Finding a Home in the Uniting Church
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Finding a Home in the Uniting Church The Proceedings of the Second Uniting Church National History Conference June 7–10 2019 The Centre for Theology and Ministry Parkville Victoria Uniting Church National History Society Published by: Uniting Church National History Society PO Box 5064 Hoppers Crossing, Victoria 3029 Edited by: Robert W. Renton Printed and bound by: Corporate Printers 141–143 Moray Street, South Melbourne, Victoria3205 First edition February 2020 National Library of Australia Catalogue in Publication Editor: Renton, Robert, 1946— Uniting Church National History Society Finding a Home in the Uniting Church ISBN 978-0-9807168-6-3 ©2020 Uniting Church National History Society This publication is copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private study, research, criticism or review as permitted under the Copyright Act, no part may be reproduced by any process or placed in computer memory without written permission. Enquiries should be made to the publisher. - 1 - Contents Contents ....................................................................................................... 2 Introduction ................................................................................................. 4 John Westerman: a new beginning or the beginning of the end? ............... 7 Tasmanian treasures: three holy tables in the Scots tradition ................... 18 The Methodist Sunday School Movement ................................................. 33 The Forgotten Women ............................................................................... 46 A Home in the Uniting Church? .................................................................. 57 The Ministry of Lay Preacher ..................................................................... 81 Serena Thorne Lake .................................................................................. 115 Religious History for a Secular Age ........................................................... 123 Continuing Influence of Denominational Legacies in South Australia ..... 152 Rev. James W Crisp: Convict’s son to venerable patriarch of the Methodist Church ...................................................................................................... 175 The Uniting Church and Christian Unity ................................................... 187 Stories of Lost and Found: Finding a home in Australian children’s religious fiction ....................................................................................................... 200 'Learning and living the faith’ - a South Australian story of lay education and lay ministry training ........................................................................... 215 Who was Harvey Perkins and why was he important? ............................ 232 ‘Seeing the clouds through the aperture of the helmet’: reading Ned Kelly’s life as a Christian life ................................................................................ 256 After the bombing of Darwin… what? Peace and reconciliation find a home in Darwin Uniting Church ......................................................................... 272 Significant local church anniversaries as pastoral care and evangelism: the endurance of St Paul’s Uniting Church, Mackay, over 150 years from 1872 to 2022 ..................................................................................................... 285 2 Finding a (new) home in the Uniting Church ........................................... 295 “Instructions for knitting pattern for an octopus”: a view of changes and challenges experienced by Uniting World since 1977 .............................. 311 Managing the news? Two editors, Warren Clarnette and Bruce Best ..... 322 Theophilus Taylor and the beginnings of Methodism in Ballaarat ........... 332 Notes on contributors .............................................................................. 344 3 Introduction Glen O’Brien President, Uniting Church National History Society What does it mean to belong to the Uniting Church? Many grew up Congregationalist, Methodist or Presbyterian; others have grown up in the Uniting Church after 1977 without knowing the precedent bodies. Some have only ever known the Uniting Church as their spiritual home and others have transferred in from other denominations. What gifts have they brought into the Uniting Church and what gifts have they received? What does it mean to ‘find a home’ in a church that describes itself as ‘Evangelical and Reformed’ and is at the same time committed to theological diversity? These were some of the questions explored during the Second Uniting Church National History Conference, held at the Centre for Theology and Ministry in Melbourne from 7–10 June 2019. Participants were treated to three keynote address by outstanding historians and a range of interesting elective papers. Dr Meredith Lake, the host of ABC Radio National’s “Soul Search” programme, Honorary Associate of the Department of History, Sydney University, and author of the award-winning book, The Bible in Australia: A Cultural History (Sydney: NewSouth, 2018) got us off to a great start with her fascinating discussion of the role the Bible has played in Australia’s history. Dr Lake showed that for a secular country, the language of the Bible has made remarkable inroads into the national psyche. In the second keynote address ‘Intimate Enemies?: Missions, governments and Aboriginal People in Australia, 1850–1970,’ 4 Dr Joanna Cruickshank, Senior Lecturer in History at Deakin University, discussed how and why the unusually intimate relationship between missions and governments developed and what it meant for Aboriginal people. The third and final keynote was delivered as a public lecture by Professor graeme Davison, Emeritus Sir John Monash Distinguished Professor of History at Monash University. Professor Davison asked what the point was of writing religious history in an age when the ‘conditions of belief’ have radically changed. In a post-Christian era, what might a history of Australian religion look like when written from the margins, rather than from the inside? Unfortunately, it has only been possible to publish the last of these keynotes in this present volume but each in their own way offered masterful explorations that raised broad issues of Australian religious history, under the generous canopy of which our more UCA- specific papers comfortably sat. The papers collected here show a rich diversity of experiences of finding a home in the Uniting Church. There are Congregationalist stories, Methodist stories, and Presbyterian stories. Wowsers and radicals, lay preachers, editors, evangelists, revivalists, ecumenists, pacifists, novelists, Korean Christians, Japanese Christians, women, children, and men, queer people and straight people have all been part of the same family, and have sat together around Communion tables and in Sunday School classes. Tasmanians, South Australians, Victorians, Northern Territorians, Queenslanders, and Uniting World partners from Asia and the Pacific demonstrate a genuinely national and international scope. ‘Switchers’ that have enriched the UCA have included Anglicans, Baptists, Catholics and just plain ‘Christians.’ To borrow from Margaret Reeson, the human ecology of the UCA looks a little like ‘a 5 knitting pattern for an octopus’! As in every home there is tension and disagreement, and these are not hidden from view here. Taken together, this collection of papers demonstrate that the history and heritage of the Uniting Church in Australia continue to engage and provoke serious thought. It is a collection that looks back with keen insight but also demonstrates hope for the future of the People of God on the way. 6 John Westerman: a new beginning or the beginning of the end? Ken Barelli Synopsis John Westerman was likely the most controversial figure in the last decades of the Methodist Church in Australia. Almost single-handedly, he attempted a makeover of Methodism’s wowser image and tried to align its social policies more with his perception of community concerns. A commitment to social action was always a key element of Methodism. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries this manifested itself in campaigns against alcohol and gambling among many others. Westerman, in the 1960s, thought it was time to leave these social issues behind and, as there is no record of any commitment to retain Methodism’s social activism during the discussions for the formation of the UCA, perhaps he was right. Instead, he actively gave priority to international aid and support for the peace movements. Westerman caused deep divisions among Methodists and exemplified the disconnection between the Church’s leaders and its members. In this paper I will interrogate these two contrasting opinions of Westerman to ask if he was at the leading edge of a new direction for the Church or was he just pulling the rug from under Methodism’s long tradition of concern for social policy outcomes? The Victorian Rev. John Westerman was a controversial figure in the Methodist Church in the last few decades of its 7 existence in Australia. To some, he was the harbinger of a progressive church but, to others, careless, if not reckless, in his oversight of the Methodist tradition of social action. These two near contemporary descriptions highlight the difficulty in assessing his contribution: “John Westerman was conspicuous in his demonstration of intellectual and moral integrity, a rare occurrence