The Ark

Australia's Anglican culture is ignored in current histories of the country, argues historian Brian Fletcher.

Transcript

This transcript was typed from a recording of the program. The ABC cannot guarantee its complete accuracy because of the possibility of mishearing and occasional difficulty in identifying speakers.

The Anglican Church's effort to make Australia an outpost of British civilization rested on Christian principles, but this is forgotten in secular histories, and Dr. Fletcher explains why.

THEME

Rachael Kohn: It's been called 'low and lazy, broad and hazy, high and crazy' - it's the Anglican Church. Hello, I'm Rachael Kohn, and this is The Ark.

Only an Anglican could come up with that way of describing the highly diverse church. But historian Brian Fletcher points out that Anglicanism's historic association with British parliamentary democracy is one of its greatest contributions to Australia. Yet current histories have overlooked Anglicanism's role in building the nation.

Brian Fletcher: I think by and large, mainstream historical writing in Australia does tend to marginalise the religious dimension, except when it's dealing with the Irish, and that's a special case, because of the Roman Catholic links with the Irish community.

Rachael Kohn: In the early part of European settlement, did the Anglican churchmen articulate some notion of nationhood?

Brian Fletcher: Well in the very early stages, in the 19th century when Australia was divided up into a number of colonies, I don't think they spoke very much about nationhood, but I think they were conscious of having come from a church that had itself helped to forge a nation. And I think this was quite important in terms of their outlook. Not really until nationalism begins to emerge as a strong force later in the 19th century, that they begin to address this.

Rachael Kohn: And do they express nationhood as a Christian concept? Is it based on Christian principles?

Brian Fletcher: Oh yes, the Anglican concept of nationhood was based very firmly on Christian principles. The Anglican church leaders were very much in favour of Federation, and once the National State was formed, they saw it as part of their duty and responsibility to make sure it followed a Christian direction.

Really, until after the Second World War, Australia did see itself as a Christian nation, and I think this worked very much in favour of Anglicanism, as indeed did the fact that the Anglican links with the Establishment were quite strong.

Rachael Kohn: How did the Anglican church attempt to influence Australian society? It didn't have that Establishment status that the church had in England, so how did it attempt to influence society?

Brian Fletcher: You're right, yes, it wasn't established, and that meant it didn't have the kind of influence that it was able to exert, but on the other hand it was linked to the Establishment. Many of the leading figures in the community were Anglican.

Rachael Kohn: Who were some of the important Anglicans in Australian society?

Brian Fletcher: Well if you look at the composition of Anglican Synods, you find that there are leading members of the judiciary, a range of political figures, in the countryside the Synods are often dominated by pioneer families, leading sectors, and so on. And that really seems to run right across the board.

Rachael Kohn: And in fact the proceedings of the Anglican Synods were widely reported in the Australian press.

Brian Fletcher: Well this is one of the really interesting things.

The secular press throughout Australia up until around the Second World War, reported very fully on development within all the churches. On Monday you would have reports in the Sydney press of sermons that were preached say at St James, or in the Cathedral, and the movements within the clergy, which parishes they were appointed to and where they were going, but when Synod meetings were held, it was really extraordinarily interesting, that very full reports of the Synod meetings, detailed accounts of the debates, were regularly reported in the metropolitan press throughout Australia and the fact that General Synod met in Sydney, meant that General Synod proceedings were reported here, also very fully indeed.

Rachael Kohn: I find it quite interesting that the Anglicans were quite accepting of State schools. Why was that?

Brian Fletcher: Originally the Anglican church monopolised the educational field. But progressively, it lost its influence, partly because of the growth of secular influences, partly because with the expansion of population it really didn't have the resources to keep going. On top of that, there was a belief that by bringing together people of all faiths within the same schools, you would inhibit sectarianism and create a fuller sense of nationhood.

Now the bishops were opposed to the idea of this, and so were numbers of the clergy, because they believed that education without religion really wasn't education at all. The laity tended to take a rather different view. Eventually the hierarchy of the church did eventually come round to accept it, provided religious teaching was incorporated within the school curriculum, and that there was an opportunity for clergy to have access to Anglican children.

Rachael Kohn: Is it possible that the idea of a secular school with a diversity of religious backgrounds and a kind of egalitarianism obviously, is actually central to an Anglican outlook?

Brian Fletcher: Well it became central, yes. I mean originally the Anglican church brought with it the sort of beliefs that existed in England, where of course there was a much more structured class-based society. But I think one of the interesting things about Anglicanism is the way in which it adjusted to the much more open, more democratic society that came into being in Australia.

Rachael Kohn: Is that in any way an expression of Christian principles?

Brian Fletcher: Well yes, very much so. Bishop Batty, the Bishop of Newcastle, argued that the Anglican faith was in fact built around the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man, and that democracy stemmed from Christian teachings, rather than from the Greek City States. So that democracy did have a religious basis.

Rachael Kohn: Well in contrast in the 20th century, the world saw the rise of totalitarian regimes, hardly democratic. Did Anglican clergymen denounce them?

Brian Fletcher: Yes, they did. They came out very strongly indeed against totalitarianism, which in their view, exhorted the State at the expense of the individual. Of course in the case of Communism, denied the existence of God.

Rachael Kohn: One of the other features of course of Australian society was the White Australian Policy, and that was an attempt obviously to maintain ties to British culture. Did that put Anglican clergymen in a moral quandary?

Brian Fletcher: Not really. There were of course exceptions as there always are in Anglicanism. But the Anglican church by and large took the view that each nation had the right to determine the composition of its own population, and that if the community wanted Australia to be white, then that was acceptable as far as the church was concerned provided it didn't carry with it any connotations of racial superiority, and provided the open lands of Australia were filled by white people and weren't left vacant in a period when surrounding regions were starving and others were anxious to come in.

So there was a moral element in the Anglican view of the White Australia Policy, although of course that was all to change in the 1960s.

Rachael Kohn: Some Anglican clergymen however did come out in opposition to it.

Brian Fletcher: Oh yes, there was some opposition when the Federal government introduced the Immigration Act in 1901, and there was particular concern at the fact that the Kanakas were to be sent back home, and there was very strong objection to that. And some individual bishops, like Bishop Gilbert White, for example, of Carpentaria, he was one of those who did criticise the White Australia Policy.

Rachael Kohn: Was the Anglican attitude to Aborigines any different from the Roman Catholic attitude to them?

Brian Fletcher: No, I think by and large, again it's changed now, but I think by and large the Anglican church took much the same view as the community, but it did believe in the necessity to assimilate the Aboriginal people and of course it was very anxious to Christianise them as well.

I think it is quite important to remember that two Anglican clergy, Dr Capell or Sydney University, and Professor Elkin, who was the first Professor of Anthropology, both Anglican priests, they did an enormous amount to help people better understand the nature of Aboriginal society. They're not only published, but they also published quite a lot in church newspapers.

Rachael Kohn: Well Anglicans clearly played an important role in the formation of Australia. Where do you think Anglicans failed to influence Australian society?

Brian Fletcher: What the Anglican church really did was to very strongly support the British heritage, and out of that heritage I think emerged some of the core values, which have helped to shape society today: a belief in democratic institutions, in the rights of the individual, in social justice and so on, and I think those values have remained permanent.

Probably where the Anglican church had least impact was on the workers, the working class. It did include within its ranks large numbers of, for better or worse, working class people, particularly the upward mobile, but there were two things against it so far as the workers were concerned. First, that a large proportion of the workers were Irish and therefore Roman Catholic, and second, that the Anglican church perhaps didn't really find an answer to socialism, and it was perhaps identified in the minds of workers too much with a middle-class ethos.

Rachael Kohn: Well there's an irony in the history of the Anglican church, on that it was so important in the formation of the country, but later on in the latter half of the 20th century, it searched for ways to become more Australian. How did it do that?

Brian Fletcher: Well first of all, in 1962, the Anglican church after nearly six decades of struggle, within itself, acquired a constitution which made it legally independent of the church in England, and therefore free to change itself.

The first way in which it changed was to alter its prayer book, and to introduce a new prayer book which arose from long and detailed and very fruitful discussion within the church as a whole, including the laity, and that prayer book had quite a strong Australian flavour. Not as much as many people would have liked, and further revision went on and in the early 1990s, a much more Australian and a much more inclusive prayer book was brought into being. And the same thing happened with hymns, with the hymnal, as well.

And of course its name, I mean it changed its name from the Church of England to the Anglican Church in Australia, which was again, only achieved after quite a lengthy struggle.

Rachael Kohn: How important do you think Anglicanism is today in the concept of nationhood?

Brian Fletcher: Well undoubtedly, Anglicanism has lost a lot of ground in terms of its membership.

I think it no longer exerts the kind of influence within the Establishment that it once did, and of course it now finds itself in a multicultural society where all faiths, Christian and otherwise, are placed on the same footing. And so it simply isn't able to exercise the kind of mission that it believed was its by divine instruction in the earlier part of the century. But nevertheless, I think its voice is still heard.

It has itself become, it's espoused multiculturalism, it's inclusive in the sense that it's included the Aboriginal community within its ranks in ways that weren't true earlier, and of course it's ordained women priests as well. So it still is in a position through the whole change of its focus and direction to exert an influence, but not perhaps the influence that it hoped to have earlier on in the piece.

Rachael Kohn: Is the more aggressive wing of the Anglican church, the evangelical church, in Sydney for example, more likely to exert that influence?

Brian Fletcher: Well it certainly is the case that in Sydney, evangelicalism is having a strong influence. It's confrontational and I think it's standing up to society in a very strong and a very forceful way. And it has had great success with youth, with bringing young people in. I think the question is, whether a rather simplistic approach holds with people as they grow older. So I think you could say that it is having an impact.

Time will tell whether that has a long-term effect. But you should not also overlook what's going on in other parts of Australia as well, where very strong moves by non-evangelicals are also being made to maintain and strengthen the position of the church.

Rachael Kohn: Professor Emeritus Brian Fletcher has written Anglicanism and Nation Building in Australia, a forthcoming publication.

Next week, the Catholic priest who funded Alcoholics Anonymous and Boys Town in Australia. That's The Ark, with me, Rachael Kohn.

Guests

Emeritus Professor Brian Fletcher
was appointed the foundation Bicentennial Professor of History at the University of Sydney in 1987. He held that position until his retirement in 1999. He has published widely in the field of Australian history and his books include Colonial Australia before 1950, and Landed Enterprise and Penal Society: a History of Farming and Grazing in New South Wales before 1821. Since 2000 Brian has chaired the Board of Trustees of the Journal of Anglican Studies.

Further Information

Australian Anglicanism and Australian History: the need for synthesis
Professor Fletcher's ideas can be found set out in the Kenneth Cable Inaugural Lecture, Occasional Paper No. 3, 2004, delivered at St James' Church, Sydney on the 10th September 2004, under the auspices of the Australian College of Theology.
http://www.act.org.au