Congregations in an Urban Ecology

Congregations in an Urban Ecology A Study of 14 Churches in Melbourne’s Central Business District By Vibeke Sundsbø Masters Thesis Department of Classics, Russian, and the History of Religions (IKRR) Faculty of Arts University of Bergen Spring 2007 Acknowledgements First and foremost I wish to thank my supervisor, Professor Michael Stausberg. His guidance and ideas, encouragement and enthusiasm, has been a great help throughout the entire process of writing this thesis. Secondly, I have to extend my deepest gratitude to my respondents at the CBD churches, as well as everyone else in Melbourne who showed an interest in this project. I also wish to thank Silje Østerbø, Anna Paszkiewicz, and Camilla Aase for reading the thesis and giving me invaluable comments and advice. Last, but not least, I wish to send my thanks to my fellow graduate students with whom I have shared lengthy coffee breaks and engaging discussions. 2 Table of Contents Acknowledgements 2 1. Introduction 4 1.1 Urban studies and congregational studies 5 1.2 Theme and problem outline 10 1.3 Methodology and material 13 1.4 Outline of thesis 19 2. The historical, urban, and religious context of the churches 20 2.1 Melbourne’s establishment 20 2.2 Immigration 21 2.3 The development of Melbourne 22 2.4 Christianity in Australia 26 2.5 Melbourne’s religious map and history 29 2.6 The churches in my sample 30 3. Composition and structure 43 3.1 Age 43 3.2 Ethnicity 45 3.3 SES 50 3.4 Location of congregants 54 3.5 Attendance and stability 58 3.6 Leadership structure and staff 66 3.7 Perception of space and the meaning of church buildings 69 4. Church activities and outreach 73 4.1 Worship services 73 4.2 Congregational groups 78 4.3 Outreach 84 4.4 Availability and approachability 92 4.5 Renting out property 96 4.6 Ecumenical efforts 100 5. Comparative and theoretical perspectives 104 5.1 Three main responses to a changing urban ecology 104 5.2 Comparative perspectives 110 5.3 Religious economies and the CBD churches 119 5.4 Prospect for a future study 124 Appendix 1: CBD Map 125 Appendix 2: Background information 126 Appendix 3: Composition and structure of the churches 127 Appendix 4: Church activities and outreach 128 Appendix 5: Church contact information 129 Appendix 6: Abbreviations 130 List of references 131 3 1. Introduction In this introductory chapter I will firstly give an outline of the theoretical framework and relevant literature. Subsequently, the questions that will be addressed in this thesis will be outlined, and research methodology discussed. Finally, an outline of the thesis in its entirety will be provided. The theme for this thesis is the various ways the churches 1 in the Central Business District (CBD) of Melbourne, Australia, have adapted and changed as a result of urban transformation processes. The thesis is situated within religious studies, urban studies, and congregational studies, joining three academic fields which have rarely crossed paths until now. Literature and research on urban studies in relation to religion has been scarce. The same can be said for the discipline of religious studies and its focus on the urban processes, and the need for a cross fertilisation of these fields of inquiry has become evident. The lack of literature, as well as the fact that this topic has not been explored more extensively earlier, makes this study relevant and important for these academic fields. Unlike other studies which have focussed on congregational studies and the urban environment combined; this study is conducted in Australia, not in the US, thus making it unique. Australia is a country that in my opinion is overlooked in terms of religious studies not related to its indigenous populations. However, although this would give me an excellent starting point for a comparative study, examining the differences between the America and Australia, this is not my main objective. I will focus on Australia and Melbourne, while I draw on American theorists who have studied the US, as these are mainly the ones available. However, I will not compare and contrast until the concluding chapter. 1 Throughout this thesis I will make full use of the terms church and congregation. It can therefore be helpful to spell out my understanding of these terms, and the way they will be used throughout the thesis. Church refers to the physical building, the religious organisation, both on a micro level (the individual church ) and on a macro level (world-wide denominations), as well as the group of people who are members. Congregation , on the other hand, refers to the group of people who regularly attend the same church, or the same worship service, these people are in some cases included in the decision making process at the church (see 3.6 Leadership structure and staff). Both church and congregation can therefore mean both the body of people gathering, and the organisation. These terms can thus to some extent be used interchangeably. However, there are still different meanings depending on the context. For instance, congregation can both be used to describe the entire number of people attending the church during one week, and it can be the ones that attend the different services. This leads me to suggest that when I am talking about the organisation, such as decisions made by the staff, etc., I will use the term church . Concerning instances where the people attending are involved, I will use the term congregation . In other instances the term church and congregation will to some extent be used interchangeably. 4 Stepping into this academic no man’s (sic) land, I hope to be able to make an impact on the joining of these areas of study. My purpose has been to develop further theory within a discipline which has experienced increased interest recently, but is still lacking in studies. 1.1 Urban Studies and Congregational Studies I will here give a presentation of the two areas of study in order to place the thesis within a theoretical framework. I will first give an outline of urban studies and its context in relation to this thesis, before I sketch out the area of congregational studies. These are both areas of study without a specific methodology, and in most cases are interdisciplinary. The areas have not been widely explored in combination; however, there are a number of researchers who are working in these areas. These have produced texts and studies to gain inspiration from, and compare to. I will first give an outline of the fields respectively, before I move on to presenting a number of studies where they have been combined. There has been an increased interest in religious studies (religionsvitenskap) in relation to spatiality (for instance Knott, 2005), and religious rituals and space (e.g. Smith, 1987). However, there has not been much focus on religion in relation to urbanity. The most common connection made here is between modernisation and urbanisation. This is also emphasised by Kisala in the survey article ‘Urbanization and Religion’ (2004) where he attempts to describe urbanisation’s impact on religious institutions. However, his focus is on the relationship between the demise of traditional Christianity and urbanisation, as well as the growth of new religious movements. He gives the impression that mainline and traditional congregations are in decline, but in my opinion this is an old-fashioned view of the effects of urbanisation. He, as many other scholars 2, has seen secularisation as an inevitable effect of urbanisation, as portrayed in the classical study The Secular City by Harvey Cox (1968) where he makes the claim that the emergence of cities will lead to the demise of traditional religion. 3 I hope, however, that this thesis will take part in dismissing this belief. 1.1.a Urban studies Urban studies are part of an area within the social sciences (and beyond) covering topics such as geography, ecology, architecture, health, etc (Gottdiener and Budd, 2005). Strangely, 2 Further reading on secularisation: Bainbridge and Stark, [1987] 1996; Berger, 1967; Finke and Stark, 1988; Finke and Stark, 2005; Furseth and Repstad, 2003; Swatos and Olson, 2000; Wilson 1966. 3 I will not outline the extensive secularisation debate in this short introductory chapter, but have included this section in order to clarify that the combination of religion and urban studies’ main concern has been on the relationship between secularisation and urbanisation. 5 religion is one of the topics urban theorists have devoted little attention to. The discipline is rooted in the early 20 th century Chicago School at the University of Chicago where a number of sociologists (R. Park and E. Burgess, among others) started studying the city. They called their approach Human Ecology 4 (Ibid). Probably one of the most famous works emerging from this discipline is Louis Wirth’s ‘Urbanism as a Way of Life’ (1938), which formulates a definition of the city still popular today: ‘For sociological purposes the city may be defined as a relatively large, dense, and permanent settlement of socially heterogeneous individuals.‘ (Wirth, 1938, p. 8) According to him, the city consists of three key variables: size, density, and heterogeneity. The larger impact any one of these variables has, the more urban the city. This essay and his theories in general, were groundbreaking, but have met a great deal of criticism in recent times. 5 In my understanding, Wirth’s definition can successfully be applied to Melbourne. Melbourne is the 2nd largest city in Australia and becoming more and more densely populated as suburbs close to the inner city are growing in population and housing.

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