The Ark

From Scotland, Ireland, England and Germany, Baptists arrived in Moreton Bay in the mid 19th Century as part of a settlement scheme to ensure the colony would be sufficiently Protestant.

Transcript

Rachael Kohn: The origins of Brisbane were not auspicious, but Christians arrived with high hopes, among them the Baptists.

Hello, I'm Rachael Kohn and this is The Ark on ABC Radio National.

Just recently the Baptist Church celebrated 150 years in Queensland, and the Reverend Dr David Parker will join me in a moment to tell its story. It all started on December 1st 1823 when the Surveyor-General John Oxley chose Red Cliff Point on the Brisbane River as the site of a new penal colony. Then in 1824, the settlement at Humpybong moved to Moreton Bay, what's now known as Brisbane. Soon Baptists from England started to arrive.

David Parker: Well the first one that we know of was James Swan, who came to work on the newspaper which is now the Brisbane Courier Mail, and he came up here a few years before 1855. But then in 1849 there was a big bunch of English Baptists came with John Dunmore Lang's immigration scheme. During that year there were three vessels arrived in Brisbane and there were quite a bunch of Baptists on there. After a few years, there was quite a migration of people from Sydney, and one can only assume that they probably saw the development of Moreton Bay as a business opportunity. Most of them were businessmen rather than, say agriculturalists or anything of that kind.

Rachael Kohn: Well one of the Baptists who came from Sydney was James Voller. Now he's been accorded the title The Father of Baptists in Brisbane. How did he earn that title, given he wasn't the first minister to arrive?

David Parker: Well the first minister who did arrive in 1855 when the Baptist Church first started as a separate institution, was a bit of a failure actually. And there had been high hopes that the church would get going very strongly at that point after a period of the United Evangelical church, which by the way was led by a Baptist minister, Charles Stewart. So when the first minister left town in disgrace, James Voller, who was at that time the minister of the Central Church in Sydney, came to Brisbane to give them advice, and spent a few weeks here, and he encouraged them strongly to continue on.

So he got the title for that reason, because without his encouragement and guidance, they probably would have folded up. And he returned on more than one occasion, until at last he moved up here permanently. But the most important thing was that he invited the leaders to consider applying to the Baptist Missionary Society in England to appoint a minister and so they did. And this was Benjamin Gilmore Wilson who was here for almost 20 years before he died, and he really put the place on the map. Wilson and Voller became firm friends, and so Voller's work was very considerable just for that one reason alone.

Rachael Kohn: Well I gather that John Dunmore Lang was very interested in building up the Protestant population, so he invited German Baptists. How did their style of ministry differ from the English Baptists?

David Parker: Well actually the German population that became the German Baptists was a little separate from Lang. Lang was connected with an earlier movement of Germans, that is, they actually came to Nundah or German station in 1838. This was before Moreton Bay became a free settlement. So these were a group of German Lutherans or Independents, who set out to evangelise the Aboriginal population.

But later on, there was a whole influx of German migrants in the 1860s. Some of the earliest of these were associated with the Baptist church, Wharf Street Baptist Church in Brisbane, but then more particularly, later on, in the rural areas out beyond Ipswich, in what we call the West Moreton. But they kept their identity in many ways, they were a much stricter group and of course the cultural and linguistic features were something to keep them apart. They seemed to use the German language in services up until the First World War, and of course during the First World War, some of them were actually under pressure, some were even interned because of their nationality.

Rachael Kohn: Well people wandering around a little time before that, probably in the late 19th century in Brisbane would have seen the City Tabernacle Baptist Church. Now that was a pretty grand building, and it could seat I think up to almost 1,000. So were the Baptists pretty confident in their missionary zeal?

David Parker: Well I think they were at that stage. Of course what was originally the Wharf Street church relocated and they rebuild and so it changed its name and became what they call 'the Tab', the Tabernacle, and it still has that name and it's still in the same location. But it was by far the largest church and has been up until fairly recent times, much larger than all of the others.

So it was a church that was led by very competent pastors usually, and also by a team of very progressive businessmen who obviously rode on the success of Brisbane as a developing and growing city at the time. Of course the other denominations in town were building good sized buildings as well. But for the Baptists, who were a smallish group in comparison say with the Presbyterians or Methodists or Anglicans, this was really of cathedral proportions.

Rachael Kohn: Well David, in your book, Pressing on with the Gospel, you write about the tension between what became the modernists and the fundamentalists amongst the Baptists. Now those are theological categories; how did the Baptists in Queensland resolve their differences?

David Parker: Those terms are a bit relative for Queensland and for Queensland Baptists.

I guess what we're talking about are fairly conservative Baptists and then not-so-conservative Baptists, rather than liberal or modernist. But there were the odd ones who were a little more liberal than the others. But they tended to move away. Some others moved away over ecclesiastical grounds. For example, the independence and the freedom of Baptist churches didn't suit some, so you find a trickle of people say ministers particularly, going into the Presbyterian church. But basically Queensland Baptists have been pretty conservative, and you might say that the theological differences really haven't been resolved, but people have gone their own separate ways. Queensland has been known to be quite conservative in other respects as well as theological.

Rachael Kohn: Well being Baptist in that frontier setting which was a penal colony, would have been pretty difficult. I mean the Baptists advocated temperance. What were the sort of challenges of mission on the home front?

David Parker: Well I think Baptists were, along with the many of the other Protestant groups at the time, socially and morally conservative. But I suppose the biggest challenges to mission on the home front would be the sheer distance.

Queensland Baptists were relatively successful around the south-east corner, and in a few spots along the coast, but it wasn't until after the Second World War that they were really able to penetrate into the far north and into the centre at all. Money was always a problem; it was a smallish group. Funding for church planting and so on was always difficult. The training of ministers was slow and for a long time they had to depend on overseas or else untrained people. And some of the leaders were outstanding, but otherwise, in more remote areas, people were really very dependent upon the pastor who came, or perhaps the schoolteacher or something like this.

Rachael Kohn: Well the big event then would have been the visit by Billy Graham, the Billy Graham Crusade in 1959. Was that a turning point for the Baptist church?

David Parker: Well I think you could probably say it was, because the number of admissions to membership by conversion were much higher in the wake of the '59 Crusade than they'd been before, and at the same time there were other movements beginning. For example, the All Aid Sunday School had just been introduced into Australia at that time, and it became a real growth area for Queensland Baptists. They took the idea very strongly, and for quite a number of years many churches had All Aid Sunday Schools which were seen as evangelistic in their purpose. There would be visiting preachers, there'd be an exchange of preachers for example, between other States or with New Zealand, or particularly with some of the American States. So during that time, there was certainly a huge boost, and there was a great increase in the number of church plantings going on.

Rachael Kohn: Well then, Pentecostalism must have come in as a prairie fire, as they say. Was it a thorny issue for the Baptists?

David Parker: Well it was in some respects. Baptists have always had a strong interest in the work and ministry and teaching of the Holy Spirit. So it wasn't as if they were unfamiliar with the concepts of the ministry of the holy spirit. But the extreme forms of Pentecostalism that had flourished in Queensland particularly in earlier years, were a bit of a no-no for Queensland Baptists, and there was a bit of fire over that sort of thing. They took the idea that there had to be a work of the holy spirit in the lives of people and in the life of the church as a positive thing, and gradually this transformed itself, possibly more you could say, into the neo-Pentecostal movement or the Charismatic movement.

Rachael Kohn: Right. So your remarks would apply then to the 1980s Charismatic Renewal?

David Parker: Queensland Baptists at first were very suspicious of this whole thing. But after a while, wise leadership and good training meant that they were able to understand that this was a movement of God with extremes set on one side. There was a genuine ministry of the Holy Spirit to be looked for, It opened up particularly the idea that every member, every person in the church, had a valid ministry and were able to participate very strongly in the life of the church, and particularly in its worship. And so it removed the rigidity and the formalism that had crept in previously, I think to all Protestant churches probably. It caused a shake-up I suppose you'd say, to the worship and the life of the church, which then meant that later on, there were other movements such as the church growth movement, and the development towards contemporary worship and the mega-church movement. This was all able to take place fairly smoothly because there'd been this big shake-up earlier.

Rachael Kohn: Well speaking of growth, what are the numbers of Baptists in Queensland?

David Parker: We talk in terms of about 27,000 people involved in the life of the church, and about 170 churches of various categories. The actual membership, which is important to Baptists, would be about 13,000 or 14,000. But to be a member of course, it signifies that a person has become converted, has been baptised, and has applied to the church to become a member. These days there is a great deal of fluidity of course, and not everybody is interested in going to the point of becoming a member of a church. So that's why the figure of maybe 27,000 or more thousand is the number given for those who participate in the life of the church.

Rachael Kohn: David, can I ask you about the Baptist logo. Now logo is a kind of odd thing to associate with the church, but the Baptist church has one. When was it devised?

David Parker: I think it was devised in probably the 1980s. Actually it was not a Queensland invention, we pinched it from Victoria and then it came through the Baptist Union of Australia and was adopted universally across the country as a form of identification. Other churches have got logos of course, we're not the only ones.

Rachael Kohn: Can you just describe it?

David Parker: Yes, the Baptist logo has a yellow circle for the world, then it has a green open Bible, signifying the authority of God's word, and then superimposed upon those is a cross, which of course focuses on the message of the Gospel which we proclaim.

Rachael Kohn: Well it's very handy to have the Bible as green in these days of environmental awareness.

David Parker: Well it is, yes.

Rachael Kohn: One of the key themes in the history of Baptists in Queensland is that they're ultimately pretty adaptable. They went from being quite conservative to quite innovative, and I was surprised to read that they've even evolved their own banking system, called Bilpin.

David Parker: Yes, well, that was another thing that we borrowed from someone else, the Anglicans and the Uniting church were probably the inspiration for that here in Queensland. Yes, Baptists have been quite adaptable, but I'd like to think of it in terms of commitment to the mission. The name of our book was Pressing on with the Gospel. The forms and the outward nature of the church is simply a shell that is there to facilitate that mission. So you can change many of the outward forms in order to make the message of the Gospel relevant and persuasive to people in the community. So I guess that's what happened over the years, and we've been blessed with some far-seeing people who have kept up-to-date with possibilities and trends in other parts of the world, and introduced them here into Queensland.

Rachael Kohn: In Brisbane, the Reverend Dr David Parker. He's the editor of Pressing on with the Gospel published by the Baptist Historical Society of Queensland.

Next week, don't miss the story of a remarkable woman - beautiful, educated, social reformer and mystic, Anna Kingsford of Sussex. That's on The Ark with me, Rachael Kohn.

Guests

Rev Dr David Parker
is a consultant theologian,and honorary Archivist for the Baptist Union of Queensland. He is a member of the Baptist World Alliance Heritage & Identity Commission, and the World Evangelical Alliance Theological Commission. He has written and edited many historical and other publications.

Further Information

Baptist Heritage - Queensland

Publications

Title: Pressing on with the Gospel: The Story of Baptists in Queensland 1855-2005
Author: David Parker ed. & Les Ball and Stan Nickerson
Publisher: Baptist Historical Society of Queensland

Presenter

Rachael Kohn

Producer

Geoff Wood and Rachael Kohn