A PILGRIM PEOPLE: FORTY YEARS ON The Proceedings of the inaugural Uniting Church National History Society Conference June 9–12 2017 Pilgrim Uniting Church Adelaide South Australia Uniting Church National History Society - ii - 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, Victoria 3205 First edition July 2018 National Library of Australia Catalogue in Publication Editor: Renton, Robert, 1946— Uniting Church National History Society A Pilgrim People: Forty Years On ISBN 978-0-9807168-5-6 Ó2018 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. - iii - Contents Introduction: First Pressing of the Grapes 1 William W. Emilsen A National History Society: Why do we need one and 17 what has brought us to this point? William W. Emilsen A Pilgrim People 40 Years On: The Uniting Church as an 20 experiment in ecumenism Renate Howe Australian Urban Mission 1960–2000 29 Dean Eland Methodists and Revivalism in South Australia 1838– 44 1939: The quest for ‘vital religion’ Brian Chalmers Ethel Mitchell: A pioneer of the Uniting Church 80 Alison Head Extinct Volcanoes: The role of missionaries in shaping 91 the Uniting Church in Australia Margaret Reeson Grappling with Church Union: Reflections on discovering the implications of church union in two congregations 105 of the Uniting Church in Australia, North Essendon, 1977–1979 Robert Renton LGBTIQ Pilgrims and the Uniting Church in Australia 122 Warren Talbot On Writing Fighting Spirit: A History of Christianity at 141 Warruwi, Goulburn Island. William W. Emilsen - iii - A Small, Precious and Fragile Object of God’s Grace: the 150 Uniting Church after 40 years Julia Pitman Surrounded by a Great Crowd of Witnesses 161 Leanne Davis The Basis of Union: Its formation 1957–1971 172 D’Arcy Wood The Voice of Methodism: How Methodism influenced 180 public policy in Victoria, 1902–1977 Ken Barelli “To Hear Anew”: History in a community of innovation 192 Katharine Massam Unfinished Business at Church Union 204 Bill Harris Wesley Church Perth: From ‘Central Methodist Mission’ 224 to ‘Uniting Church in the City’ in 40 Years Alison Longworth What Wesley might say to the Uniting Church on the 234 occasion of its 40th Birthday Glen O’Brien Where we have come from: Three Reflections 256 Janine Barker, Brian Howe, Robert Renton - 1 - INTRODUCTION: FIRST PRESSING OF THE GRAPES William W. Emilsen [W]ithout the memory of the dream nothing hoped for would happen at all.1 Forty years on is not a long track record. The history of the Uniting Church is equivalent to less than two minutes in the history of the human race and about a week in the history of the Christian church. Our place in the larger scheme of things isn’t a very large one; it is dangerously tangential. So, when the church seems to be struggling for purpose and direction and when a gen- eral feeling of anxiety prevails, we need to take a fresh look. We could take counsel from the American histo- rian of late medieval and early modern Christianity, David Steinmetz, who called for “taking the long view”—view- ing modern developments, as far as possible, through the lens of the Christian past.2 And if we are troubled by the loss of membership, cutbacks, constant restructur- ing, retrenchments, ecclesiastical mismanagement, unfulfilled dreams and disappointments, a loss of confi- dence in the ecumenical vision of the 1960s and 70s, congregations feeling cut adrift and ‘For Sale’ signs out- side churches, we need to view recent developments 1 Davis, Natalie Zemon, A Passion for History: Conversations with Denis Crouzet, ed. Michael Wolfe, Kirksville, Mo:, Truman State Uni- versity Press, Early Modern Studies 4, 2010, p. 68. 2 Steinmetz, David C., Taking the Long View: Christian Theology in His- torical Perspective, Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2011, pp. 147–156. - 2 - with a more universal and critical understanding of our history. Taking the long view is necessary for the church to func- tion effectively in the present, especially in our uncertain and technologically rapidly changing times. History can deepen our understanding of the present. It can remind us of similar situations that have caused problems in the past. It can highlight our mistakes and faithlessness by reminding us of those who, at other times, faced similar problems but who made different, yet wise decisions. It can help us formulate important critical questions, pro- voke imagination, challenge dogmatic statements, offer wisdom and memories of possibility, dismantle myths, expose hidden agendas and avoid sweeping generaliza- tions. And although historians (with a few exceptions) are not in the business of prophesising or predicting the future as economists and sociologists might, the past of- fers us essential moments of hope: that happy sense of human possibility—dreaming into a desirable future. Memory stops the church going mad, especially at a time when measurement and money reign supreme and a culture of forgetting pervades almost every aspect of its life. When corporate memory is faulty or quickly lost, our life is severely impoverished, injustice is let loose and decision-making becomes subject to the whims of the moment. Historians are the memory whisperers. They do the hard work of compiling our book of memories, the custodians of our memory bank. They provide the wherewithal to extend beyond our purely personal memories. They fill our world with reminders. They are like doctors treating amnesia and sometimes, like public prosecutors, challenging those who take refuge in a - 3 - “forgettery”,1 that deliberate denial of formal decisions and actions taken in the past. Or, to put it another way, historians provide the aide-memoires for each one of us who are called upon to make important practical and political decisions either in council or in community or as individual people of faith deciding how best to live the Christian life. Looking backwards does not extin- guish the desire to move forwards; it is immensely freeing, life-giving and fundamentally optimistic. “His- tory”, says Oxford historian Theodore Zeldin, “is not a coffin with no escape. On the contrary, it is liberation, a bunch of keys that opens doors to places one never knew existed.”2 The eighteen papers in these Proceedings were given in June 2017 at the first national conference of the Uniting Church National History Society held in Adelaide. Apart from the name of the conference, “A Pilgrim People: 40 Years On” with its dual focus of celebrating both the birth of the Uniting Church and its 40-year milestone, there is not a strong unifying theme to the collection. This was deliberate. The conference’s organisers were determined that the new history society would be com- prehensive, involving the participation of all historians at any level of specialisation, interest or place of employ- ment. Anyone who has sought to investigate the past according to recognised criteria of historical scholarship was welcome to present an offering. However diverse 1 I owe this expression to Edmund Blair Bolles’ Remembering and For- getting: Inquiries into the Nature of Memory, New York, Walker and Company, 1988, p. 180. 2 Zeldin, Theodore, The Hidden Pleasures of Life: A New Way of Re- membering the Past and Imagining the Future, Quercus and London, Maclehose Press, 2015, p. 25. - 4 - the subject matter of these papers may be, they capture the spirit of the new society which has emerged in re- sponse to the widespread conviction that we need to expand the scope of historical interchange to historians across the nation and to all with an interest in the history of the Uniting Church and its predecessor churches. The coming into being of the Uniting Church National History Society may sit uncomfortably with some, be- cause it raises awkward questions about denominational history. In the afterglow of Church Un- ion in Australia there was considerable prejudice within the Uniting Church against writing denominational his- tory; it was seen as working against the ecumenical spirit of the age. T. V. Philip, a Brisbane-based church histo- rian committed to doing history from an “ecumenical perspective”, expressed the prevailing view: “The de- nominational or confessional approach to history is essentially a communalistic and not a catholic one. It is a distortion of history, exaggerated and often triumph- alistic.”1 Denominationalism has been much maligned in ecu- menical circles, and for a generation brought up on Richard Niebuhr’s devastating critique of denomina- tions and denominationalism, a society that focuses its attention on a single church like the Uniting Church could fairly be construed as a backward step. Niebuhr portrayed denominationalism as the “moral failure” of the church. The language he used to describe denomi- nationalism leaves little doubt as to his evaluation of it— 1 Philip, T. V., “Church History in Ecumenical Perspective”, in The Teaching of Ecumenics, ed. Samuel Amirtham and Cyris H. S. Moon, Geneva, WCC Publications, 1987, pp. 46–47. - 5 - evil, secular, divisive, petrification, creeping paralysis, confining, confusion, externalization, capitulation, self- congratulatory, self-confident and self-righteous.1 Despite Niebuhr’s scathing critique of denominational- ism in general and American denominations in particular, there is little evidence that denominational history in Australia is in decline. Even with the rapid ex- pansion of ‘religious history’ in Australia since the mid- 1960s, there have been many fine denominational histo- ries written by professional Australian historians in the past two decades.2 These national histories, together with the ever-expanding thematic studies of denomina- tions, are an important and permanent feature of religious historiography.