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The Australian Student Christian Movement (ASCM), formerly the Australasian Student Christian Union, is a Christian group with an ecumenical focus working with university students.
Described as a "university within a university", the ASCM was formed in 1896, and is one of the oldest student groups in existence in Australia. Originally named the Australian Student Christian Union [1] (or Australasian Student Christian Union?), the group was established at a meeting in Wyselaski Hall, Ormond College, University of Melbourne, in 1896, 14 years before the 1910 Edinburgh Missionary Conference that is commonly considered to have inaugurated the modern ecumenical movement. At the time Australia had only four universities, which were strongly opposed to any religious activities taking place on their secular campuses. Yet those who created the ASCM fervently believed that Christian students could be agents of change in the university, the nation and the world.[ citation needed ]
The name changed gradually during the period between the wars to reflect the idea of movement rather than organisation. The title ASCM was formally adopted in the early 1930s. [1]
The ASCM was involved in the formation of the National Union of Students, the Overseas Service Bureau and the Uniting Church in Australia.[ citation needed ]
ASCM fosters liberal and progressive religious and social views and has been associated with the social gospel, Christian socialist and environmentalist movements and is generally part of the Christian left.
The ASCM sees itself as:
The ASCM has had a long history of activism, which led to the movement being monitored by the Commonwealth Investigation Branch (CIB) and Australian Security Intelligence Organisation in the 1940s and 1950s, worried about the ASCM's work with refugees and the pacifism and conscientious objection of some of its members.
During Australian involvement in the Vietnam War, the ASCM was involved in subverting the draft and providing support for so-called draft dodgers.
After the 1965 Freedom Ride through regional New South Wales by Aboriginal activists and students, which exposed racism in Australia and the racial segregation practised in regional towns, ASCM's journal Crux ran a special issue on "Aborigines". This included a guest editorial entitled "No genteel silence" by Ian Spalding on the significance of the Freedom Ride. [2]
Today[ when? ] the ASCM is involved in the struggles for the liberation of women and of gay, lesbian and bisexual people, in the work against racism against both migrant and Aboriginal people and the exploitation of the people and lands of the Asia-Pacific region. This is reflected in the history of the ASCM with their explicit support for Gandhi, the equality of women and their activism for changes to the White Australia policy which reached its climax in the 1960s with the Sydney branch leading the way. [1] ASCM are still politically active and continue to offer opportunities for students to be involved in Human Rights and a world wide recognition of women's rights in differing cultures. ASCM is seen to promote a mature faith of intellectual engagement.
It is affiliated with the World Student Christian Federation and has close ties to the National Council of Churches in Australia, the Christian Conference of Asia and to the World Council of Churches.
It participated in the 37th General Assembly of the World Student Christian Federation in Berlin, Germany, in 2022.[ citation needed ]
ASCM is part of the World Student Christian Federation Asia-Pacific Region with a biannual Regional Committee Meeting and the Pacific Sub-region (Australia, Aotearoa/New Zealand with Fiji and Papua New Guinea not active.
ASCM published a journal called Crux in Melbourne between 1961 and 1972. It was bimonthly until 1970, and then quarterly until the end of its run. [3] As of 1965, the journal editors were John and Margaret Howe. [2]
There is at times conflict with conservative evangelical Christian groups on campus, such as the Australian Fellowship of Evangelical Students (affiliated to the parachurch International Fellowship of Evangelical Students). While the formation of the ASCM was inspired by the charismatic American evangelical ecumenist, John R. Mott, from the beginning the Australian movement had a tense relationship with evangelicalism, deciding not to adopt Mott’s watchword of “the evangelisation of the world in this generation”. The ASCM refused to hold American-style university missions; encouraged liberal Biblical interpretation; and supported the modernist side in the modernist-fundamentalist controversy of the 1920s. In 1930 the Evangelical Union split off from the ASCM; a division that has never been healed. While this split was seen as a catastrophe, by no longer feeling the constraint of conservativism, ASCM had the flexibility to explore liberal issues in a more consistent and concise way. The areas of engagement included science, psychology, humanism and Communism amongst many others. [1]
In the early years of the ASCM's history, conflict was often over issues of theology and biblical interpretation. In later decades the conflict was often over social issues, including sexuality. Since the 1990s, the ASCM has promoted itself as queer- friendly and has supported gay, lesbian and bisexual Christians who have felt hurt by their treatment within conservative Christian groups.
Christian fundamentalism, also known as fundamental Christianity or fundamentalist Christianity, is a religious movement emphasizing biblical literalism. In its modern form, it began in the late 19th and early 20th centuries among British and American Protestants as a reaction to theological liberalism and cultural modernism. Fundamentalists argued that 19th-century modernist theologians had misunderstood or rejected certain doctrines, especially biblical inerrancy, which they considered the fundamentals of the Christian faith.
Ecumenism – also called interdenominationalism, transdenominationalism, or ecumenicalism – is the concept and principle that Christians who belong to different Christian denominations should work together to develop closer relationships among their churches and promote Christian unity. The adjective ecumenical is thus applied to any interdenominational initiative that encourages greater cooperation and union among Christian denominations and churches.
The Uniting Church in Australia (UCA) was founded on 22 June 1977, when most congregations of the Methodist Church of Australasia, about two-thirds of the Presbyterian Church of Australia and almost all the churches of the Congregational Union of Australia united under the Basis of Union. According to the church, it had 243,000 members in 2018. In the 2016 census, about 870,200 Australians identified with the church; in the 2011 census, the figure was 1,065,796. The UCA is Australia's third-largest Christian denomination, behind the Catholic and the Anglican Churches. There are around 2,000 UCA congregations, and 2001 National Church Life Survey (NCLS) research indicated that average weekly attendance was about 10 per cent of census figures.
A united church, also called a uniting church, is a denomination formed from the merger or other form of church union of two or more different Protestant Christian denominations, a number of which come from separate and distinct denominational orientations or traditions. Multi-denominationalism, or a multi-denominational church or organization, is a congregation or organization that is affiliated with two or more Christian denominations, whether they be part of the same tradition or from separate and distinct traditions.
The World Student Christian Federation (WSCF) is a federation of autonomous national Student Christian Movements (SCM) forming the youth and student arm of the global ecumenical movement. The Federation includes Orthodox, Protestant, Catholic, Pentecostal and Anglican students.
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The Australian Fellowship of Evangelical Students (AFES) is an evangelical Christian parachurch organisation that aims to encourage university students to believe in and follow Jesus Christ. It is affiliated with, and in 1947 was a founding member of the International Fellowship of Evangelical Students.
The Christian Conference of Asia is a regional ecumenical organisation representing 15 National Councils and over 100 denominations (churches) in New Zealand, Australia, Bangladesh, Burma, Cambodia, East Timor, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Laos, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, Pakistan, Philippines, Sri Lanka, Taiwan and Thailand.
The Union of the Armenian Evangelical Churches in the Near East, abbreviated as UAECNE, is an autonomous body of Armenian Evangelical churches comprising 25 congregations throughout Lebanon, Syria, Turkey, Greece, Egypt, Iran, Iraq and Australia.
The Congregational Union of Australia was a Congregational denomination in Australia that stemmed from the Congregational Church in England as settlers migrated from there to Australia.
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Student Christian Movement of Great Britain is a British religious charity led by students, past and present. The movement is an ecumenical and inclusive community that recognises unity in diversity and explores faith through worship, discussion and action. SCM's vision is that "every student can find a vibrant, open and inclusive Christian community, where they can explore faith and be inspired to put faith into action."
The Reverend Professor Ian James Mitchell Haire AC KStJ is a theologian and Christian minister of religion. He is emeritus professor of Charles Sturt University, Canberra, Australia and past executive director of the Australian Centre for Christianity and Culture. He was formerly the fourth president of the National Council of Churches in Australia and the ninth president of the Uniting Church in Australia.
Marie Tulip was an Australian feminist writer, academic and proponent for the ordination of women as priests.
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Margaret Holmes was an Australian community worker specialising in refugee resettlement and program management for faith-based organisations. She ran the headquarters for the Australian Student Christian Movement from 1924 to 1945. During World War II, she helped establish the Victorian International Refugee Emergency Committee. From 1951 to 1962, she led the refugee resettlement program of the Australian Council of Churches. In recognition of her work with refugees and migrants, she was appointed MBE in 1958.