Family and Sexuality in Australia in the 1950s’, Australian Historical Studies 28, no. 109 (1997), pp. 133–46. Hilliard, David, ‘God in the Suburbs: The Religious Culture of Australian Cities in the 1950s’, Australian Historical Studies 97 (October 1991), pp. 399–419. Hilliard, David, ‘Popular Religion in Australia in the 1950s: A Study of Adelaide and Brisbane’, Journal of Religious History 16, no. 2 (1988), pp. 219–35. Hilliard, David, ‘The Religious Crisis of the 1960s: The Experience of the Australian Churches’, Journal of Religious History 21, no. 2 (June 1997), pp. 209–28. Hilliard, David, and John Warhurst, ‘Festival of Light’, Current Affairs Bulletin 50 (February 1974), pp. 13–9. Hirt, John, ‘Radical Discipleship: Towards the Theology and Socio-Political Implications’, PhD Thesis, The University of Sydney, 1998. Hobsbawm, Eric, and Terence Ranger, The Invention of Tradition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993). Hocking, Jenny, Lionel Murphy: A Political Biography (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997). Hogan, Michael, The Sectarian Strand: Religion in Australian History (Ringwood, VIC: Penguin Books, 1987). Hollier, Nathan, ‘From Hope to Disillusion? A Literary and Cultural History of the Whitlam Period, 1966–1975’, PhD Thesis, Victoria University, 2006. Horne, Donald, Ideas for a Nation (Sydney: Pan Books, 1989). Horne, Donald, Time of Hope: Australia 1966–72 (Sydney: Angus & Robertson, 1980). Hull, Brian, ‘Enduring Endeavor: How Francis E. Clark Utilized Written Communication, Global Travel, and Organization to Re-Shape the Global Protestant Church’s Ministry to Young People through the Christian Endeavor Society’, PhD Thesis, Asbury Theological Seminary, 2014. Hull, Terence, ‘The Strange History and Problematic Future of the Australian Census’, Journal of Population Research 24, no. 1 (2007), pp. 1–22.

Bibliography

235

Hunt, Keith, and Gladys Hunt, For Christ and the University: The Story of InterVarsity Christian Fellowship: USA, 1940–1990 (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1991). Hunt, Robert, ‘The History of the Lausanne Movement, 1974–2010’, International Bulletin of Missionary Research 35, no. 2 (2011), pp. 81–4. Hutchinson, Mark, ‘Dain, Arthur John “Jack” (1912–2003)’, ADEB Online, , accessed 19 April 2018. Hutchinson, Mark, Iron in Our Blood: A History of the Presbyterian Church in New South Wales, 1788–2001 (Sydney: Ferguson Publications and the Centre for the Study of Australian Christianity, 2001). Hutchinson, Mark, and Ogbu Kalu (eds.), A Global Faith: Essays on Evangelicalism and Globalization (Sydney: Centre for the Study of Australian Christianity, 1998). Hutchinson, Mark, and John Wolffe, A Short History of Global Evangelicalism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012). Hyman, Ronald, Understanding the British Empire (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), pp. 23–32. Inglis, K.S., ‘Churchgoing in Australia’, Current Affairs Bulletin 22 (June 1958), p. 50. Inglis, K.S., ‘Multiculturalism and National Identity’, in Craig Wilcox (ed.), Observing Australia, 1959–1999 (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1999), pp. 186–209. Inglis, K.S., and Craig Wilcox (eds.), Observing Australia: 1959 to 1999 (Carlton South, VIC: Melbourne University Press, 1999). Ion, A. Hamish, ‘The Empire that Prays Together Stays Together: Imperial Defence and Religion, 1857–1956’, in Greg Kennedy (ed.), Imperial Defence: The Old World Order 1856–1956 (London: Routledge, 2008), pp. 197–217. Irvine, Rob, Ian Kerridge and Paul Komesaroff, ‘Bioethics in Australia: On Politics, Power and the Rise of the Christian Right’, in Catherine Myser (ed.), Bioethics around the Globe (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), pp. 245–68. Jackson, Hugh, Australians and the Christian God: An Historical Study (Preston, VIC: Mosaic Press, 2013). Jenkins, Philip, The Next Christendom: The Coming of Global Christianity, third edition (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011). Jensen, Michael, Sydney Anglicanism: An Apology (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2012). Johnson, Todd M., and Gina A. Zurlo, ‘The Changing Demographics of Global Anglicanism, 1970–2010’, in David Goodhew (ed.), Growth and Decline in the Anglican Communion, 1980 to the Present (London: Routledge, 2017), pp. 37–54. Jordens, Ann-Mari, ‘Post-War Non-British Migration’, in James Jupp (ed.), The Australian People: An Encyclopedia of the Nation, Its People and Their Origins, second edition (Oakleigh, VIC: Cambridge University Press, 2001), pp. 65–70. Judd, Stephen, and Ken Cable, Sydney Anglicans (Sydney: Anglican Information Office, 1988). Justins, Charles, ‘Christian Parent Controlled Schools in Australia: A Study of the Relationship Between Foundational Values and Prevailing Practices’, EdD Thesis, Australian Catholic University, 2002. Knight, Penny, and David Gilchrist, Australia’s Faith-Based Charities: A Study Supplementing the Australian Charities 2013 Report (Melbourne: Australian Charities and Not-for-Profits Commission, 2015). Kristensen, Jeppe, ‘“In Essence Still a British Country”: Britain’s withdrawal from East of Suez’, Australian Journal of Politics and History 51, no. 1 (2005), pp. 40–52.

236

Bibliography

Kruse, Kevin M., One Nation under God: How Corporate America Invented Christian America (New York: Basic Books, 2015). Kuhn, Chase R., The Ecclesiology of Donald Robinson and D. Broughton Knox: Exposition, Analysis, and Theological Evaluation (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2017). Lahr, Angela, Millennial Dreams and Apocalyptic Nightmares: The Cold War Origins of Political Evangelicalism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007). Lake, Meredith, The Bible in Australia: A Cultural History (Sydney: University of New South Wales Press, 2018). Larsen, Timothy, ‘The Reception Given Evangelicalism in Modern Britain since Its Publication in 1989’, in Michael A.G. Haykin and Kenneth J. Stewart (eds.), The Emergence of Evangelicalism: Exploring Historical Continuities (Nottingham: Inter-Varsity Press, 2008), pp. 21–36. Leigh, Andrew, Disconnected (Sydney: UNSW Press, 2010). LeRoy, Doris, ‘Anglicanism, Anti-Communism and Cold War Australia’, PhD Thesis, Victoria University, 2010. Lim, Paul, ‘Evangelicalism and/as New Constantinianism: Globalization, Secularity, and the Heart of the Gospel’, in Bruce Ellis Benson and Peter Goodwin Heltzel (eds.), Evangelicals and Empire: Christian Alternatives to the Political Status Quo (Grand Rapids, MI: Brazos Press, 2008), pp. 278–90. Linder, Robert D., The Long Tragedy: Australian Evangelical Christians and the Great War, 1914–1918 (Adelaide: Openbook Publishers, 2000). Loane, Marcus, Men to Remember (Canberra: Acorn Press, 1987). Lohrey, Amanda, ‘Voting for Jesus: Christianity and Politics’, Quarterly Essay no. 22 (2006), pp. 1–79. Lopez, Mark, The Origins of Multiculturalism in Australian Politics 1945–1975 (Carlton, VIC: Melbourne University Press, 2000). Loss, Daniel S., ‘Missionaries, the Monarchy, and the Emergence of Anglican Pluralism in the 1960s and 1970s’, Journal of British Studies 57 (July 2018), pp. 543–63. Luckins, Tanja, ‘Cosmopolitanism and the Cosmopolitans: Australia in the World, the World in Australia’, in Shirleene Robinson and Julie Ustinoff (eds.), The 1960s in Australia: People, Power, Politics (Newcastle upon Tyne, UK: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2012), pp. 51–68. Luckins, Tanja, and Seamus O’Hanlon (eds.), Go! Melbourne in the Sixties (Melbourne: Melbourne Publishing Group, 2005). Luttrell, John, ‘“Australianizing” the Local Catholic Church: Polding to Gilroy’, Journal of Religious History 36, no. 3 (September 2012), pp. 335–50. Lyon, David, Christians and Sociology: Towards a Christian Perspective (London: Inter-Varsity Press, 1975). Macintosh, Neil K., Richard Johnson: Chaplain to the Colony of New South Wales (Sydney: Library of Australian History, 1978). MacIntyre, Alasdair, After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory (London: Duckworth, 1981). Macintyre, Stuart, A Concise History of Australia, second edition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004). Macklin, Robert, Kevin Rudd: The Biography (Camberwell, Vic.: Viking, 2008). Maddox, Marion, ‘An Argument for More, Not Less, Religion in Australian Politics’, Australian Religious Studies Review 22, no. 3 (2009), pp. 345–67.

Bibliography

237

Maddox, Marion, God under Howard: The Rise of the Religious Right in Australian Politics (Crows Nest, NSW: Allen & Unwin, 2005). Maddox, Marion, ‘Howard’s Methodism: How Convenient?!’, Journal of Australian Studies no. 83 (2004), pp. 1–13. Malloy, Jonathan, ‘Political Opportunity Structures, Evangelical Christians and Morality Politics in Canada, Australia and New Zealand’, Australian Journal of Political Science 52 (June 2017), pp. 402–18. Manley, Ken, From Woolloomooloo to ‘Eternity’: A History of Australian Baptists, 2 vols. (Milton Keynes, UK: Paternoster, 2006). Mansfield, Bruce, ‘The Church’s Voice: Australian Churches as Social Critics over Two Centuries’, in Andrew Dutney (ed.), From Here to Where? Australian Christians Owning the Past: Embracing the Future (Melbourne: Uniting Church Press, 1988), pp. 13–24. Mansfield, Bruce, ‘Thinking about Australian Religious History’, Journal of Religious History (1989), pp. 330–44. Martin, David, On Secularization: Towards a Revised General Theory (Aldershot, Surrey: Ashgate, 2005). Martin, David, A Sociology of English Religion (London: SCM Press, 1967). Martin, William, A Prophet with Honor: The Billy Graham Story (New York: William Morrow & Co., 1991). Marty, Martin E., ‘Reverse Evangelization’, Context 36, no. 2 (February 2004), pp. 4–5. Mathias, Rex, Mission to the Nation: The Story of Alan Walker’s Evangelistic Crusade (Melbourne: Joint Board of Christian Education, 1985). McCrindle, Mark, ‘A Demographic Snapshot of Christianity and Church Attenders in Australia’,, updated 18 April 2014, accessed 20 April 2018. McCrindle, Mark, Faith and Belief in Australia: A National Study on Religion, Spirituality and Worldview Trends (Baulkham Hills, NSW: McCrindle Research, 2017). McGillion, Chris, The Chosen Ones: The Politics of Salvation in the Anglican Church (Crows Nest, NSW: Allen & Unwin, 2005). McKenna, Mark, ‘Monarchy: From Reverence to Indifference’, in Stuart Ward and Deryck Schreuder (eds.), Australia’s Empire (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), pp. 261–87. McKnight, Jim, Australian Christian Communes (Cobbity, NSW: Trojan Head, 1990). McLean, David, ‘From British Colony to American Satellite? Australia and the USA during the Cold War’, Australian Journal of Politics and History 52, no. 1 (2006), pp. 64–79. McLeod, Hugh, ‘Protestantism and British National Identity, 1815–1945’, in Peter van der Veer and Hartmut Lehmann (eds.), Nation and Religion: Perspectives on Europe and Asia (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999), pp. 44–70. McLeod, Hugh, The Religious Crisis of the 1960s (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007). Meaney, Neville, Australia and the World: A Documentary History from the 1870s to the 1970s (Melbourne: Longman Cheshire, 1985). Meaney, Neville, ‘Britishness and Australian Identity: The Problem of Nationalism in Australian History and Historiography’, Australian Historical Studies 32, no. 116 (2001), pp. 76–90.

238

Bibliography

Melleuish, Gregory, ‘Donald Horne and the Idea of a Public Culture’, Quadrant 36, no. 6 (June 1992), pp. 46–52. Miedema, Gary R., For Canada’s Sake: Public Religion, Centennial Celebrations, and the Re-Making of Canada in the 1960s (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2005). Millikan, David, The Sunburnt Soul: Christianity in Search of an Australian Identity (Homebush, NSW: Lancer Books, 1981). Moore, Nicole, The Censor’s Library (St Lucia, Qld: University of Queensland Press, 2012). Mouw, Richard, ‘Christian Theology and Cultural Plurality’, The Scottish Bulletin of Evangelical Theology 5, no. 2 (1986), pp. 185–96. Munro, Marita, ‘A History of the House of the Gentle Bunyip (1975–90): A Contribution to Australian Church Life’, MA Thesis, University of Melbourne, 2002. Murphy, Andrew, Prodigal Nation: Moral Decline and Divine Punishment from New England to 9/11 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008). Murphy, John, Imagining the Fifties: Private Sentiment and Public Culture in Menzies’ Australia (Sydney: UNSW Press and Pluto Press Australia, 2000). Muston, Philip, ‘John Smith: A Charismatic and Transformational Religious Leader’, MA Thesis, Edith Cowan University, 2001. Nash, David, Christian Ideals in British Culture: Stories of Belief in the Twentieth Century (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013). Neville, David, ‘Introduction’, in David Neville (ed.), Prophecy and Passion: Essays in Honour of Athol Gill, ATF Series, Vol. 5 (Hindmarsh, SA: ATF Press, 2002), pp. xiv–ix. Newton, James W., and Leon Mann, ‘Crowd Size as a Factor in the Persuasion Process: A Study of Religious Crusade Meetings’, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 39, no. 5 (1980), pp. 874–83. Niebuhr, H. Richard, Christ and Culture (New York: Harper & Row, 1951). Noll, Mark A., ‘“Christian America” and “Christian Canada”’, in Sheridan Gilley and Brian Stanley (eds.), The Cambridge History of Christianity, Volume 8: World Christianities c.1815–c.1914 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), pp. 359–80. Noll, Mark A., ‘What Happened to Christian Canada?’, Church History 75, no. 2 (July 2009), pp. 245–52. O’Brien, Glen, ‘Anti-Americanism and the Wesleyan-Holiness Churches in Australia’, The Journal of Ecclesiastical History 61, no. 2 (March 2010), pp. 314–43. O’Brien, Glen, Wesleyan-Holiness Churches in Australia: Hallelujah under the Southern Cross (Abingdon: Routledge, 2018). Orpwood, Michael, Chappo: For the Sake of the Gospel (Russell Lea, NSW: Eagleswift Press, 1995). Orr, J. Edwin, Evangelical Awakenings in the South Seas (Minneapolis, MN: Bethany, 1976). Palfreeman, A.C., ‘Immigration’, in W.J. Hudson (ed.), Australia in World Affairs: 1971–75 (Sydney: George Allen & Unwin and the Australian Institute of International Affairs, 1980), pp. 93–110. Parer, Michael, Four Papal Days (Sydney: Alella Books, 1970). Parker, David, ‘Fundamentalism and Conservative Protestantism in Australia, 1920– 1980’, two vols., PhD Thesis, University of Queensland, 1982. Pasture, Patrick, ‘Christendom and the Legacy of the Sixties: Between the Secular City and the Age of Aquarius’, Revue d’Histoire Ecclesiastique 99, no. 1 (2004), pp. 82–117.

Bibliography

239

Paulson, Graham, ‘Towards an Aboriginal Theology’, Pacifica 19 (October 2006), pp. 310–20. Perlstein, Rick, Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America (New York: Scribner, 2008). Petigny, Alan, The Permissive Society: America, 1941–1965 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009). Phillips, W.W., ‘Religion’, in Wray Vamplew (ed.), Australians: Historical Statistics (Broadway, NSW: Fairfax, Syme & Weldon Associates, 1987), pp. 418–35. Piccini, Jon, Transnational Protest, Australia and the 1960s: Global Radicals (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016). Pidwell, Harold, A Gentle Bunyip: The Athol Gill Story (West Lakes, SA: Seaview Press, 2007). Piggin, Stuart, ‘The American and British Contributions to Evangelicalism in Australia’, in Mark Noll, David Bebbington, and George Rawlyck (eds.), Evangelicalism: Comparative Studies of Popular Protestantism in North America, the British Isles, and Beyond, 1700–1990 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), pp. 290–309. Piggin, Stuart, ‘Billy Graham in Australia, 1959: Was It Revival?’, Lucas: An Evangelical History Review no. 6 (1989), pp. 2–30. Piggin, Stuart, ‘Historical Streams of Influence on Evangelical Piety’, Lucas: An Evangelical History Review no. 18 (1994), pp. 5–19. Piggin, Stuart, ‘Power and Religion in a Modern State: Desecularisation in Australian History’, Journal of Religious History 38, no. 3 (September 2014), pp. 320–40. Piggin, Stuart, Spirit, Word and World: Evangelical Christianity in Australia (Brunswick East, VIC: Acorn Press, 2012). Piggin, Stuart, and Robert D. Linder, Attending to the National Soul: Evangelical Christians in Australian History 1914–2014 (Clayton: Monash University Publishing, 2020). Piggin, Stuart, and Robert D. Linder, The Fountain of Public Prosperity: Evangelical Christians in Australian History 1740–1914 (Clayton: Monash University Publishing, 2018). Pollock, John, Crusades: 20 Years with Billy Graham (Minneapolis, MN: World Wide Publications, 1969). Porter, Muriel, Sydney Anglicans and the Threat to World Anglicanism: The Sydney Experiment (Farnham, Surrey: Ashgate, 2011). Powell, Adam J., Hans Mol and the Sociology of Religion (Abingdon: Routledge, 2017). Powell, Ruth, and Miriam Pepper, ‘Local Churches in Australia: Research Findings from NCLS Research’, in 2016 NCLS Church Life Pack Seminar Presentation (Sydney: NCLS Research, 2017). Prentis, Malcolm, ‘Binding or Loosing in Australasia: Some Trans-Tasman Protestant Connections’, Journal of Religious History 34, no. 3 (September 2010), pp. 312–34. Preston, Andrew, ‘Evangelical Internationalism: A Conservative Worldview for the Age of Globalization’, in Laura Gifford and Daniel Williams (eds.), The Right Side of the Sixties (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), pp. 221–40. Preston, Andrew, ‘Introduction: The Religious Cold War’, in Philip E. Muehlenbeck (ed.), Religion and the Cold War: A Global Perspective (Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 2012). Price, Charles, ‘Immigration and Ethnic Origin’, in Wray Vamplew (ed.), Australians: Historical Statistics (Broadway, NSW: Fairfax, Syme and Weldon Associates, 1987), pp. 2–22.

240

Bibliography

Randell-Moon, Holly, ‘Australian Secularism, Whiteness, and the British Monarchy’, in Timothy Stanley (ed.), Religion after Secularization in Australia (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015), pp. 75–89. Reed, Colin, Walking in the Light: Reflections on the East African Revival and its link to Australia (Brunswick East, VIC: Acorn Press, 2007). Reid, John, Marcus L. Loane: A Biography (Brunswick East, VIC: Acorn Press, 2005). Robinson, Shirleene, ‘1960s Counter-Culture in Australia: The Search for Personal Freedom’, in Shirleene Robinson and Julie Ustinoff (eds.), The 1960s in Australia: People, Power and Politics (Newcastle upon Tyne, UK: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2012), pp. 123–42. Rohrer, Norman, Leighton Ford: A Life Surprised (Wheaton, IL: Tyndale House, 1981). Salinas, Daniel, Latin American Evangelical Theology in the 1970s: The Golden Decade (Leiden: Brill, 2009). Schafer, Axel (ed.), American Evangelicals and the 1960s (Madison, WI: The University of Wisconsin Press, 2013). Schultz, Kevin, ‘Religion as Identity in Postwar America: The Last Serious Attempt to Put a Question on Religion in the United States Census’, The Journal of American History 93, no. 2 (2006), pp. 359–84. Senter, Mark, When God Shows Up: A History of Protestant Youth Ministry in America (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2010). Shils, Edward, Tradition (London: Faber and Faber, 1981). Shiner, Rory, ‘Speaking to God in Australia: Donald Robinson and the Writing of An Australian Prayer Book (1978)’, Studies in Church History 53 (2017), pp. 435–47. Shires, Preston, Hippies of the Religious Right (Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2007). Showalter, Nathan, and Yichao Tu, ‘Billy Graham, American Evangelicals, and Sino-American Relations’, Missiology: An International Review 38 (October 2010), pp. 444–59. Skinner, Quentin, Visions of Politics, Volume 1: Regarding Method (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002). Smart, A.J.H., ‘Some Religious Beliefs and Attitudes of Students at the Armidale Teachers’ College and at the University of New England’, Journal of Christian Education 7, no. 1 (June 1964), pp. 44–52. Smart, Judith, ‘The Evangelist as Star: The Billy Graham Crusade in Australia, 1959’, The Journal of Popular Culture 33, no. 1 (1999), pp. 165–75. Smith, Christian, American Evangelicalism: Embattled and Thriving (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998). Smith, John, The Origins, Nature and Significance of the Jesus Movement as a Revitalization Movement (Lexington, KY: Emeth Press, 2011). Stanley, Brain, The Global Diffusion of Evangelicalism: The Age of Billy Graham and John Stott (Nottingham: Inter-Varsity Press, 2013). Stanley, Brian, ‘Introduction: Christianity and the End of Empire’, in Brian Stanley (ed.), Missions, Nationalism and the End of Empire, Studies in the History of Christian Missions (Grand Rapids, MI: W.B. Eerdmans Publishing, 2003), pp. 1–10. Stanley, Brian, The World Missionary Conference, Edinburgh 1910 (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 2009). Steuernagel, Valdir, ‘Social Concern and Evangelization: The Journey of the Lausanne Movement’, International Bulletin of Missionary Research 15 (1991), pp. 53–63. Stevens, Rachel, ‘Political Debates on Asylum Seekers during the Fraser Government, 1977–1982’, Australian Journal of Politics and History 58, no. 4 (December 2012), pp. 526–41.

Bibliography

241

Suri, Jeremi, ‘The Rise and Fall of an International Counterculture, 1960–1975’, The American Historical Review 114, no. 1 (February 2009), pp. 45–68. Swartz, David, ‘Embodying the Global Soul: Internationalism and the American Evangelical Left’, Religions 3, no. 4 (September 2012), pp. 887–901. Swartz, David, Moral Minority: The Evangelical Left in an Age of Conservatism (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012). Tamney, Joseph B., The Resilience of Conservative Religion: The Case of Popular, Conservative Protestant Congregations (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002). Taylor, Charles, A Secular Age (Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University, 2007). Thompson, Ben (ed.), Ban This Filth! Mary Whitehouse and the Battle to Keep Britain Innocent (London: Faber and Faber, 2013). Thompson, Michael, For God and Globe: Christian Internationalism in the United States between the Great War and the Cold War (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2015). Tizon, Al, Transformation After Lausanne: Radical Evangelical Mission in GlobalLocal Perspective (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2008). Toft, Monica Duffy, Daniel Philpott, and Timothy Samuel Shah, God’s Century: Resurgent Religion and Global Politics (New York: W.W. Norton, 2011). Turner, John G., Bill Bright & Campus Crusade for Christ: The Renewal of Evangelicalism in Postwar America (Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press, 2008). Tyndall, David, ‘Evangelicalism, Sport and the Australian Olympics’, PhD Thesis, Macquarie University, 2004. Tyrell, Ian, Reforming the World: The Creation of America’s Moral Empire (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2010). Wacker, Grant, America’s Pastor: Billy Graham and the Shaping of a Nation (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2014). Wacker, Grant, ‘Introduction’, in Andrew Finstuen, Anne Blue Wills, and Grant Wacker (eds.), Billy Graham: American Pilgrim (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017), pp. 1–21. Walker, Andrew, Restoring the Kingdom: The Radical Christianity of the House Church Movement (Guildford, Surrey: Eagle, 1998). Walker, Chris, ‘Five Possible Points of Engagement’, in Vaughan Hinton (ed.), Being Christian in Australia (Melbourne: Joint Board of Christian Education, 1983), pp. 53–5. Walls, Andrew, ‘The Evangelical Revival and the Missionary Movement’, in Mark A. Noll, David W. Bebbington, and George A. Rawlyck (eds.), Evangelicalism: Comparative Studies of Popular Protestantism in North America, the British Isles, and Beyond, 1700–1990 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), pp. 310–30. Ward, Kevin, The Church in Post-Sixties New Zealand: Decline, Growth, and Change (Auckland: Archer Press, 2013). Ward, Kevin, A History of Global Anglicanism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006). Ward, Kevin, ‘Religion in New Zealand since the 1960s: Some Sociological Perspectives’, New Zealand Sociology 31 (2016), pp. 186–206. Ward, Stuart, Australia and the British Embrace: The Demise of the Imperial Ideal (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 2001). Ward, Stuart, ‘The “New Nationalism” in Australia, Canada and New Zealand: Civic Culture in the Wake of the British World’, in Kate Darian-Smith, Patricia

242

Bibliography

Grimshaw, and Stuart Macintyre (eds.), Britishness Abroad: Transnational Movements and Imperial Cultures (Carlton, Vic.: Melbourne University Press, 2007), pp. 231–66. Warner, Rob, Reinventing English Evangelicalism, 1966–2001: A Theological and Sociological Study (Milton Keynes: Paternoster, 2007). Watson, Don, ‘Rabbit Syndrome: Australia and America’, Quarterly Essay no. 4 (2001), pp. 1–59. Watt, Alan, The Evolution of Australian Foreign Policy 1938–1965 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1968). Webster, Peter, ‘Race, Religion and National Identity in Sixties Britain: Michael Ramsey, Archbishop of Canterbury, and His Encounter with Other Faiths’, in Charlotte Methuen, Andrew Spicer, and John Wolffe (eds.), Christianity and Religious Plurality, Studies in Church History 51 (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2015), pp. 385–98. Whipple, Amy, ‘Speaking for Whom? The 1971 Festival of Light and the Search for the “Silent Majority”’, Contemporary British History 24 (July 2010), pp. 319–39. White, Richard, ‘A Backwater Awash: The Australian Experience of Americanisation’, Theory, Culture and Society 1, no. 3 (1983), pp. 108–22. Willett, Graham, Living Out Loud: A History of Gay and Lesbian Activism in Australia (St Leonard’s, NSW: Allen & Unwin, 2000). Williams, Daniel, ‘Richard Nixon’s Religious Right: Catholics, Evangelicals and the Creation of an Antisecular Alliance’, in Laura Gifford and Daniel Williams (eds.), The Right Side of the Sixties: Reexamining Conservatism’s Decade of Transformation (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), pp. 141–58. Williams, Roy, In God They Trust? The Religious Beliefs of Australia’s Prime Ministers, 1901–2013 (Sydney: Bible Society, 2013). Williams, Roy, Post-God Nation? How Religion Fell Off the Radar in Australia and What Might Be Done to Get It Back On (Sydney: ABC Books, 2015). Wilson, Bruce, Can God Survive in Australia? (Sutherland, NSW: Albatross Books, 1983). Winks, Robin (ed.), The Oxford History of the British Empire, Volume 5: Historiography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999). Wolffe, John, God and Greater Britain: Religion and National Life in Britain and Ireland, 1843–1945 (London: Routledge, 1994). Woodard, Gary, Asian Alternatives: Australia’s Decision and Lessons on Going to War (Carlton, VIC: Melbourne University Press, 2004). Woodhead, Linda, ‘Implicit Understandings of Religion in Sociological Study and in the Work of Hugh McLeod’, in Callum G. Brown and Michael Snape (eds.), Secularisation in the Christian World: Essays in Honour of Hugh McLeod (Farnham, Surrey: Ashgate, 2010), pp. 27–40. Woolmington, Jean (ed.), Religion in Early Australia: The Problem of Church and State (Stanmore, NSW: Cassell, 1976). Wright, Don, Mantle of Christ: A History of the Sydney Central Methodist Mission (St Lucia, Qld: University of Queensland Press, 1984). Yates, Nigel, Love Now, Pay Later? Sex and Religion in the Fifties and Sixties (London: SPCK, 2010). Yates, Timothy, Christian Mission in the Twentieth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994). Yeats, Kristy, ‘Australian New Left Politics, 1956–1972’, PhD Thesis, The University of Melbourne, 2009.

Index

Note: Page numbers in italics indicate figures; page numbers in bold indicate tables; page numbers that include n indicate notes. 1960s: American cultural impact on 85; different experiences of Australians and Europeans/North Americans 10; libertarianism of 25, 204; ‘long 1960s 8, 10, 30–1, 144, 203; 1958–1960 as ‘early 1960s’ 30–1; ‘relevance’ in 51; ‘religious crisis of’ 8, 64, 71; rupture of 1–7; social problems of 67; see also Billy Graham crusades in Australia; British Empire; Jesus Movement; Mol, Hans; Nile, Fred; Taylor, Charles 1968–1969 crusade: as compared to 1959 94–6; as helping evangelicals think about place in nation 98, 103; King and Kennedy assassinations during 82; see also Billy Graham crusades in Australia 1988 Bicentennial 162 Aboriginal land rights, struggle for 172 Aborigines Evangelical Fellowship 172, 192–3 Adams, Phillip 89 Advance Australian Where? (book) [Smith] 162 Ahlstrom, Sidney 10 Americanisation: of Australian religion 78; and globalism 99–100 ‘American Revival’ 16 Anzac Legend (WWI) 37 AOFL see Australian Festival of Light (AOFL) Asian Christianity, growth of 99 Asia South Pacific Congress on Evangelism (1968) 98–9

Atkinson, Alan 11 Aussie ‘Awakening,’ as including all Protestant denominations, Catholics, and others 162–3; see also Bicentennial National Prayer Gathering Australia 78; anxiety in about vulnerability in Asian environment 83; as British dominion and ‘Christian nation’ 4; ‘indigenisation’ of Christianity in 113; new stature of 83; search for ‘new nationalism’ by 8 Australia (book) [Hartley] 54 Australian, The (newspaper): ‘Cook the Man and Enigma’ (Australian series) [Rienits] 127; insert in after Lausanne Congress 186; profile of Laune 130 Australian Capital Territory (ACT): decriminalizing homosexuality in 41; Law Reform Society 38; see also ACT Australian Christian Endeavour (magazine), as highlighting citizenship as central aspect of CE mission 36–7 Australian Christian Nation Association (2005) 43 Australian Church Record, Christians in Australia as ‘despised minority’ 164 Australian Council of Churches, Commission on Church and Society 191 Australian critiques of Graham see critiques of Graham Australian culture, image of as mediocre, parochial and superficial 152 Australian Evangelical 153, 175, 191; evangelical Aboriginal missions 193–4

244

Index

Australian Evangelical Alliance (E.A.) see Evangelical Alliance (E.A.) Australian evangelicalism: activist entrepreneurialism of 103; Jesus Movement’s influence on public face of 144; ‘National Revival through a revived Church’ as slogan for 2; as turning outwards 196; see also evangelicalism Australian Festival of Light (AFOL) 17, 43, 153, 156; Community Standards Organisation 40; Fred Nile 25; Lance Shilton’s role in 191 Australian Frontier, as gathering Christian intellectuals for conferences and publications on social issues 58 ‘Australianising’ Christianity, to find unique expression of Christian truth 157–61 Australian Labor Party manifesto (1954), Australia as under ‘Divine Providence’ 13 Australian national identity see national identity Australian National University (ANU), Institute for Advanced Studies 56; Hans Mol at 56 ‘Australian-ness’ see national identity Australians: faith of as part of global spiritual and cultural community 2; identity as members of ‘God’s Australian people’ and ‘God’s Imperial British people’ 11; identity of as ‘British,’ ‘white’ and ‘Christian’ 2; loose affirmation of central Christian doctrine by 10; participation in Christian denominations of 2–3; view of Billy Graham 88–94; see also national identity ‘Australian theology,’ conservative evangelical leaders opposed to idea of 161 Australian Values Study (1983) 62 ‘Australian way of life,’ Christian moral conduct as essential to 3; see also national identity ‘authenticity,’ quest for cultural 148 ‘average’ Australian, attempts to connect with 160–1 Babbage, Stuart Barton Babbage (canon), Australians as ‘attractive, godless pagans’ 64

Bebbington, David: evangelicalism as bound up in flux of events 135; Evangelicalism in Modern Britain (book) 15; historiographical association between revivalism and America 102 ‘being British’: as central collective myth 3–4; see also national identity Belloc, Hilaire 13 Berger, Peter significance 9 Berton, Pierre 65; The Comfortable Pew (book) 64 ‘Biblical Jesus,’ as ‘the Radical Jesus’ 149 biblical literacy, decline of 11, 61, 97–8, 212 Biblicist activism, Jesus Movement and 145, 148–9 Bicentennial National Prayer Gathering (‘Aussie Awakening’) (1988) 162 Billy Graham: A Parable of American Righteousness (biography) [Frady] 87 Billy Graham crusades in Australia 1–7, 102; 1959 80–1, 85–9, 94–6, 116–17, 146, 203, 213; 1968–1969 1, 4, 82, 87–8, 94–6, 98, 103; profound shift in way Australians conceived of identity between first and last 213; see also Americanisation; Graham, Billy; Southern Cross Crusade (1959) Billy Graham Evangelistic Association (BGEA), Bishop Jack Dain and 176–7 Blaikie, Norman 1 Blainey, Geoffrey 85 Bonegilla Migrant Reception Centre, Hans Mol working at 54 Bonhoeffer, Dietrich, ‘religionless Christianity’ 149 ‘born-again Christians’ 2, 15, 29, 65, 206, 212–13; Jimmy Carter, President 70 Bouma, Gary 113 Boy Scouts (1907), as mobilising youth for Christian service to Church and nation 27–8 Boys’/Girls’ Brigades (1883/1893), as mobilising youth for Christian service to Church and nation 27–8 Brewitt-Taylor, Sam 64 Bright, Bill, Four Spiritual Laws 159 ‘British,’ ‘white’ and ‘Christian,’ Australians’ identity as 2; see also national identity

Index British Commonwealth, Australia’s membership in 112; see also British Empire; national identity British Empire 126, 134–5, 195; collapse of 3–4; end of 78, 113–14, 120, 133, 209; post-imperial Australia’s ‘identity void’ 4; see also national identity British Evangelical Alliance 178; Bishop Jack Dain and 176; see also Evangelical Alliance British forces, withdrawal of from Southeast Asia 4 British imperial sentiment and security, decline of 78; see also British Empire British loyalty and Australian independence as complementary continuities 111 British national identity, role of Protestantism in defining 11 British Nationwide Festival of Light, Mary Whitehouse 40–1; see also Festival of Light Britishness, ‘whiteness’ as corollary to 4; see also national identity ‘British race patriotism’ 4; collapse of 208; Archbishop Loane’s attachment to 115–16 Brown, Callum 9; ‘discursive Christianity’ 205 bunyip, origins of mythical mammal in Aboriginal Dream Time 148 Burgmann, Bishop Ernest, chapter on religion in Australia (book) [Hartley] 54 Call to Australia Citizens’ Movement (1977): Fred Nile and 42–3; see also Christian Democratic Party ‘Call to the Nation’ (1951), nation’s health as dependent on fidelity to God’s moral laws 12–13 Cambridge and the Evangelical Succession (book) [Loane] 115 Campus Crusade for Christ: as ‘expansionist, imperialist’ 178; Four Spiritual Laws 159 Can God Survive in Australia? (book) [Wilson] 159, 192 Carey, Hillary 12; Empires of Religion (book) 13 Carter, Jimmy, President, as ‘born-again Christian’ 70

245

censorship, relaxing of laws 38 ‘Challenge to the Church’ (1968 newspaper series) [Williams] 97 changing evangelical youth culture, Jesus Movement as 144 charismatic renewal movement: Jesus Movement as sowing seeds for 145; mainstreaming of 162 Chavura, Steven 12 Christendom: appeal to nations of to go to unreached masses of ‘heathendom’ 174; changing nature of belief, behavior, and belonging after 9; defining 10–14; as geographical descriptor 13; as global spiritual and cultural community 2; lost hegemony of 24–6; meanings of 12; mental map of 8; mindset 66; see also post-Christendom Christendom, end of 43–4, 52, 71–2, 79, 113–14, 171; evangelical leaders’ responses to 205; see also Christendom; post-Christendom ‘Christian Australia’: abrupt end of 203; defining 10–14; idea of 8; ostensible end of 144; as powerful discursive reality 11; radical evangelicals’ assertion Christianity never took root 159; response to demise of 8; see also national identity Christian churches, relevance of in post-Christendom world 68 Christian citizen(s), as ‘ordinary’ Australian(s) 39 Christian citizenship 206; Australian Endeavourers’ clear agenda for 29; CE emphasis on being ‘positive’ 39; dual heavenly and earthly citizenship as reigning metaphor for CE 27 Christian Democratic Party 25, 43 Christian Endeavour (CE): decline of 35–6; good citizenship and public affairs 27; holistic vision of evangelical activism in local church, nation, and world 28; interdenominational cooperation and pragmatic activism 40; as ‘loyal opposition’ vs. militance 42; movement 26–30; National Handbook 30; self-conception of as key advocate for national righteousness 29; as world’s first Church-based, interdenominational evangelical youth training organisation 26, 43

246

Index

Christian Endeavour ‘Nowtime’ Convention (1974) 43 Christian intellectuals: conferences and publications on social issues 58; desire of to integrate faith and scholarship 58, 63 Christianity: evangelical 2; growth of in Asia 99; rapid growth in tandem with spread of modernity 9; significance of past and present ideas of national identity and vocation 213; see also evangelicalism; religion Christianity in Chains: A Sociologist’s Interpretation of the Churches’ Dilemma in a Secular World (book) [Mol] 3, 69; and interaction of religion and identity 51; as response to Honest to God 63; as testing ideas of in addressing varied Christian audiences 57–8 Christian moral conduct, as essential to ‘Australian way of life’ 3 Christian morality, vocal minorities bent on unseating 39 Christian moral standards, attack on 3 ‘Christian nation’ see national identity Christian Research Association (1985) 63 ‘Christian Social Responsibility’ clause of Lausanne Covenant, as turning point in evangelical thinking 184 church as ‘conscience of nation’ 55 churches: decline of attendance 4; growth of during Southern Cross Crusade (1959) 1; growth as shifting away from traditional Christian centres 174; social utility of 55 ‘Churchgoing in Australia’ (essay) [Inglis] 2 Church Growth Movement 63 Church Missionary Society (CMS) see CMS ‘civic Protestantism’: Jesus People and 164; non-denominational, civicallyfocussed Protestantism 11 Clark, Manning 113, 150, 162; ‘great age of confusion’ 208 Claydon, David (Kairos Chairman) 151, 155, 179; failure of traditional community organisations to socialise young people 153; and Radical Discipleship group 181–3

Coffman, Elsha, ‘Elmer Gantry’ image of evangelists 89–90 Cole, Douglas 14 collapse of British ‘race patriotism,’ as source of uncertainty 208 collectivist sources of identity, erosion of Australians’ attachment to 61 Colley, Linda 14 Comfortable Pew, The (book) [Berton] 64 Commission on Church and Society, How Lucky Are We? Australia in the Seventies (report) 191 ‘commonwealth of speech’ 11 Commission on World Mission and Evangelism (WCC) 175 complex relationship between nation’s white and Aboriginal populations, Lausanne as forcing Australians to grapple with 192–3 conferences and conventions, importance of in CE 27 congregations as needing doctrinal, moral and organisational loyalty 67 Congress on World Evangelisation (1974), Lausanne see Lausanne Congress on World Evangelisation (1974) ‘conservative’ institutions, attack on 3 Constantinian, Christendom as 13; see also pre-Constantinian church ‘consumer revolution,’ as militating against public-spirited service and organisational loyalty 62 conversion, of individual as key to renewal of nation 2 Cook, Captain James 111; debate over degree of faith of 127 Cook Bicentenary (1970) 111–12, 127; as accentuating tension between history and geography 120; Queen Elizabeth II’s visit to Australia for 111, 132; see also Loane, Sir Marcus ‘Cook the Man and the Enigma’ (Australian series) [Rienits], complicity of Christianity in displacement of Aboriginal people 127 counterculture 144–5, 161; see also Jesus People Cox, Harvey 65 Cross, W.J.L., concept of worldwide CE federation 28

Index Crusading Down Under (report) [Nichols and Olson]: 1968–1969 crusade 84; first Billy Graham Evangelistic Association (BGEA) commissioning of local writers 100; see also Billy Graham crusades in Australia Crux (journal), Student Christian Movement 58 ‘cultural Cold War,’ centrality of religion to 32 cultural time lag, between Australia and Europe/North America 10, 145–6 Curran, James 120 Current Affairs Bulletin, ‘Churchgoing in Australia’ (essay) [Inglis] 2 Dain, Bishop Jack (executive chairman of Lausanne Congress 18, 99, 185; 1979 crusade chairman 4; and Billy Graham 176–7; as developing global evangelical network of missionaries and Church leaders 176; irenic, conservative approach to cultural and theological differences 173; last-minute invitations to members of Australian Jesus Movement 179; Lausanne Continuation Committee 188 ‘Day the Grog Ran Out and Other Stories from the Big Book, The’ (cassette) 160 ‘Death of God,’ American debates about 145, 149; see also Honest to God (book) [Robinson] decentring global evangelicalism, René Padilla delivery of Lausanne speech in Spanish 183 decline of public piety, Fred Nile 39 decriminalizing homosexuality: in Australian Capital Territory (ACT) 41; growing support for 38 denominational identity 212 ‘divinity,’ shift from study of to ‘religious studies’ 57 Durkheim, Emile 13 Dutch migrants, Hans Mol as Presbyterian chaplain to 54–5 Dutch Reformed Church, Dutch migrants joining Presbyterian Church of Australia instead of 54; establishment of parent-controlled Christian school by 70–1

247

ecclesiastical conservatism, Athol Gill’s opposition to 180–1 Eisenhower, President Dwight D., message from at Southern Cross Crusade meeting 2, 80 Ellul, Jacques, ‘the technological society’ 144 Elmer Gantry (novel) [Lewis], image of evangelists 89–90, 93 Ely, Richard, corporate vs. civic Protestantism 11, 151 empire: end of 8, 14, 16, 113, 196, 206, 208; old verities of 85, 171; see also British Empire; Cook Bicentenary (1970); imperialism; national identity; post-imperial Empires of Religion (book) [Carey], religion as holding imperial ideal together 13 Endeavourers see Christian Endeavour (CE) Escobar, Samuel 155, 183, 210; ‘Evangelism and Man’s Search for Freedom, Justice and Fulfillment’ (paper at Lausanne Congress) 175; as leading figure in Lausanne Movement 177; see also Padilla, René Eskridge, Larry, God’s Forever Family (book) 145 ethnic and cultural diversity, policy of 123 Evangelical Alliance (EA) 97, 157, 186–8; conference of ‘radical Christians’ engaged in parachurch ministry 186–8; Lausanne Congress on World Evangelisation (1974) 207; as responsible for maintaining Lausanne momentum 186 Evangelical Alliance Relief Fund (TEAR) 155, 190 Evangelical Christianity 2, 103; as contested 203; and diversity 56; expansion of 173; growing divide and British anti-American attacks 177–8; and Jesus Movement 145; leaders 8; and ‘national public culture’ 11, 188, 207; North Atlantic hegemony 102; and political activism 25; personal conversion 101–2; tendency of to adapt and ‘re-indigenise’ itself 144; as transnational 16, 102; triumphalism 183; youth culture 147; see also Jesus

248

Index

Movement; Jesus People; Loane, Sir Marcus (Archbishop of Sydney); Nile, Fred Evangelicalism in Modern Britain (book) [Bebbington] 16 faith and scholarship, Christian intellectuals’ desire to integrate as aid to social relevance 58 Fallding, Harold 63 Family Action Movement, Fred Nile and 42–3 Family Law Act, Lionel Murphy as architect of 42 Family Law Bill see Family Law Act Festival of Light (AFOL) see Australian Festival of Light (AOFL) Fischer, David Hackett, ‘web of contingency’ 16 Fletcher, Geoffrey: as critic of Move in for Action (report) 98; too much negativism toward existing institutional churches 187 Foord, Dudley, and evangelicals’ international responsibilities 98 Four Spiritual Laws, Bill Bright and Campus Crusade for Christ 159 Fowler, Stewart 156 Frady, Marshall, Billy Graham: A Parable of American Righteousness (biography) 87 Frame, Tom 30 Frankl, Victor, Man’s Search for Meaning (book) 53 Fraser, Malcolm, Prime Minister 157 Frontier Youth Workers’ Consultation, David Claydon (Kairos Chairman) 153 functional approach to religion 70 Furse-Roberts, David, ‘conservative ecumenicalism’ 41 Garvin, Mal: Bicentennial National Prayer Gathering (‘Aussie Awakening’) (1988) 162; examination of national identity by 157; Us Aussies: The Fascinating History They Didn’t Tell Us at School (book) 162 Gascoigne, John 12 Gatu, John 174, 194 gay rights, activist organizations see homosexuality Giles, Paul 102 Gill, Alan 113

Gill, Athol: and ad hoc Radical Discipleship group at Lausanne Congress 173, 183; applying teaching of Jesus to life in modern technocracy 149; broadening of evangelical responsibility 173; ‘Christian Social Responsibility’ clause of Lausanne Covenant as turning point in evangelical thinking 184; as eager to emphasise cultural difference at Lausanne Congress 181; as establishing House of the Gentle Bunyip 148; firing of from Queensland Baptist Theological College 180–1; and Jesus Movement 147; Lausanne Congress as opportunity for subversion 179–80 Girl Guides (1910), as mobilising youth for Christian service to Church and nation 27 Global Anglican Futures (GAFCON) movement 113 global expansion of evangelicalism 171; Lausanne Congress as response to 173 Global March for Jesus (2000) 163 Global South, ‘next Christendom’ of as emerging 8 Glock, Charles 57 God’s Forever Family (book) [Eskridge] 145 God Squad 161–2; Christian Motorcycle Club 142, 146 ‘Godzone’ (Meanjin series) 99; national identity 85 Goldsworthy, David 120 Gorton, John, Prime Minister, ‘Australia First’ trade and defence policy 83 ‘Gospel in our Strange New World’ (conference) (1969), importance of local church 97 Gough, Hugh Rowlands (Archbishop of Sydney) 116–17, 123 Gould, Shane (Olympic athlete), on House of the New World 146 Graham, Billy 4, 85–6, 144–5, 185; Australia’s repeated embrace of 78; Bishop Jack Dain and 177; Crusading Down Under (report) [Nichols and Olson] 84; and fostering ‘pan-evangelical pragmatism’ 102; health of 81, 96; interwoven political and spiritual goals 84; Jesus Generation, The

Index (book) 145; press coverage of 88; see also Americanisation; Billy Graham crusades in Australia; Elmer Gantry; Vietnam, Billy Graham and Graham, Billy, critiques of: as American 89; as defender of US imperialism 79; and silence on Vietnam War 17, 37, 82–3, 92–4 Graham, Ruth (Billy’s wife) 87 Grattan, Hartley, Australia (book) 54 ‘Greater Britain’ 112, 121, 125, 161, 163, 173 ‘Greater Christian Britain’ 10 Guinness, Howard (rector of St Michael’s Vaucluse), I Object . . . to Billy Graham 80 ‘gum-leaf theology’ 157, 191 Hancock, Keith 150 Hilliard, David 3, 65 Hirt, John: House of the New World 146; and political conservatism and theological superficiality of evangelical groups 147; and Radical Discipleship group 183; ‘the un-church tainted Jesus’ 149 Hoke, Donald (director of Lausanne Congress), Europeans’ complaints that Congress was American operation 178 Homosexuality: growing support for decriminalizing 38 Honest to God (book) [Robinson] 63, 149 Horne, David 11, 38, 62, 102, 126–7, 144, 203; 1960s terms 51; The Lucky Country (book) 10, 157; ‘new nationalism’ 83 ‘Hour of Decision’ (Billy Graham), and US isolationism 83–4 House of the New World: establishment of as origin of Australian Jesus Movement 146; as parachurch 146; see also Hirt, John How Lucky Are We? Australia in the Seventies (report) 191 Hudson, Bishop Goodwin 15 Hutchinson, Mark 171 identity: denominational 212; erosion of Australian’s attachment to collective sources of 61; group

249

and ‘Protestant Remnant’ 67–8; in pluralised, migratory world 52; see also national identity Identity and the Sacred (book) [Mol], functional approach to religion 70 identity politics of post-imperial settler societies 214 identity void 208; see also ‘identity void’ vs. ‘distinctive’ identity ‘identity void’ vs. ‘distinctive’ identity, of post-imperial Australia 4 immigration, increase of non-British 4 imperial racial and religious myths, ‘new nationalism’ needed to replace 8 imperialism, Western mission as perpetuating 174 ‘indigenisation’ of Christianity in Australia, Archbishop Loane’s attachment to Britain as barrier to 113 indigenising the gospel 192 individuality, as logic of ‘consumer revolution’ 62 Inglis, Ken 2, 56–7 institutional organisation, all movements’ need for 66 Interchange: Papers on Biblical and Current Questions (journal), Edwin Judge 58 interdenominational cooperation, and pragmatic activism vs. ‘fundamentalism’ and separatism 40; public religion and Southern Cross Crusade (1959) 3 International Congress on World Evangelisation (1974) see Lausanne Congress on World Evangelisation (1974) international responsibilities, and evangelicals’ international responsibilities 98–9 International Review of Mission 4 Islam, and immigration 44 Jackson, Hugh 10 Jenkins, Philip 173 ‘Jesus Freaks’ 144 Jesus Generation, The (book) [Graham] 145 Jesus Movement 161–2; application of gospel to mission and lifestyle 148–9; as catalysing conscientiousness of progressive Christians 63; and public

250

Index

face of Australian evangelicalism 144; ‘radical evangelicalism’ of as interacting with national identity 144; as ‘re-indigenising’ Christianity and opening new freedoms for Christian self-expression 164; romanticism, nativism and spiritual experimentation of counterculture 144–5; scepticism about 148; significance of within evangelicalism and American culture 146; transnational nature of 145; see also Jesus People Jesus People: as affirming civic Protestant sense of national identity and purpose 164; group consensus for dismissing ‘old shibboleth of evangelical piety’ 154; and image of mediocre, parochial and superficial Australian culture 152; and radical communal vision of world evangelical leaders 151; ‘The Real Revolution: Jesus!’ 142; as seeking to return to pre-Constantinian Church 149; see also Jesus Movement; Kairos ’73 Jesus Revolution see Jesus Movement Johannis Jacob (‘Hans’) Mol see Mol, Hans Journal of Christian Education (1958) (journal) 58 Journal of Religious History (1960) (journal) 58 ‘Judeo-Christian’ heritage 24, 41, 44, 213 Judge, Edwin, role in establishing evangelical scholarly journals 58 Kairos (newspaper) 149 Kairos ’73 144, 150–3; as helping to legitimise Jesus Movement 153; Jesus People 143; lasting significance of 153; see also Jesus People Kairos Live! (record album) 143 King, Dr Martin Luther, Jr, active opposition to Vietnam War 93 Kirk, David (president, Aborigines Evangelical Fellowship): Aboriginal self-confidence and moves towards independence by former colonial peoples 192–3; at Lausanne Congress 172 Kivengere, Festo 194 Knöpfelmacher, Frank 56–7

Knox, Broughton (Principal of Moore College) 190 Kristensen, Jeppe 133 Late Great Planet Earth, The (book) [Lindsey] 148 Lausanne see Lausanne Congress on World Evangelisation (1974) Lausanne Congress on World Evangelisation (1974) 102, 151; concern about ‘obvious rightwing American speaker’ 178; difference between countries and among Australian delegates 172; as forcing Australians to grapple with relationship between white and Aboriginal peoples 192–3; future of evangelicalism in globalised world and 176; as highlighting differences among Australian evangelicals 195; new era for evangelical identity 171–2; non-Western evangelicalism and 175; see also Gill, Athol Lausanne Continuation Committee, question about social concern in future of Movement 188 Lausanne Covenant: ‘Christian Social Responsibility’ clause of as turning point in evangelical thinking 184; international post-Congress symposium on the Lausanne Covenant entitled The New Face of Evangelicalism 173; post-Congress symposium on 173; and repentance for evangelical triumphalism 183–4; as statement of evangelical belief 172 Lausanne Movement 172, 196 Life of Jesus (documentary) [Muggeridge] 89 Linder, Robert 12 Lindsey, Hal, Late Great Planet Earth, The (book) 148 Loane, Sir Marcus (Archbishop of Sydney) 86; attachment to British race patriotism 115–16; as calling for new Billy Graham crusade in 1960s 81; community of race and culture with New Zealand 121; as first Australian-born Archbishop 111, 117; as ‘instigator’ of 1979 crusade 4; ‘missionary and humanitarian’ concern for Asia 117–18; and national identity 112, 125; nationalism of ethnic

Index essence 123–5; opposition to revisions of Orthodox Anglican law 116; with Queen Elizabeth II 132; refusal of to attend Pope Paul VI’s ecumenical service 130; as representative of oldworld resistance to new-world change 113; response to end of ‘British world’ and Christendom 112–13 Loane, Sir Marcus (Archbishop of Sydney), works: Cambridge and the Evangelical Succession (book) 115; Masters of the English Reformation (book) 115; Oxford and the Evangelical Succession (book) 115 ‘long 1960s’ 144, 203; 1958–1960 as ‘early 1960s’ 30–1; and death of ‘Greater Christian Britain’ 8; as needed to comprehend shifts in Australia 10 Longmead, Ross (musician), on Gough Whitlam 150 loss of clear markers of identity and otherness 212 Loy, Alan 161 Lucky Country, The (book) [Home] 157; ‘religious’ as standing for being ‘respectable’ 10–11 Maddox, Marion, Methodism in 1950s 30 mainstream press, as enthusiastically endorsing Southern Cross Crusade (1959) 2 Man’s Search for Meaning (book) [Frankl] 53 Martin, David 9, 87; A Sociology of English Religion (book) 62; sociology of religion 57 Martin, William, Billy Graham biographer on 1959 crusade 80 Mary Whitehouse, and British Nationwide Festival of Light 40–1 Masters of the English Reformation (book) [Loane] 115 ‘mateship,’ as source of leadership 39 McLeod, Hugh 9; 1958–1960 as ‘early 1960s’ 30–1; Religion in Australia as snapshot of long-standing status quo before sudden erosion 62 McMahon, William, Minister for Social Services (later Prime Minister), Australia as ‘Christian land opposing barbarians’ 13

251

meaning, individual vs. social sources of 61–2 Meanjin (literary journal) 85, 99 Melbourne, Southern Cross Crusade (1959) 2; see also Southern Cross Crusade (1959) Menzies, Robert, Prime Minister 112–13; ‘Christian nation’ 13; retirement of as auguring of new foreign policy era 83 Merton, Robert, Hans Mol as student of 55 Miller, Bruce, ‘Other Places’ (‘Godzone’ Meanjin series) 99 Millikan, David (Director, Zadok Institute) 159 minority ethic, Hans Mol and 69–70 missionary movement and Western culture, ‘traditional marriage of’ 174 missionary volunteers, increase in during Southern Cross Crusade (1959) 1 modernity, religion as bulwark against dislocating pressures of 9 ‘modest religious boom,’ in 1950s 2 Moffit, Ian, Anglican prelates as aware of lost establishment status 134 Mol, Hans 52, 56; church as ‘conscience of nation’ 55; dilemma of churches in secular world 67; interaction of religion and identity 51; ‘Protestant Integrationist’ approach 66; Protestantism as flourishing in periods of change 55; religion’s role in life of nation 63; on social utility of churches 55; as student of Reinhold Niebuhr, Paul Tillich, and Robert Merton 55; transnational nature of evangelical engagement with end of Christendom 52; universal theory of identity 52; Religion in Australia Survey (1966); secularization Mol, Hans, works: Identity and the Sacred (book) 70; Religion in Australia (book) 62 Mol, Hans, Christianity in Chains: A Sociologist’s Interpretation of the Churches’ Dilemma in a Secular World (book) 69; and interaction of religion and identity 51; Integrationists, vs. ‘Protestant Remnant’ 67–8; as response to Honest to God 63; as testing ideas

252

Index

of in addressing varied Christian audiences 57–8 Mol, Ruth (wife of Hans) 55, 69–70 moral liberalisation, as radical challenge to Fred Nile’s conception of nation 26 ‘moral minority,’ role of Jesus Movement in emergence of 145 moral pluralism, Family Law Bill and 41 Morris, Milton 41–2 Move in for Action (report), limitations of mass evangelicalism 97–8 Mowll, Harold (Archbishop of Sydney) 116, 118, 123 Muggeridge, Malcolm: British Nationwide Festival of Light 40–1; keynote address at Lausanne Congress 191; Life of Jesus (documentary) 89 multiculturalism, ascendancy of 122; see also national identity Murphy, Lionel, Attorney-General, as architect of Family Law Act 42 muscular Christianity, Fred Nile’s commitment to 34 national identity, loss of historic evangelical assumptions of Christian nationhood by 1979 4 National Council of Churches (New Zealand), and Mol’s research on race relations within churches 55–6 National Evangelical Anglican Congress (1971) 130 National Handbook, Christian Endeavour (CE) 30 national identity 53, 85, 144, 157, 192, 206, 209; affirming sense of 164; attempts to define postimperial nation 161; Australia as ‘under Divine Providence’ 13, 150; ‘Australian-ness’ 156–63; claims about as continuing to resonate 213; British 11; as ‘British,’ ‘white’ and ‘Christian’ 2; Britishness and 112; and British Empire 134; ‘Christian Australia’ 4, 8, 144, 159; ‘distinctive’ 85; erosion of attachment to collective sources of 61; erosion of ethnic and racial markers of 203; Loane, Sir Marcus (Archbishop of Sydney) 115; and persistent colonial deference to Britain 159; post-

Christendom mission of Australians 18; post-imperial 4, 156; and ‘radical evangelism’ of Jesus Movement 144; religion as giving content to 14; search for non-imperial 112 nationalism, religion as fulfilling function of 9; of ethnic essence and Archbishop Loane 123–5 ‘national public culture,’ relationship with evangelicalism 11 national public culture, as no longer explicitly ‘Christian,’ ‘British,’ or ‘white’ 8 national renewal, personal conversion as fountainhead of 2, 152 ‘National Revival through a revived Church,’ as slogan for Australian evangelical organisers 2 national self-knowledge, Hans Mol and 208–9 ‘New Christian Right,’ role of Jesus Movement in emergence of 145 New Face of Evangelicalism symposium, Athol Gill as only Australian contributor to 173 ‘new nationalism’ 112–13; calls for in post-imperial Australia 4; Jesus People as drawing on rhetoric of 151–2; needed to replace imperial, racial and religious myths 8 ‘next Christendom’ of Global South, emergence of 8 Nichols, Alan, Crusading Down Under (report) 90 Niebuhr, Reinhold: Hans Mol as student of 55; Protestantism as flourishing in periods of change 55 Nile, Fred 40, 100, 149; 1968–1969 crusade 84; Call to Australia Citizens’ Movement (1977) 42–3; Christian Endeavour Movement 26, 29–30; conspiratorial coalition of vocal minorities 39; controversies and 24–5; first campaign for Parliament (1974) 42; impossibility of moral pluralism 41; influencing legislation vs. public evangelism 39; muscular militarist language 208; politicisation of 42; as representing trajectory of evangelicalism and national public culture 26, 43; rhetoric as polarising and inclusive 43; as standard-bearer for Christian Right in Australia 25;

Index see also Australian Festival of Light (AFOL) (1973); Uniting Church Nixon, Richard, President 39, 80, 94; Graham’s support of 92, 175 ‘Nixon Doctrine,’ US unwillingness to commit ground forces to future Asian conflicts 83 non-Western evangelicals, Bishop Dain’s insistence on their inclusion in Lausanne Congress and postCongress organisation 177 O’Grady, Desmond 129 Oliphant, Sir Mark, scientific ethos and ‘knowledge of nature’ could fulfil Christianity’s unifying function 66 Olson, Warwick, Crusading Down Under (report) 90 On Being (magazine) 155–7, 207 One Man, One Nation (book) [Pollock], 1959 crusade 85–6 Order of Australia 161 organisational loyalty, ‘consumer revolution’ as militating against 62 ‘Other Places’ (Meanjin ‘Godzone’ series) [Miller], rejoinders to ‘prophets of conspiratorial cultural imperialism’ 99 Oxford and the Evangelical Succession (book) [Loane] 115 Padilla, René 155, 210; as delivering Lausanne speech in Spanish 183; ‘Evangelism and the World’ (paper at Lausanne Congress) 175; as leading figure in Lausanne Movement 177; see also Escobar, Samuel Page, Ron, expansion of social issues as responsibility of Jesus People 154–5 ‘pan-evangelical pragmatism,’ as fostered by Billy Graham 102 parachurch(es) 57, 97, 176, 186–1, 208; Campus Crusade for Christ 178; Evangelical Alliance (E.A.) 187; House of the New World 146; Scripture Union 178 parliamentary speeches, increasing invocation of Christian terminology between 2000 and 2006 213 Pasture, Patrick, secularisation of Europe as ‘fundamental break with history’ 9–10

253

Paulson, Graham: as advocating for racially diverse theological education 194; as first Aboriginal Baptist minister in Australia 172 Pentecostal churches, mainstreaming of 162–3 ‘permissive society’: challenge to ideal of single Christian public morality 43; see also ‘stand up and be counted’ personal conversion, Jesus People as affirming evangelical belief in 152; as key to renewal of nation 2 Piatt, Dan, 1968–1969 crusade 84 Pidwell, Harold (biographer of Athol Gill) 179–80 Piggin, Stuart 12, 80 political representation to influence legislation 42 Politics of Jesus, The (book) [Yoder] 183 Pollard, Noel 127 Pollock, John, One Man, One Nation, proposed biography of Billy Grama \ 85–6 Pope Paul VI, 1970 visit to Australia 129 popular culture, Jesus Movement and 145 ‘pornographic floodgates,’ opened by relaxing of censorship laws 38 post-Christendom 173; identity and mission of Australians 18; see also end of Christendom; Jesus Movement as showing evangelicals’ understanding of place in 144 ‘post-Christian Australia’ vs. Australia as ‘post-Christian’ country 212–13 post-imperial: attempts to define nation 161; Australian ‘identity void’ vs. ‘distinctive’ identity 4; national identity 156 postwar immigration 122 postwar religious identity, Hans Mol and 51–2 pragmatic depictions of social and personal problems, vs. credal doctrine 66 pre-Constantinian Church: Jesus People as seeking to return to 149; see also Constantinian Presbyterian Church of Australia: Hans Mol and Dutch migrants 54; shift to voluntarist, minority and multicultural character 71

254

Index

Preston, Andrew, evangelical existential response to US turmoil 82 Prewer, Bruce, ‘the authentic Australian psalms will be written by our Aboriginals.’ 159 Program to Combat Racism (WCC) 175 Protestantism, as flourishing in periods of change 55 ‘Protestant Remnant,’ sharp sense of embattlement as building tight group identity 67–8 public culture, radical evangelicals rethinking of 153 Puritanism and paganism, Australia’s historic battle between 96–7 Queen Elizabeth II, visit to Australia for Cook Bicentenary (1970) 111, 132 Queensland, Frank Nicklin (Premier) 2 racial integration, and National Council of Churches (New Zealand) 55–6 ‘radical discipleship,’ Jesus Movement as 148–9 ‘Radical Discipleship at Work in Australia,’ distributed at Lausanne Congress by Gill and others 181–2 Radical Discipleship group: Athol Gill’s involvement in 183; Escobar and Padilla as allies to 183; ‘A Response to Lausanne’ 173 radical evangelicals, Christianity as never having taken root in Australia 159; Jesus Movement as 148–9 radio broadcasts, of Billy Graham’s Southern Cross Crusade (1959) 1 Ramsey, Michael (Archbishop of Canterbury), ‘secular society’ 64 ‘rapture,’ Jesus Movement’s opposition to as excuse for social disengagement 148 reappraisals of relations with other national cultures, by Australian evangelicals 209 Reid, Bishop John, as Archbishop Loane biographer 115–16 ‘re-indigenising Christianity,’ vs. ‘indigenising’ properly 159 relaxing of censorship laws, as opening ‘pornographic floodgates’ 38 relevance 51–2; of faith to practical and conceptual questions 58; see also social relevance

religion: as bulwark against dislocating pressures of modernity 9; functional approach to 70; as giving content to Australian national identity 14; as important element of assimilation 54; long-term gradual decline in social and personal significance of 9; place of in post-Christendom world 52; ‘return of’ 8–9 religion, nationalism, and 1960s, relationship among 8 religion and identity, interaction of 51 religion as ‘compartmentalised,’ vs. ‘deep unifying concern’ 67 Religion in Australia (book) [Mol] 69; as reclaiming religion as subject of serious study 63; Religion in Australia Survey (1966) 62 Religion in Australia Survey (1966) 56–63; deductions from 60–1; and postwar religious identity 51–2; as snapshot of long-standing status quo just before sudden erosion 62; see also Mol, Hans ‘religious crisis’: 1960s and 1970s as period of 8, 203; books on since 1940s 64 religious identity, crisis of 10 ‘religious studies,’ shift to from studies of ‘divinity’ 57 renewal see Jesus People; Kairos ’73 ‘Response to Lausanne’ 173, 192; Radical Discipleship group 173 ‘reverse evangelisation,’ majority-world leaders to traditional mission-sending countries 195 revival, as personal and national renewal 206 revivalist(s), image of see ‘Elmer Gantry’ image of evangelists Rienits, Rex, ‘Cook the Man and the Enigma’ (Australian series) 127 Robinson, Bishop John 65; Honest to God (book) 63 Robinson, Peter 120 Rolph, Ken 149Roman Catholicism, loss of as ‘other’ of evangelicalism 131 Roszak, Theodore, ‘counter-culture’ 144 Royal Commission on Human Relationships (1974) 204 Rudd, Kevin (former Prime Minister), ‘Americanisation of political Christianity’ 78

Index science and rationality, vs. belief in Christianity’s ‘supernatural claims’ 64 Secular Age, A (book) [Taylor], 1960s as signalling rapid collapse of powerful mentality 9 secularisation 63–4; of Europe 9–10; Mol’s attempt to challenge new orthodoxies of 64; and relation to end of empire 8; secular rationality, as undone by Romanticism of counterculture 66; secularisation studies 9; ‘secularisation thesis,’ 9; see also Mol, Hans ‘self-theologizing,’ Jesus People as 155 separation of church and state, vs. faith and state 24 Serle, Geoffrey: ‘Australica’ (hybrid Australia-America) 85; ‘decline of standard imperial rhetoric’ 127, 133 settler societies: multivalent identities in 13; and spread of British Protestantism 13 Shilton, Lance 39, 190; Australian Festival of Light (AFOL) (1973) 40–1, 40 ‘silent majority’ 39 Skinner, Quentin 16 Smart, Judith 78; 1959 crusade 88 Smith, John 145, 149; Advance Australian Where? (book) 162; God Squad 161; ‘God Squad’ Christian Motorcycle Club 142; and Radical Discipleship group 183; Truth and Liberation (newspaper) 147–8 social issues, Journal of Christian Education (1958) and the Journal of Religious History 58 social relevance: Christian intellectuals’ desire to integrate faith and scholarship as an aid to 58; see also relevance social transformation, as consequence vs. as part of gospel 190 ‘sociologist’s interpretation’ of religion in Australia, shortcomings of 64 sociology: as answer to Church’s dilemmas 64; Religion in Australia Survey as demonstration of scientific value of 57; see also Mol, Hans Sociology of English Religion, A (book) [Martin] 62

255

Southern Cross (magazine) 115, 130–1, 146; 1968–1969 crusade 84; attention to House of the New World from 146 Southern Cross Crusade (1959) 79; increase in missionary volunteers, theological college enrolments during 1; interdenominational cooperation and public religion 3; see also Billy Graham crusades in Australia, 1959 ‘stand up and be counted’ 43; as CE’s response to rise of ‘permissive society’ 17; as Nile’s rallying cry 39 Stanley, Brian: Bishop Jack Dain as recruiting and reconciling views of key evangelical leaders 176–7; postwar Anglophone evangelicalism 15; strength of missionary movement as due to Western Christian nationalism 174 Stott, John 184; Lausanne Continuation Committee 188 ‘street Christians’ and Jesus Movement 143; see also Jesus People structural injustices vs. individual immorality, as conservative evangelicals’ concern 188 Stuckey, Hugh 38 ‘sub-Christian,’ treatment of Aboriginal people and racist immigration policies as 151 Sunday school enrolments, decrease of in 1960s 3 ‘supernatural religion’ 67 Swartz, David, international evangelical left 164 Sydney, 1979 crusade 4 Taylor, Charles 12; ‘age of authenticity’ 9’; ‘age of mobilisation’ 9; ‘neoDurkheimian’ mentality of churches at centre of national public culture 66; A Secular Age (book) 9 TEAR see Evangelical Alliance Relief (TEAR) theological college enrolments, increase in during Southern Cross Crusade (1959) 1 Tillich, Paul, Hans Mol as student of 55 Toffs, Ted, criticism of Jesus Movement 148

256

Index

transnational nature: of evangelicalism 52, 102; of Jesus Movement 63 Tregenza, Ian 12 Troeltsch, Ernst, ‘Churchian’ 13 Truth and Liberation (newspaper) [Smith] 147–8 Tyrell, Ian 27–8 Uniting Church in Australia 4; see also Uniting Church United States: 1960s crisis of religious identity in 10 Uniting Church 36, 71; as distinctive Australian expression of ‘pilgrim people of God’ 160–1; Fred Nile as minister in 24 universal theory of identity: Hans Mol and 52; universal 52 urbanised, pluralist Australia, and loss of civic Protestant assumptions of familiarity 191 Us Aussies: The Fascinating History They Didn’t Tell Us at School (book) [Garvin] 162 Vietnamese refugees 103, 122–3, 189; Archbishop Loane and 120; see also Cook Bicentenary (1970) Vietnam War 103, 142, 144, 148; Australians’ indifference to 93–4; Martin Luther King Jr’s active opposition to 93; protests about during 1968–1969 crusade 93–4; see also Graham, Billy, critiques of Volke, Harvey 150, 151 Wacker, Grant 87 Walker, Alan, Billy Graham’s silence on Vietnam War 93 Walker, Frank, New South Wales Attorney-General 24 Walls, Andrew 14–15 Ward, Russel 162; Whitlam election as ‘end of the Ice Age’ 150 Weber, Max, influence of rationalism and modernisation 63–4 ‘Western Christendom,’ disintegration of 8; see also end of Christendom Western evangelical cultural hegemony, challenge to 174 Western missionaries, calls for moratorium on sending of 174

Western scholars, need of to reacquaint themselves with complexity of world religions 8–9 What in the World? (book) [Williams] 64 Where in the World? (book) [Williams] 64 Whitehouse, Mary, Australian Festival of Light (AFOL) (1973) 40–1, 40 ‘whiteness,’ as corollary to ‘Britishness’ 4; see also national identity; British race patriotism Whitlam, Gough, Prime Minister 122–4, 131, 149–53; avowed agnosticism of 150; Labor government of 42; as ‘Messiah’ 150; new Parliament seated 142–3; and progressive spirit of ‘new nationalism’ 10 Williams, Colin: What in the World? (book) 64; Where in the World? (book) 64 Williams, Graham 65; ‘Challenge to the Church’ (1968 newspaper series) 97; ‘Crisis in Christianity’ (1965 newspaper series) 97; ‘In the Steps of the Reformation’ (Australian profile of Archbishop Loane) 130 Wilson, Bruce: Can God Survive in Australia? (book) 159, 192; challenge of postwar pluralism 192 Wilson, Bryan 65; long-term gradual decline in religion’s social and personal significance 9 ‘witnessing gear’ 145; see also Jesus People Wolffe, John 14; global evangelicalism 171 World Council of Churches (WCC) 175 World Evangelical Fellowship, Bishop Jack Dain and 176 world religions, need for Western scholars to reacquaint themselves with complexity of 8–9 World’s Christian Endeavour Convention (1962) 25–6, 30–5; United Procession of Witness 35 Yoder, John Howard, The Politics of Jesus (book) 183 Zadok Institute for Christianity and Culture (1977) 145