DOCSLIB.ORG

Secular Failure—A History from Two Australian States

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Secular Failure—A History from Two Australian States CHAPTER EIGHT SECULAR FAILURE—A HISTORY FROM TWO AUSTRALIAN STATES Australian difficulties with religion in public education have been present since its first school halls were built. Current controversies echo similar, and as yet, unresolved disputes from colonial times—about the meaning of the secular principle and the power of some Christian churches. Prolonged, ambiguous applications of the principle continue to create confusion and division today, but these debates have been part of Australian political life since British settlement. Australia’s two earliest settled and now most pop- ulated states, New South Wales and Victoria, undermined the secular prin- ciple. New South Wales did so through ambiguous interpretations of legislation and Victoria did so by granting local exceptions to legislation. This chapter compares the politically pragmatic approach of Henry Parkes’s faux secularism in New South Wales, with the more inclusive view taken by George Higinbotham in Victoria.1 The next chapter looks at the erosion of secular intent in the state of Queensland. A Radical Idea Meets Anglican Dominance In many nations, the nineteenth century radically transformed education from a church function to a state duty. During the 1800s, Australian legisla- tors debated the foundations of education for their new society. Decades of acrimonious argument, and sustained (but failed) attempts to create a workable denominational system led the colonies to explore more radical options. To minimise religious division, Australia’s proposal was for public education to be ‘free, compulsory and secular.’ New South Wales legislated for these then politically progressive principles in the Public Instruction Act 1880, following Victoria in 1872 (and Queensland and South Australia in 1875). But no state defined the term ‘secular’ and each interpreted it differ- ently, at a time of Anglican privilege in all areas of Australian society. 1 The chapter contains excerpts from: Cathy Byrne, “Free, Compulsory and (Not) Secular: the Failed Idea in Australian Education,” Journal of Religious History 37, no.1, (2012): 20–38. <UN> 188 chapter eight As the colonies were being established, education issues were often raised alongside property entitlement discussions. It was well understood that “the proximity of a good school always enhances the value of land,”2 and the English lords were clear about who would be granted privilege. In 1826, King George IV issued an imperial charter which deeded one-seventh of the colony’s ‘crown’ land (land taken by the crown without recognition of Indigenous ownership), and associated revenue to the Australian Church and Schools Corporation, for “maintenance and support of the clergy of the established Church of England … [its] schools and school masters.”3 This valuable land included thousands of acres around Botany Bay in new South Wales (and a small coal mine in greater Sydney) making the Corporation “the third largest landowner in the Colony.”4 Land legislation became “con- fused and tangled by the education question.”5 In addition, growing Catholic populations increased the focus on education’s “problem of dog- matic content.”6 In 1830, private funding was solicited for a non-denominational school “for all parties, of whatever religious persuasion.” The Sydney Gazette objected to the proposed school’s lack of religious instruction. It argued that “Christianity was the sole foundation of human happiness and [that] … Presbyterian and dissenting [Protestant] schools were indeed to be tolerated, but the official aim was to establish a public school system … which would be exclusively Anglican.”7 In response, the newly arrived Anglican leader, Bishop Broughton, proposed the Kings School, in which “the masters … were to be clergy and … the whole atmosphere … was to be pervaded … by the teachings of the Church of England.”8 Anglican dominance was challenged in New South Wales by Governor Bourke, who feared “the blighting influence of intolerance.”9 Bourke argued that reforms in religion education were essential for a progressive commu- nity and pushed for equal endowments for “the three grande Divisions of 2 J. Rutledge. The Empire, September 11, 1855, 2. 3 Sydney Morning Herald, July 11, 1863, 7. 4 Meredith Lake, “Provincialising God: Anglicanism, Place, and the Colonisation of Australian Land,” Journal of Religious History 35, no. 1, (2011): 79. 5 Gwyneth Dow, “Political Factions and Education in Victoria, 1857–8,” Journal of Religious History 6 (1971): 250. 6 Donald W.A. Baker, “John Dunmore Lang and the Sydney College: Religion and Education in New South Wales,” Journal of Religious History 2, (1963): 219–33. 7 Sydney Gazette, 16, and 19 January, 1830, 2. 8 Baker, (1963), 228. 9 Roger Therry, Reminisces of 30 Years Residence in NSW and Victoria (London, 1863), 157, in Gregory, (1973), 16. <UN>.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Acta Theologica 2005: 1 RESENSIES/REVIEWS Trouble in the Colonies Review of Melbourne University Press 1998
    Acta Theologica 2005: 1 RESENSIES/REVIEWS Trouble in the Colonies Review of D.W.A. BAKER, PREACHER, POLITICIAN, PATRIOT: A LIFE OF JOHN DUNMORE LANG Melbourne University Press 1998; ISBN 0 522 84822 2. Some people write biographies of great men they admire for their par- ticular virtues or achievements. Mr. Don Baker has a refreshing ap- proach. He wrote a biography on the life of John Dunmore Lang not because he liked him, but because he did not. The preface introduces the reader to the kind of person he is: “A man to whom truth and falsehood come alike as he can best adapt them to his unmanly pur- poses.” The author uses this quote from one of Lang’s opponents at the time to characterise the subject of his biography. Preacher, Politician and Patriot is a shortened version of the original biography Days of Wrath, published by the Melbourne University Press in 1985. At that time Mr. Baker was still reading history at the Australian National University. Politically correct? The author shows a keen interest in the Aborigines of Australia not only in this book, but also in The civilised surveyor: Thomas Mitchell and the Australian Aborigines (Melbourne, 1997). The epilogue of Preacher, Politician and Patriot reveals a similar link. For this purpose it even extends the Lang-biography to the description of the son of his sis- ter’s offspring, and a subsequent marriage of a far cousin to a lady from the Ngalia tribe ninety years after Dunmore’s death, followed by the birth of three children of mixed descent, in particular.
    [Show full text]
  • Pietism in Religious Practice, Congregationalism in Ecclesiastical Polity
    RELIGIOUS CULTURE OF QUEENSLAND ________________________________________________________________________ THE RELIGIOUS CULTURE OF QUEENSLAND: PIETISM IN RELIGIOUS PRACTICE, CONGREGATIONALISM IN ECCLESIASTICAL POLITY John Harrison School of Journalism & Communication The University of Queensland Abstract Publication of Rae Wear’s biography of Queensland Premier Johannes Bjelke-Petersen, The Lord’s Premier (St Lucia: University of Queensland Press, 2002) has renewed interest in the influence of religion on Bjelke-Petersen’s political philosophy and public policy. This article probes the religious culture of Queensland in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It examines the origins of the religious culture in Queensland, examines long-asserted views about the influence of sectarianism and fundamentalism, and argues that an over-aching ‘pietism’ in religious practice, and ‘congregationalism’ in ecclesiastical polity have been the key characteristics of the religious culture of Queensland since the beginning of free settlement. I. Writing about the character of Australia religion, Richard Campbell inferred that Queensland's religious culture, as an extension of a Melbourne-Sydney axis, is ‘sectarian-fundamentalist’: Religious life in Melbourne has always been more urbane, more ecumenical, more catholic in its social vision, more Tory in its conservatism, whereas Sydney has been more assertive, more sectarian-fundamentalist in my special sense, a tendency which become stronger the further north one goes.[1] The ‘special sense’ in which
    [Show full text]
  • The University of Sydney
    THE UNIVERSITY OF SYDNEY Copyright and use of this thesis This thesis must be used in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright Act 1968. Reproduction of material protected by copyright may be an infringement of copyright and copyright owners may be entitled to take legal action against persons who infringe their copyright. Section 51 (2) of the Copyright Act permits an authorized officer of a university library or archives to provide a copy (by communication or otherwise) of an unpublished thesis kept in the library or archives, to a person who satisfies the authorized officer that he or she requires the reproduction for the purposes of research or study. The Copyright Act grants the creator of a work a number of moral rights, specifically the right of attribution, the right against false attribution and the right of integrity. You may infringe the author’s moral rights if you: - fail to acknowledge the author of this thesis if you quote sections from the work - attribute this thesis to another author -subject this thesis to derogatory treatment which may prejudice the author’s reputation For further information contact the University’s Copyright Service. sydney.edu.au/copyright "THE CONTRIBUTION OF DR JOHN DUNMORE LANG TOWARDS EDUCATION IN NEW SOUTH WALES« 1825-1878 By Kenneth J,Harman# Submitted to the Education Department, Sydney University, as a partial requirement for the degree of Master of Education. January,1961. w aw nidii JOHN DUNMORE LANG M.A..D.D.--- (From an engraving by H.S.Sadd in the Mitchell Library.) -Contents- A. Introduction, (i) The Man John Dunmore Lang - early background; brief summary of his social and political work* (ii) His interest in education - the low moral tone of the colony* B*PART 1 - THE AUSTRALIAN COLLEGE.
    [Show full text]
  • Church and Parish Registers 0002
    JOINT COPY PROJECT Society of Australian Genealogists – Sydney National Library of Australia - Canberra Mitchell Library – Sydney CHURCH AND PARISH REGISTERS 0135 The UNITING CHURCH in AUSTRALIA The PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH of AUSTRALIA in NSW Item Detail Frame (Continued from Reels 0128-0134) NOTE: This series continues the microfilming of church records of the Uniting Church and the Presbyterian Church as permitted by the Registry of Births, Deaths and Marriages and the Archives Authority of NSW. Previous reels are at SAG 0101 to 0106. Ministers of the Wesleyan and Methodist Circuits are not named here, except in a few instances. With the Methodist Church records, those of the 19th century are entitled, as applicable, Wesleyan Methodist Church or Primitive Methodist Church; after the Act of Union, 1902, they are entitled the Methodist Church in Australasia. These now form part of the records of the Uniting Church in Australia. PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH NOTE: In this microfilming project, certain Presbyterian records were not permitted to be copied. These are registers of baptisms and marriages, including Scots Church, St Andrew’s Scots Church, St Stephen’s Church, all of Sydney; early country parishes. The Indexes to certain Presbyterian baptisms and marriages have been filmed. It is hoped that the above registers will be available later, on microfilm. PHILLIP STREET, SYDNEY UNITED PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH 1 Baptisms Revd. H Darling 5- 24 October 1858 – 30 January 1859 Baptisms Revd. Adam Thomson 28 April 1861 – 26 May 1861 -15 22 January 1865 – 8 November 1869 2 March 1870 – 27 August 1871 Baptism No. 70/3552 “Maggie Ferrier, daughter of Robert and Janet Downing, born at Forest Lodge Glebe Point, May 3/70.
    [Show full text]
  • The Missionary Marsden an AUSTRALIAN VIEW
    The Missionary Marsden AN AUSTRALIAN VIEW SAMUEL MARSDEN, in spite of his outstanding importance in the early history of Australasia, has fared ill at the hands of our historians. New Zealand writers, until the recent publication of Judith Binney's perceptive book on Thomas Kendall,1 have not looked beyond the too simple folk tradition of Greatheart Marsden,2 the Apostle to the Maoris. Australians, with the exception of a few uncritical clerics,3 have perpetuated the equally unsatisfactory colonial tradition of the selfishly materialistic flogging parson that was set firmly by the biased contemporary accounts of William Charles Wentworth and John Dunmore Lang.4 Manning Clark has come closest to bringing out the complicated motivation of the man in his multi-volume History of Australia, but the need remains for a comprehensive and careful study that might rescue Marsden from the caricaturist and present him as a credible human being. My purpose here is to suggest the complexity of Marsden's character and motivation, and to indicate a line of biographical approach that takes account of his activities in every area engaging his interest. The great weakness of the existing delineations of Mars- den is not so much that they are violently partisan, rather that they are too narrowly identified with his work in a particular geographical The theme of this article was presented, with variations, to the 1968 ANZAAS Conference at Christchurch, New Zealand, and as the Anniversary Lecture to the Royal Australian Historical Society in January 1969. Much of the argument has appeared in mv Oxford University Press booklet on Marsden in the 'Great Australians' Series.
    [Show full text]
  • Aspects of the Career of Alexander Berry, 1781-1873 Barry John Bridges University of Wollongong
    University of Wollongong Thesis Collections University of Wollongong Thesis Collection University of Wollongong Year Aspects of the career of Alexander Berry, 1781-1873 Barry John Bridges University of Wollongong Bridges, Barry John, Aspects of the career of Alexander Berry, 1781-1873, Doctor of Philosophy thesis, Department of History and Politics, University of Wollongong, 1992. http://ro.uow.edu.au/theses/1432 This paper is posted at Research Online. 525 LIST OF SOURCES The sources listed here are those used for Berry's life as a whole. No attempt has been made to confine the list to sources mentioned in the reference notes by identifying and deleting sources for chapters on matters not included in this thesis or lost in cutting the text. Item details have been taken, as far as possible, from title pages. As a consequence, in some items usage varies from mine in the text of the thesis. Anonymous items have been placed at the end of sections and listed chronologically by date of publication. Where the author has been identified his name is indicated in square brackets. PRIMARY SOURCES ARCHIVES SCOTTISH RECORD OFFICE, NEW REGISTER HOUSE, EDINBURGH Old Parish Registers OPR 351/2 Errol Births/Marriages 1692 - 1819. OPR 420/3 Cupar Baptisms/Marriages/Deaths 1778 - 1819. OPR 420/4 Cupar OPR 445/1 Leuchars Births/Marriages 1665 - 1819. OPR 445/2 Leuchars Births/Marriages 1820 - 1854, Deaths 1720 - 1854. OPR 446/1 Logie. OPR 446/2 Logie. OPR 453/3 St Andrews and St Leonards Births. Sherriff Court SC 49/31/8 Sheriff Court of Perth - for inventories of estate of James Berrie 10 March 1828.
    [Show full text]
  • The Select Committees of the New South Wales Legislative Council 1824-1856
    PARLIAMENT OF NEW SOUTH WALES Parliamentary Library ________________________________________ New South Wales Legislative Council 1824-1856 The Select Committees Compiled by R F Doust New South Wales Legislative Council 1824-1856 The Select Committees Compiled by R F Doust NEW SOUTH WALES PARLIAMENTARY LIBRARY New South Wales Parliamentary Library cataloguing-in-publication data: New South Wales. Parliament. Legislative Council New South Wales Legislative Council, 1824-1856: the select committees,.compiled by R.F. Doust. – [Partially revised edition published in electronic format, Sydney, N.S.W: NSW Parliamentary Library November 2011] ISBN 978 0 7313 1883 4 I. New South Wales. Parliament. Legislative Council. I. Title. II. Doust, R.F. (Russell Fletcher) III. New South Wales. Parliamentary Library. Note: Previously published in three parts--- Part I 1824-1843, Part II 1844-1848, Part III 1849-1856 © R F Doust 2011 The Select Committees of the New South Wales Legislative Council 1824-1856 The Select Committees is a work which identifies and describes the many committees of inquiry appointed by the first Legislative Council of the Colony of New South Wales in the first half of the nineteenth century. From the arrival of the first fleet bringing convicts to the Colony of New South Wales in 1788, supreme power was vested until 1824 in the Governor, acting in accordance with instructions from the Imperial Government in London. The first Legislative Council of New South Wales, appointed by His Majesty to advise the Governor, and consisting of five officials employed by the Crown, met for the first time on 24 August 1824. It had as a primary role the scrutiny of legislative measures proposed by the Governor.
    [Show full text]
  • Fifty Years in the Making of Australian History
    Fifty Years in the Making of Australian History Parkes, Henry Sir (1815-1896) A digital text sponsored by New South Wales Centenary of Federation Committee University of Sydney Library Sydney 2000 http://setis.library.usyd.edu.au/fed © University of Sydney Library. The texts and images are not to be used for commercial purposes without permission Source Text: Prepared from the print edition published by Longmans, Green and Co., London 1892 First Published: 1892 Languages: French Latin Greek, Classical RB1592/36 Australian Etexts autobiographies political history 1890-1909 prose nonfiction federation 2001 Creagh Cole Coordinator Final Checking and Parsing Fifty Years in the Making of Australian History In Two Volumes by London Longmans, Green and Co. 1892 Preface THIS book is not a history nor yet an autobiography. It leaves my life still to be written, should it be deemed worth the writing. It leaves, in fact, the first thirty years after my birth almost a blank. My residence in New South Wales has extended over fifty-three years; I began, in association with others, to take an earnest interest in the affairs of the colony within two or three years after my arrival. My first acquaintances were Charles Harper, William Augustine Duncan, and Henry Halloran, the latter of whom, now a hale man of eighty-two years, is still my warm personal friend, whose high generous spirit and fine gifts of mind have contributed much to my enjoyment of life. Some years before the advent of Responsible Government I was drawn into the active politics of the country; and of all the men who laboured conspicuously in public in preparing the way for the new Era, I now stand alone.
    [Show full text]
  • Women's History, Dialogical Memorials And
    Public History Review ‘Remembering Aesi’: Vol. 28, 2021 Women’s History, Dialogical Memorials and Sydney’s Statuary Kiera Lindsey DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5130/phrj.v28i0.7760 When Adelaide Eliza Scott Ironside (1831-1867) became the first native-born artist to leave Australia to train as an artist in mid 1855, she did so with the explicit intention of returning home to fresco the public buildings of Sydney with the ‘future history’ of her country.1 Her vision was not only explicitly republican and public but also extended to statues. Writing to her ’sincere friend’, the controversial pastor and politician, Dr John Dunmore Lang (1799- © 2021 by the author(s). This 1878), while living in Rome a few years later, Ironside expressed her desire to one day see him is an Open Access article in ‘statued marble somewhere on the coasts of the city’. For there, she enthused, her ‘Patriot distributed under the terms Father’ would be ‘hailed’ as he so ‘fully and richly deserved’.2 of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Although Aesi, as she preferred to be known, left no directions about how she wished to be (CC BY 4.0) License (https:// memorialised, there is much to suggest that the woman Sir Charles Nicholson (1808-1903) creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/), allowing third parties once described as ‘the founder and acknowledged mistress of Art in the Southern hemisphere’, 3 to copy and redistribute the was also keen to occupy her own ‘conspicuous niche in the colonial Valhalla’. There were material in any medium certainly many others who deemed her worthy of such memorialisation.
    [Show full text]
  • Aspects of the Career of Alexander Berry, 1781-1873 Barry John Bridges University of Wollongong
    University of Wollongong Thesis Collections University of Wollongong Thesis Collection University of Wollongong Year Aspects of the career of Alexander Berry, 1781-1873 Barry John Bridges University of Wollongong Bridges, Barry John, Aspects of the career of Alexander Berry, 1781-1873, Doctor of Philosophy thesis, Department of History and Politics, University of Wollongong, 1992. http://ro.uow.edu.au/theses/1432 This paper is posted at Research Online. 301 Chapter 10 LEGISLATOR Berry was not a regular participant in Legislative Council debates although he spoke a good deal more often in his earlier years than later. The Colonial Observer in 1843 praised his writing but rated him much less effective as a speaker because he made desperate attempts to be an orator, for which 'nature cetainly never designed him'.l In one of its reports this newspaper said that Berry 'kept the house during the whole of his speech, as usual, in a roar of laughter'.'' His humour and good nature when amongst friends came out in debate where he was commonly in turn ironical, whimsical, outrageously forthright or undulging in playful banter at the expense of fellow members. The depth of his knowledge of the Bible showed in a wealth of allusion and his wide experience of other men, other places and other times in anecdote and reference. On the evidence of press reports he was undoubtedly the most widely read member throughout his long tenure but in his displays of learning he often appeared to be striving for effect. He normally spoke in a monotone and at so low a voltime that quite often reporters were unable to hear him.-* The looseness and tendency to irrelevance of many of his speeches detracted from their impact.
    [Show full text]
  • 236 Reverend Dr. John Dunmore Lang
    View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by University of Queensland eSpace 236 REVEREND DR. JOHN DUNMORE LANG (Papers read on January 22, 1959) The Society is usually in recess during January, but as a special gesture in the Centenary Year, a meeting was held in January devoted to Dr. Lang, who had such a tremendous influence on the history of Queensland. The following papers were read dealing with Dr. I.ang as a man, as emigration supporter and as an advocate for Separation from New South Wales. Sir Raphael Cilento summed up the papers, and spoke on the end of Convictism in New South Wales. DR. LANG—THE MAN [Read by Mr. C. G. AUSTIN] John Dunmore Lang was born at Greenock, Scot­ land, on August 25, 1799, but in a few years his parents went to Largs in Ayrshire, and he attended a parish school there for five years. It is a coincidence that his early schooling was obtained at Largs; the town of Sir Thomas Brisbane, after whom this capital city is named. On leaving the parish school the young man at­ tended the University of Glasgow, and having chosen the Church for his calling decided to pursue his ministry in one of the Colonies. His brother George was already in New South Wales and his description of the moral condition of the colony roused the missionary zeal of the young minister, who decided to live in New South Wales. From all accounts there would have been ample oppor­ tunity to improve the moral condition of the colony.
    [Show full text]
  • MP84 Gallop G.Pdf.PDF
    Essay: A radical legacy Author: Geoff Gallop ike all great speeches, the Tenterfield Oration delivered on October 24, 1889 – the most significant speech in Australian history – was a call to action, a call to Lthe Australian people to achieve by peace what the Americans had achieved by war. The time had come, Sir Henry Parkes said, for ‘an uprising in this fair land of a goodly fabric of free government’ with ‘all great national questions of magnitude affecting the welfare of the colonies’ disposed of by ‘a distinct executive and a distinct parliamentary power’. Parkes was pointing to the need for a national system of government that embodied freedom. He was drawing upon the theories, insights and arguments of the British radical tradition – albeit modified by his experience of hard‐edged parliamentary politics. This is the tradition of parliamentary and electoral reform, freedom of association and expression, national self‐determination and social equality. From this tradition also emerged the argument for popular sovereignty, democracy and a republic. At a deeper level, the radicals recognised that good political systems weren’t just important as means to an end, but were ends in themselves. To put it in contemporary terms, they saw people as ‘citizens’ rather than ‘consumers’. Australian radicalism came from people like Parkes and John Dunmore Lang – two of the most important intellectual founding fathers, who laid the base on which men like Edmund Barton, Alfred Deakin and George Reid later built the nation. When we think of founding fathers, we think of grey‐haired, conservative old men who believe that the old ways are always best.
    [Show full text]