The Australian Church was an independent Christian church that operated in Australia between 1885 and 1957. It was founded by Charles Strong, a Scottish-born Presbyterian minister, after he resigned from the Presbyterian Church of Victoria under threat of heresy charges. The Australian Church was politically and theologically liberal and advocated for pacifism, women's rights, and social reform. At its peak, the church's membership included several of Melbourne's most influential citizens, including Australia's second prime minister Alfred Deakin, the feminist Vida Goldstein, and the businessman Alfred Felton.
The church's founder Charles Strong was educated at the University of Glasgow and was heavily influenced by the teachings of the liberal theologian John Caird. Strong moved to Australia to take up the position of minister at Scots Church, Melbourne in 1875 and soon attracted suspicion from more conservative members of the clergy for his liberal views. He faced commissions of inquiry after writing a controversial essay on the doctrine of atonement and after inviting the Supreme Court Chief Justice George Higinbotham to deliver a lecture on the relationship between religion and science. While his case was being heard before the Presbyterian Assembly in 1883, he resigned from his position. He founded the Australian Church soon after and built an opulent church building on Flinders Street for his approximately 1000-member congregation.
The church's theology was characterised by its rejection of sectarianism and rigid theological doctrine. Strong aspired to create a single national church, free of traditional dogmas, that would contribute to the development of an Australian "national sentiment." The church and its members founded a number of affiliated organisations to operate social welfare initiatives and to advocate for political causes, including pacifism, prison reform, and labour rights.
By as early as the 1890s, the church began to experience financial strain—in part due to the substantial mortgage it had taken out to construct its Flinders Street premises—which worsened during the First World War after many members left the church due to Strong's strident pacifist views. In 1922, the church sold its premises on Flinders Street and moved to a smaller building. It continued to operate for a time after Strong's 1942 death, but held its final service in 1955 and was formally wound up in 1957.
Charles Strong, the founder of the Australian Church, was born in Scotland in 1844.[1] He studied divinity at the University of Glasgow, where he became attracted to liberal theological currents.[1] He was particularly influenced by the theologian John Caird, a leading figure in the philosophical movement known as British idealism.[1][2][3] Strong was ordained in the Church of Scotland in 1868 and ministered in the coal mining town of Dalmellington, the town of Greenock, and the Glasgow suburb of Anderston, before being chosen as the new minister of Scots' Church, Melbourne in 1875.[4] He arrived in Australia in August of that year.[1]
Between 1875 and 1877, while Strong was known to hold progressive views, he did not provoke major opposition from the more conservative members of the Melbourne Presbyterian clergy.[5] Strong was particularly successful in attracting the educated and disaffected back towards religion, and was popular among Melbourne's working class.[6] He served a term as moderator of the Melbourne Presbytery and was a member of the councils of Scotch College and Ormond College.[7]
But following the publication of an anonymous 1877 pamphlet attacking unnamed figures within the Presbyterian church for apostasy, Strong began to attract greater suspicion.[8] In 1880 he published an essay on atonement in the Victorian Review. In the essay, he took a historical and rationalist approach to the doctrine of atonement, arguing that Christians should treat different theories of the atonement as "figures of speech...which are not to be pressed into exact logical definitions."[9][10] The essay proved controversial in Victoria's Presbyterian circles and led to calls for Strong to be charged with heresy.[11] Figures in the church were also concerned by his changes to the church's worship practices and by his calls to rewrite the Westminster Confession of Faith.[1] In March 1881 a committee was appointed by the Presbytery to investigate Strong's article.[12] In August 1881 he offered to resign from the church, but agreed to instead take six months of leave at the urging of congregants and church officials.[1]
1883 print illustration of the trial of Charles Strong before the Presbyterian Assembly
After his return, he stirred up renewed controversy by arguing that libraries and museums should be opened on Sundays.[1][11] This was viewed as an important cause by many of Strong's fellow social liberals, who believed that it would allow the working classes to educate themselves, but was opposed by those who believed it would undermine the observance of the Sabbath.[13][11] In 1883, he sparked further backlash by inviting the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Victoria, George Higinbotham, to deliver a lecture on the relationship between science and religion.[11] Higinbotham argued that while religion and science were fundamentally compatible, religions must relinquish their "arbitrary dogmas" in order to keep up with modern science.[14][11] The speech angered members of the church and led the Presbytery to appoint another committee of inquiry.[11] Strong was threatened with heresy charges and offered his resignation from the Presbyterian church in August 1883.[1] On 14 November, as the case was being heard by the Presbyterian Assembly, more than 2000 people farewelled Strong at the Melbourne Town Hall ahead of his planned departure from the country.[15] The next day, as Strong returned to Scotland, the assembly revoked his status as a minister of the Presbyterian Church of Victoria.[16]
History
Foundation
1887 print of the ceremony at which the church's foundation stone was laid
While Strong was offered ministry positions at various other churches during his time in Scotland, he had become disillusioned with the Presbyterian church.[17] In October 1884 he returned to Melbourne and began to minister to an independent congregation of around 800 people at the Temperance Hall on Russell Street.[1][18][19] During Strong's time overseas, a bill in the Victorian Parliament had unsuccessfully attempted to re-establish the independence of Scots Church from the Presbyterian Church of Victoria. After the bill's failure, a number of the congregants at Scots Church began to instead attend Strong's services at the Temperance Hall.[1][20] In November 1885 the Australian Church was officially founded.[1] Strong was supported by an assistant minister, Francis Anderson, who led the church's evening services at the Melbourne Athenaeum.[18] In materials distributed to the public, the church described itself as a "comprehensive Church, whose bond of union is the spiritual and the practical rather than creeds or ecclesiastical forms."[21]
Strong received financial support from George Higinbotham and from the future prime minister Alfred Deakin to construct a new church building.[22] On 19 March 1887, the ceremony for the laying of the Australian Church's foundation stone was held with 2500 people in attendance.[23] The new church, which could seat 1500 people, cost £21,000 to build and featured what was the largest organ in Australasia at the time.[18]
After the church's founding, Strong supported the establishment of affiliated congregations to advance his aim of making the Australian Church a national church. One of the more successful Australian Church affiliates was founded by another former Presbyterian minister, Donald Fraser, in Newcastle in 1899.[24] Fraser established three congregations and reported over 1000 church attendees in 1899, but resigned in 1904, leaving the Newcastle congregations to wither away.[25] A handful of other efforts to found Australian Churches outside of Melbourne were attempted, including in Lucknow and Hyde Park, but with little success.[26][25] By 1905, Strong's Melbourne church was the only Australian Church congregation remaining.[26]
Decline and dissolution
During the 1890s, Melbourne experienced an economic depression. Strong became increasingly radical in his politics and preached socialism in his sermons, advocating for land reform and economic redistribution.[27] Strong's biographer Colin R. Badger wrote that his increasing political radicalism, as opposed to his earlier religious liberalism, drove away many of the church's wealthy members and supporters.[27] In 1894, the church had a deficit of £260 and struggled to afford the repayments on the substantial loan it had taken out to pay for the construction of the church building.[28]
From the early 1900s onwards the church began to experience even more serious financial strain. Many of the church's middle-class congregants had begun to move out to the suburbs, while others were driven away during the First World War by Strong's strident pacifism and anti-conscription activism.[29][30][31] Two members of the church's committee resigned in 1916 after Strong refused to permit the singing of the national anthem at Sunday services, arguing that its "jingo and warlike attitude" was inappropriate for the setting.[32] While the church received a temporary reprieve after a wealthy congregant left a bequest of £5000 in her will in 1913, by 1918 the financial situation of the church once again became perilous.[33] The church sold the building on Flinders Street in 1922 and moved to a smaller building on Russell Street with a significantly diminished congregation.[29][34] After Strong's death at the age of 98 in 1942, the church continued to operate for a time, with the Methodist Mervyn Plumb serving as the church's minister between 1943 and 1950.[29][35] But the church ultimately held its final service and sold its building on Russell Street in 1955 before formally ceasing to operate in 1957.[29][36] Its assets were used to found a research organisation, the Charles Strong (Australian Church) Memorial Trust.[29]
Activism and affiliated organisations
Social welfare
1891 print of the Collingwood Working Men's Club, featuring its hall, library, and billiards room
In 1885, soon after the church's foundation, it established the Social Improvement Society to operate the church's charitable activities.[37] In accordance with the church's anti-sectarian philosophy, the society was affiliated with the Australian Church, but allowed members of any religious affiliation.[38] The society issued educational literature and held lectures and sermons, many of which focused on the uplift of women as a means for broader improvements to social welfare.[39]
In 1886 the Social Improvement Society established Melbourne's first crèche in Collingwood to provide for the childcare needs of working women with young children. These efforts would eventually grow into the Melbourne Crèche Society.[37][40] In 1891, the society founded a Working Men's Club in Collingwood with support from Deakin and Higinbotham to allow working-class men to improve themselves.[40][41] The club hosted lectures, a debating club, and other educational programs.[41] Strong and his wife Janet were also involved in founding a number of organisations to provide healthcare to the poor, including the Convalescent Aid Society, the Melbourne District Nursing Society, and the Maternity Aid Society.[42] In 1923 the church founded the Association for Mentally Defective Children and worked with the Victorian government to establish a boarding school in Travancore for children with disabilities.[43]
In 1895, the Australian Church formed the Australasian Criminology Society to engage in the "study and promotion of the best methods for the treatment of criminals and the prevention of crime."[44] The society advocated for the abolition of capital punishment, for the introduction of rehabilitation programs modelled on New York's Elmira Reformatory, and for the establishment of children's courts.[45] Strong also established a Melbourne branch of the Howard League for Penal Reform in 1922.[46]
The Australian Church was heavily involved in campaigns against "sweating" or sweatshop labor. In 1895, several Australian Church figures, including Strong and Samuel Mauger, were involved in the founding of the National Anti-Sweating League.[47][48] The historian John Rickard has argued that unlike much of the era's labour rights activism, these anti-sweating campaigns were dominated by middle-class Christian liberalism rather than trade unionism.[49] The National Anti-Sweating League organised public meetings and worked to reform labour rights legislation.[50] It also issued publications praising businesses that had agreed to offer living wages, while shaming those who continued to operate as sweatshops.[51] Its advocacy led to the establishment of a new board to set minimum wages along with other reforms in the 1896 Factory and Shops Act.[51][52] These efforts in Victoria would help to inspire Britain's Trade Boards Act (1909), which introduced the country's first boards to set minimum wages.[53]
Pacifism
Strong was known for being a particularly committed pacifist and was described by the pacifist and Australian Church member Eleanor May Moore as "the father of the peace movement" in the state of Victoria.[54] In 1900 Strong was involved in the founding of the Peace and Humanity Society.[55] He eventually became the president of the Melbourne Peace Society, a role that he would hold until his death.[55][56] He was one of the first figures in Melbourne to oppose the Boer War, founding a group that the historian Malcolm Saunders has described as "the first group in Australia formed specifically to oppose a particular war."[57] He was also a strong opponent of conscription during the First World War, campaigning alongside other clergymen during the 1917 Australian conscription referendum.[58]
The Australian Church also formed a pacifist women's association, the Sisterhood of International Peace, in 1915. The group became the Australian branch of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom in 1920.[59][31] The historian Kate Laing has argued that the SIP was part of a broader maternalist political movement and that its connection to the Australian Church gave its activism a strong strain of Christian internationalism, as opposed to the radicalism of other groups like Vida Goldstein's Women's Peace Army.[60] The group published a journal, Peacewards, and held study groups and lectures for its members.[61] Fearing legal action under the War Precautions Act 1914, the group did not take an official position in the 1916 Australian conscription referendum, but actively campaigned against the subsequent referendum in 1917.[62]
Membership
Charles Strong and the committee of the Australian Church, pictured c. 1909
The Australian Church's membership was dominated by educated, middle-class professionals, many of whom were influential members of Australian society. The historian Marion Maddox has observed that a third of the members of the church's inaugural 21-member committee have entries in the Australian Dictionary of Biography, including a member of parliament, two mayors, and the Victorian chief health officer.[63] The church's members were generally left-leaning, but ranged in political philosophy from liberalism to socialism.[64][65] Maddox noted that despite the church's sometimes radical beliefs, its tactics were influenced by its educated and middle-class membership, who typically held a preference for fundraising and education campaigns over militancy.[66] She wrote that, "The frame for Australian Church activism tended to be that change is best led by well-mannered ladies and gentlemen; and that improvement for the working class includes exhorting that class's members to adopt more middle-class modes of life."[66] Maddox described this "elite radicalism" as "remarkably successful", arguing that the church made significant contributions to Melbourne's political debate and social welfare.[67]
Sunday school of the Australian Church, pictured c. 1910
One of the church's most notable members was Alfred Deakin, Australia's second prime minister.[68] He grew close to Strong and the Australian Church during the 1890s, a period generally regarded as the nadir of his political career.[69] While the circumstances under which Deakin met Strong are not known, the historian Judith Brett has speculated that Deakin likely heard Strong preaching soon after his arrival in Australia, and that they may have known each other through their shared interest in spiritualism in the late 1870s.[70] In 1891 Deakin began to attend Australian Church events, and in 1896 he formally became a member of the church.[71] Brett notes that Deakin was a deeply religious man but held a lifelong scepticism towards the orthodoxy and sectarianism of established religions, leading him first towards spiritualism and theosophy, and then towards the Australian Church.[72] After the Federation of Australia, when Deakin became Australia's first attorney-general and then its second prime minister, his friendship with Strong and his involvement in the Australian Church appear to have ceased.[73]
One of the church's most distinguishing features was its rejection of rigid doctrine or creed.[79][80]Colin R. Badger described the church as "Protestant in the broad sense of that term", while noting that the church was characterised by its scepticism towards sectarianism and theological doctrine.[81] Strong's theology was heavily influenced by the British idealism of his teacher John Caird, including the movement's suspicion of orthodoxy and dogmatism, and its rejection of dualist ideas like the strict separation of material from supernatural or of the religious from the secular worlds.[82]
The church hoped that its lack of theological or doctrinal disputes would enable it to fulfil its goals of social reform and of becoming a national church.[83] At its 1886 annual meeting, the church's committee declared its aspiration of creating "a really national church—wide enough to embrace all shades of religious thought, and loving enough to seek not its own triumph or glory, but the triumph and glory of all truth, progress and righteousness and the best interests of man."[84] Strong believed that in order to properly establish an Australian "national sentiment", there was a need for an Australian-born national religion.[85] In 1890, he said that he dreamt of "the various denominations melting into one, and the Australian Church being swallowed up in a Church of Australia."[86]
The church was also characterised by its commitment to social reform and its belief that religion was intimately tied to economic and political life.[87] Strong explained in an 1890 address that he believed socialism to stem from the same roots as religion, saying, "Both recognise selfishness, neglect of the social principle, and the subordination of human beings' welfare to the accumulation of property in the hands of the individual, as the root of much evil."[88] Like many other social liberal movements at the time, however, the Australian Church was sceptical of "almsgiving" or handouts of welfare to the poor. Instead, the church advocated for better working conditions, such as through its anti-sweatshop campaigns, and attempted to "improve" the poor through education and by promoting frugality and temperance.[89]
The Australian Church was also notably committed to the uplift of women. The historian Diane Kirkby has described the Australian Church as a "particularly rich environment for feminists" and as "the place where Australian feminism developed whatever particular character it had."[90] The church allowed women, including the social reformer Catherine Helen Spence and the journalist Alice Henry, to serve in important roles.[91] The historian Kate Laing has argued that Melbourne's status as a hub for feminist and pacifist activism in the early 20th century owed in part to the influence of the Australian Church on its middle class.[92]
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