Tag Archives: religion

Beyond the Church Parade: Religious beliefs in the front line during WWI

Posted on by
5
Soldier pausing from writing at a makeshift table and looking directly at the camera.

Australian WWI soldier-diarist, Henry Charles Marshall(1890-1915). Photo supplied by State Library of NSW.

Today I am presenting a paper at the Religious History Association Conference which is running as an affiliated conference to the Australian Historical Association conference in Brisbane. This post provides an abstract of the paper and supporting information about my paper.

To general readers of this blog I hope that this gives you a feel for the work behind an academic paper. This is the work I have been doing on and off behind the scenes for the last couple of years amidst everything else that life throws up. I hope to blog about the sessions I attended at the conference on Tuesday in the next couple of days. There have been some good discussions about how war both reinforces and challenges gender roles in society.

Abstract

A review of World War I diaries reveals glimpses of the personal beliefs held by Australian soldiers serving on the frontline. Using research tools available to the twenty first century historian, such as digitised texts and programming, a collection has been made of the expressions of religious belief recorded by soldiers in their diaries while on active duty. Read with an understanding of the way audience and masculinity shaped the soldiers’ reflections, these fragments give us greater insight into the forms and extent of personal religious beliefs held by Australian soldiers. Continue reading →

Queensland’s Bible in State Schools Referendum – 1910

Posted on by
2
Members of the executive committee of Queensland's Bible in State Schools League

The executive committee of the Bible in State Schools League. They were all men but this photo fails to convey the importance of the work of women in the campaign. Source: John Oxley Library

My honours thesis, Queensland’s Bible in State Schools Referendum 1910: A Case Study of Democracy, is now available to download from the University of Sydney eScholarship Repository. In it I explore a fascinating era of Queensland’s history where women, Labour politicians and the Protestant clergymen of the Bible in State Schools League were key participants in a public debate about whether Bible lessons should be reintroduced in Queensland’s state schools. These lessons had not been held in public schools since the introduction of Queensland’s free, compulsory and secular education legislation in 1875.

I loved doing the research. At times I was sitting in the Fisher Library at University of Sydney silently remonstrating with the politicians as they were debating the issue in parliament. At other times I was incredulous. The Legislative Council spent twenty-one hours debating the issue and this was after the referendum had been passed by Queensland voters! I was a bit suspicious of the Hansard recorder. The debate was rather sparse at around two o’clock in the morning. Was he taking a cat nap?

Women were instrumental in the campaign for the passing of the referendum. The Bible in State Schools League was in financial trouble and turned to women to help them out. Not only did women rescue the organisation financially through their fundraising, they wrote letters to newspapers, were part of delegations who visited parliamentarians about the issue and were conspicuous as they manned the polling booths on the day of the referendum. However, while researching this referendum I was mindful of the fact that women do not all think the same way. Sure enough newspapers such as The Worker had letters from women who opposed the introduction of Bible lessons and expressed their opposition to the referendum to the Bible in State Schools women at the polling booths. Continue reading →

On Utterance

Quote

Posted on by
Reply

If ye be aware of a certain truth, if ye possess a jewel, of which others are deprived, share it with them in a language of utmost kindliness and good-will. If it be accepted, if it fulfil its purpose, your object is attained. If any one should refuse it, leave him unto himself, and beseech God to guide him. Beware lest ye deal unkindly with him. A kindly tongue is the lodestone of the hearts of men. It is the bread of the spirit, it clotheth the words with meaning, it is the fountain of the light of wisdom and understanding….

Baha’u’llah, Gleanings from the Writings of Baha’u’llah.

Australian Prime Ministers and Their Faith

Posted on by
3

Head and shoulders of Alfred Deakin

Australia’s second Prime Minister, Alfred Deakin, had deeply held, unorthodox religious beliefs. (Photo by Contributor(s): Swiss Studios, Melbourne [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons)

Each of us has a mental and/or spiritual framework which influences everything we do. Our culture and beliefs, whether absorbed in our childhood or carefully thought through and adopted as an adult, act in a complex way to affect our decisions throughout our lives.

In this respect our politicians are no different to every other member of society. We should expect that the beliefs of politicians, atheist, agnostic or religious will affect the decisions they make. This effect may be unconscious and subtle or it may be obvious to everyone.

The ABC television program Compass is running a two-part series about the religious beliefs of Australia’s Prime Ministers from the inception of this nation in 1901 to today’s Prime Minister, Tony Abbott. ‘God in the Lodge’ is a chronological overview that introduces the question of how religious our Prime Ministers have been and how this has affected their decisions.

‘God in the Lodge’ is the briefest of introductions to this area. It covers all twenty-eight Australian Prime Ministers over two episodes of only thirty minutes each. This is not a program about nuance. There is no room for coverage of the subtle influence of religion in Australian politics. It is not a criticism to say that ‘God in the Lodge’ does not dig deep. It is unusual for this kind of question to be raised on television in a country which rarely considers the role of belief in its public history. Committing the resources to raising this topic is welcome. Continue reading →

The Anzac Day Silence, Religion and Garland

Posted on by
17

At today’s National Ceremony for Anzac Day attendees will stand for one minute’s silence to remember all those who have lost their lives in wars and to reflect on what Anzac Day means. The minute’s silence has been part of Anzac Day since the first commemorations of Anzac Day on 25th April 1916. Digitisation of old documents allows us to see how the Anzac Day we know today was first conceived.

As I noted in my post, The Emergence of Anzac Day, planning for the first anniversary of the landing of Australian and New Zealand troops at Gallipoli started early in 1916. Queensland’s Anzac Day Commemoration Committee (ADCC) was formed at a public meeting in Brisbane on 10th January, 1916. This committee war chaired by the Premier of Queensland, T J Ryan, and included leaders of the Roman Catholic, Church of England, Presbyterian and Methodist churches, the Salvation Army, members of parliament, the mayors of Brisbane and South Brisbane, members of local councils and military representatives. The honorary secretary was an army chaplain, Canon D J Garland.

Canon David John Garland

Canon David John Garland

Canon Garland was a Church of England priest who had years of experience in public advocacy. He had been instrumental in campaigns which led to religious education being reintroduced in state schools in Western Australia (1893) and Queensland (1910). Most recently he had been invited to New Zealand to lead a campaign to have religious education reintroduced in schools there. The outbreak of World War I had derailed this campaign. Garland moved back to Brisbane and became a military chaplain.

Garland was asked by the Anzac Day Commemoration Committee in 1916 to devise a program which could be used throughout Queensland to commemorate Anzac Day. Committee member, H J Diddams recalled in 1921 that the program Garland submitted to the ADCC on February 18th included a minute’s silence (Diddams, p. 9). The ADCC encouraged towns and cities throughout Queensland to follow this program, the elements of which were publicised in newspapers such as The Brisbane Courier. Continue reading →

Captains of the Soul in Sceptical Times

Posted on by
8
Captains of the Soul: A history of Australian Army chaplains by Michael Gladwin, (Big Sky Publishing, 2013).

Captains of the Soul: A history of Australian Army chaplains by Michael Gladwin, (Big Sky Publishing, 2013).

The interaction between religious and non-religious beliefs in Australian society is complicated. It is often obscured by a public debate which in recent times has been punctuated by simple slogans, such as “Australia is a Christian country” or “separation between church and state”. Passion about these issues has periodically run high through Australia’s post European-settlement history. To gain a better understanding of secularism and religion in Australia we need to dig under the gushing of rhetoric to examine the actions of Australians.

Education is an important arm of the state in Australia. As I’ve noted in my review of the recently published book about religion in schools by Marion Maddox, Australian children  learned about God in their public school classrooms even in the times of allegedly “free, compulsory and secular education” in the late nineteenth-century.  We continue to have religious education in our public schools and now we have significant funding of religious schools as well as religious chaplains in our public schools.

Michael Gladwin’s new book, Captains of the Soul, brings attention to how religion is embedded in another important arm of the Australian state. Chaplains have been part of the defence forces during every major overseas war in which Australians have been officially involved. Gladwin tells of how the New South Wales government “bowed to significant public pressure” and allowed two chaplains to accompany the troops to Sudan in 1885, one from the Roman Catholic Church and the other from the Church of England. Eighteen chaplains accompanied colonial forces to the Boer War at the turn of the twentieth century. Continue reading →

Fresh Observations of War and Military

Posted on by
2
An army chaplain at work. Gallipoli, Turkey. c. 24 May 1915. Padre McKenzie of the 4th Battalion, AIF, burying a soldier in Shrapnel Gully, Gallipoli, Turkey c 24 May 1915. Image from Australian War Memorial.

An army chaplain at work. Gallipoli, Turkey. c. 24 May 1915. Padre McKenzie of the 4th Battalion, AIF, burying a soldier in Shrapnel Gully, Gallipoli, Turkey c 24 May 1915. Image from Australian War Memorial.

Mobilities and mobilisations in history is the theme of this year’s conference of the Australian Historical Association.  This is a very rich topic. The construction and maintenance of empires was based on the ability to move people and goods around the empire.  Subversion often draws on the ability to move also.

There have been some fascinating papers delivered at this conference on a very broad range of topics.  In today’s post I will concentrate on three absorbing presentations concerning the military. Michael Gladwin‘s started the session with a captivating paper, ‘”Captains of the Soul”: the mobilisation of Australian Army chaplains for Australia’s twentieth century wars’.  Midway through the paper the lights went out.  The motion sensors connected to the light detected no movement from us – we were fixated by Gladwin’s presentation. Continue reading →