CHRISTIANITY: CHRISTIANITY IN AUSTRALIA AND NEW ZEALAND

Christianity has developed in Australia and New Zealand along broadly similar lines. Such similarities include the occurrence of colonization at about the same time, largely by emigration from the British Isles; the early presence of major Christian denominations, both locally and in extending missionary activity in the South Pacific; periodic sectarian strife; and, by the end of the twentieth century, the clearly evident effect of secularizing influences. Important differences include the much greater geographical extent of Australia, the situation of the respective indigenous inhabitants, and the partly different ethnic background and denominational affiliations of immigrants.

Contacts between Christianity and Indigenous Cultures

British penal settlements were established in New South Wales on the east coast of Australia in 1788 and, on a smaller scale, in Van Diemen's Land (Tasmania) in 1803. During the nineteenth century, ex-convicts, free settlers, and government-assisted immigrants increased the population and spread it to Western and South Australia, Victoria, and Queensland.

The Aborigines—tribally and linguistically distinct groups scattered throughout Australia, with a population variously estimated between 300,000 and 750,000—were quickly displaced in the eastern colonies and reduced in numbers by disease, loss of hunting grounds, malnutrition, and brutality from settlers. Officials and missionaries found Aborigines to be enigmatic, and provision for religious observances in the settlements took slight account of them. Their seminomadism hindered missions and made it easy for settlers to assert that Aborigines had no substantive territorial claims. Missions, schools, and various measures, which sought simultaneously to isolate Aborigines from their own communities and segregate them from Europeans, had limited success during the nineteenth century.

From the late eighteenth century onward, whalers, sealers, and traders were attracted to New Zealand, inhabited by the Maori, who numbered between 70,000 and 100,000 in 1840. In that year New Zealand was annexed as a British colony, and Governor William Hobson signed the Treaty of Waitangi with northern Maori chiefs; subsequently, signatures were collected widely from other chiefs. The proceedings, the part played by missionaries, the meaning of the treaty's terms, and the treaty's contemporary relevance remain controversial. Disputes over land erupted into violence (at its most intense between 1860 and 1865), followed by extensive and unjust confiscation. Initial criticism of governmental action and settlers' attitudes by some church leaders, such as Octavius Hadfield, an Anglican missionary, became muted as the conflict proceeded. One legacy was widespread alienation of Maori from the British and their churches.

The Church Missionary Society had begun work among Maori in the far north of the North Island in 1814, partly at the behest of Samuel Marsden, a Church of England (Anglican) chaplain to the convict colony in New South Wales. In 1822, Wesleyan Methodists began work among the Maori, initially in the far north; both missions gradually extended southwards. Early Anglican and Methodist missionaries were firmly Protestant and evangelical, and the arrival in 1838 of Bishop Jean Baptiste Pompallier as the head of a Catholic mission generated anti-Catholicism and suspicion of French motives. Catholic missionaries, initially drawn from the Marist order, were, under Pompallier's guidance, more ready to accommodate native customs and often achieved closer identification with the Maori. Their impact was diminished by their relatively late arrival, the itinerant style of their ministry, Pompallier's administrative ineptitude, and, after 1850, the withdrawal of the Marist order from the diocese of Auckland, which comprised the upper half of the North Island and much of the Maori population.

By 1845 about half the Maori population was worshiping in Christian congregations. The general state of Maori society, the nature of the missionaries' impact, and the part played by other factors (e.g., war-weariness among the Maori, the attractions of literacy, improvements in the quality and methods of missionaries, and the role of Maori leadership) are debated by historians. Indigenous evangelists, catechists, and teachers significantly assisted conversions. The wives of missionaries played an important part in caring for their families, but also in having charge of mission stations when husbands were absent and in influencing Maori women and girls. The Maori often combined Christian ideas with their own traditional beliefs and practices, initially informally, but soon in reactive movements that combined secular and religious concerns. One of the earliest such movements, led by Papahurihia, later known as Te Atua Wera, emerged in the 1830s. Other movements followed, including that led by Pai Marire and Ringatu during the 1860s, and the movements associated with Rua Kenana and Tahupotiki Wiremu Ratana in the first and second decades of the twentieth century, respectively.

Church Development

By 1900 all the major denominations, and several minor ones, were represented in Australia. Anglican chaplains to the penal settlements arrived first; mostly evangelicals, they were precursors of the strong presence their version of Christianity has maintained in Australia. Their ministry to convicts, about a fifth of whom were women, was less successful than that offered to free settlers, where clergy initially found more support from laity than from military and civil authorities. An important stage was reached in 1836 when William Grant Broughton became the first and only Anglican bishop of Australia. His diocese was subsequently subdivided, and the dioceses (and later the general synod) were governed by synods of bishops, clergy, and laity.

Initially, no provision was made for Catholics, despite the presence of Irish convicts. In 1820, two Irish priests arrived in Sydney, but their activities were severely restricted. By 1828, Catholics in New South Wales constituted almost a third of the population. In 1833 William Ullathorne was appointed vicar-general; a year later John Bede Polding was designated bishop of Sydney. Dioceses for other Australian colonies were created in the 1840s. Governance remained the prerogative of bishops and clergy, among whom the Irish soon established a long-sustained predominance. Caroline Chisholm (1808–1877), a Catholic laywoman with a humanitarian concern for immigrants, provided a different style of leadership.

By 1803, Presbyterianism was established among Scottish immigrants in Sydney. John Dunmore Lang, who arrived in 1823, was a dominant, and sometimes dominating, figure in public and ecclesiastical life. By 1850, Presbyterianism was strongly represented, especially in Melbourne, but events in both Scotland and Australia made it prey to controversies and divisions, although these were mostly resolved over the next half-century. A national Presbyterian General Assembly first met in 1901 after wary negotiations over the respective functions of state and national assemblies. The initial Methodist class meeting was held in Sydney in 1812; the first minister arrived in 1815. An Australasian Conference first met in 1855; and in 1902 the Methodist Church of Australasia brought together the branches of Methodism, thirty years before Great Britain did so. By the 1830s several smaller denominations, notably Baptists, Congregationalists, and Quakers, were represented; Lutheranism brought by German migrants, was, like Methodism, especially strong in South Australia. By the close of the nineteenth century, Seventh-day Adventists, the Salvation Army, Brethren, and Unitarians added to denominational variety.

In nineteenth-century Australia the overwhelming majority of the population professed adherence to one of the major denominations. Anglicanism embraced many nominal adherents and infrequent worshipers, and it lost its quasi-establishment status to become one denomination among others. Methodism, on the other hand, shed vestiges of sectarianism to gain denominational status. Catholics and Methodists (especially the former), were initially overrepresented among the less affluent, while Anglicans and Presbyterians were slightly overrepresented among the more affluent.

Systematic colonization of New Zealand began in the 1840s. Two major settlements had ecclesiastical associations: Otago (1848) with Presbyterianism, and Canterbury (1850) with the Church of England; neither ended up religiously exclusive. George Augustus Selwyn, from 1841 to 1867 the first Anglican bishop of New Zealand, was a commanding, sometimes autocratic, figure. By 1869 the original diocese had been subdivided into six dioceses. A constitution of 1857, fostered by Selwyn and enacted without consulting the Maori, established the church in New Zealand as an autonomous province with close links to the Church of England and gave synodical representation to clergy and laity. In 1848 the Catholic Church in New Zealand was divided into two dioceses, based in Auckland and Wellington; dioceses in Dunedin and Christchurch followed later. Irish and Catholic identity were mutually reinforcing but were modified by the presence of English and French clergy and religious.

Presbyterianism, which began as a ministry to settlers, not a mission to the Maori, had its New Zealand beginnings in Wellington in 1840 and Auckland in 1842; during the 1850s and 1860s it spread more widely. Initially, Presbyterianism was organized in two separate bodies, one based in the southernmost provinces of Otago and Southland and the other covering the rest of New Zealand. Reunion moves faltered in the 1860s but succeeded in 1901. The early presence of Methodist missionaries, along with an emphasis on lay involvement, ensured that Methodism was active in the earliest years of settlement. The varieties of British Methodism were represented, but had united by 1913 when Methodism in New Zealand became an autonomous conference. The first Baptist church in New Zealand was formed in Nelson in 1851. The New Zealand Baptist Union was inaugurated in 1882. By 1900, other groups—Congregationalists, Churches of Christ, Quakers, Brethren, Seventh-day Adventists, Unitarians, and Lutherans—were represented in smaller numbers.

The social composition of the major churches in New Zealand was broadly similar to that of Australia, but the level of regular church attendance in New Zealand was lower than that in New South Wales, Victoria, and South Australia—as well as, for that matter, England and Scotland. The difference between Australia and New Zealand may be related to the slightly different denominational composition, since Methodists and Irish Catholics, more strongly represented in Australia, had higher church attendance figures than Anglicans.

Church, State, and Society

Debate on church-state relations in Great Britain extended to Australia and New Zealand. The most significant early measure in Australia was the New South Wales Church Act of 1836, which broke the Anglican monopoly of governmental financial aid and did not distinguish between the major denominations in providing funds to build churches and maintain clergy. Similar arrangements were made in other Australian colonies. South Australia began with a voluntary system and flirted briefly with state aid, but it set a precedent in 1851 by terminating such aid, which was phased out in other Australian colonies by 1895. Hobson, the first governor of New Zealand, was directed to guarantee "the most absolute toleration" to all denominations. Once representative government was in place in 1854, the House of Representatives affirmed "the privilege of a perfect political equality in all religious denominations" and declined responsibility for the Anglican bishop's stipend.

Controversy over the control and funding of education was also exported to the colonies. In Australia a pattern of state aid to denominational schools emerged. Erosion of such aid began in New South Wales in 1866 when separate boards for state and church schools were consolidated, existing denominational schools were regulated, and assistance was withheld from new church schools. In Victoria a secular public system was inaugurated in 1872, and in New South Wales state aid to denominational schools was withdrawn in 1880. Eventually all Australian colonies terminated state aid and established free, compulsory, and secular education at the primary level. In New Zealand aid was given to denominational schools during the Crown Colony period and was continued by some provincial governments until their abolition in 1876. The Education Act of 1877 stipulated that primary education should be free, compulsory, and secular; state aid was withdrawn.

While many Protestants in both countries supported state education in principle, Catholics and some Anglicans opposed it and developed schools at their own expense. Catholic schools, able to draw on religious orders for teaching staff, were more numerous and helped to reinforce Catholic community and identity. Especially in Australia, Protestant and Anglican secondary schools gained a long-lasting elite status. Behind the move to secularization in both countries was a dislike of sectarian squabbling, suspicion of Catholic and Anglican designs, fears of social divisiveness, inefficiencies and inequalities in existing systems, and the growing popularity in government circles of theories of secular education.

The secularizing of primary education, along with concerns about the effects of urbanization and falling church attendance, especially among workingmen, may have helped generate the sense of crisis among Christian leaders that arose in the 1870s. Moves to defend "Christian standards" were channeled into opposition to educational changes, evangelistic efforts, and moves to secure legislation on a range of issues including Sunday observance, temperance, gambling, prostitution, the age of consent, and indecent publications. Visions of what constituted a Christian society and how it was to be realized varied. Protestants and Catholics rarely cooperated. Few Catholics were prepared to support Protestant-led moves on gambling, sabbatarianism, and temperance. An economic depression during the 1890s helped generate concern about social justice, some of which was expressed in "Christian socialism." More generally, however, there was an emphasis on personal religion and morality and their outworking in public life. To this period belong the beginnings of church social-service agencies; Methodist "city missions" and the Salvation Army were conspicuous.

Although there were instances of denominational cooperation, which sometimes bridged the Catholic-Protestant divide, sectarian strife surfaced. Anti-Catholicism was evident in colonial New South Wales; in New Zealand suspicion first fastened on early French Catholic missionaries. Subsequent conflict was fed by various causes, including Protestant aversion to Catholicism, Catholic resentment of Protestant social and political ascendancy, the presence of a largely working-class Irish-Catholic subculture, strongly Protestant lodges and friendly societies, and disputes over education. On both sides were public figures with a propensity for inflammatory rhetoric: Daniel Mannix, archbishop of Melbourne from 1917 to 1963 (and coadjutor from 1913 to 1917), personified militant Catholicism. During World War I, conscription and the 1916 Easter Rising in Ireland fueled sectarian strife, which continued into the postwar years, sustained by anti-Catholic organizations.

Leadership in church and society up to around 1900 and for some time thereafter was predominantly male. In a few smaller denominations—Primitive Methodists, Bible Christians (a branch of Methodism), Salvation Army, and Unitarians—women were allowed to preach; from the 1890s onward, some larger Protestant denominations appointed women as deaconesses. Women were active in many roles, including evangelism, pastoral care, charitable work, overseas missions, and teaching, particularly in Sunday schools, which gained added importance in the wake of the secularization of public education at the primary level. In Catholicism, and on a much smaller scale in Anglicanism, women's religious orders, some led by outstanding women—including Mary McKillop (1842–1909) in Australia and Suzanne Aubert (1835–1926) in New Zealand—worked effectively in education, nursing, and charitable enterprises. In the closing years of the nineteenth century, various women's organizations emerged, some church-based, others in which churchwomen worked alongside other women in matters of common concern, such as temperance and women's suffrage. Measures facilitating female participation in church government did not follow generally or quickly, even after female suffrage was granted, initially in New Zealand in 1893.

World Wars, Economic Depression, and the Churches

A sense of national identity (among Protestants particularly), combined with imperial loyalty, was evident from around 1900. It became apparent in moves leading to the federation of the Australian colonies in 1901, and in New Zealand in support for the South African War (1899–1902). With few dissentients, mostly from smaller Christian bodies such as Quakers and Brethren, church leaders and representative assemblies strongly supported participation in both world wars, although more soberly during World War II. The disastrous Gallipoli campaign in 1915 to 1916 was speedily memorialized in the annual Anzac (an acronym from Australian and New Zealand Army Corps) Day observance, which blends religious and secular elements and now commemorates the dead in other conflicts also. Australian Lutherans during World War I and conscientious objectors in both countries and conflicts were victims of prejudiced patriotism. For some—chaplains, combatants, and church leaders—World War I was an unsettling experience, strengthening support for pacifism and the League of Nations during the interwar years.

Between the two wars lay the economic depression of the late 1920s and early 1930s. Despite financially restrictive budgets the churches provided relief measures, although as the depression deepened some church members criticized government policies. In New Zealand the Labour Party capitalized on support from the churches, and this was a factor in the party's electoral victory in 1935. In Australia, Ernest Burgmann, the Anglican bishop of Goulburn from 1934, emerged as an outspoken social critic and supporter of working-class aspirations. Some Catholics, influenced by their church's social teachings, envisaged a more just social order, but they also sought to curb Communist influence in trade unions. These efforts, in which B. A. (Bob) Santamaria, a leading and controversial lay intellectual, played a key role, were one cause of a major split in the Australian Labour Party in the 1940s and early 1950s and its political defeat and ineffectiveness until the 1970s. These events strained a long-standing alliance between the Labour Party and Catholicism, which had weakened as Catholics moved up the socioeconomic ladder.

Missionary work among the Maori resumed towards 1900, in some areas competing with Mormons and the Ringatu and Ratana movements. Assimilative policies were only slowly abandoned; measures such as the Anglican appointment of Frederick Augustus Bennett as bishop of Aotearoa in 1928 typically gave the Maori an enhanced but still limited role. Church-related secondary schools contributed towards the emergence of Maori leadership. Aborigines were subjected to drastic assimilative measures, including the removal of Aboriginal children for adoption or institutional care. Protestant and Catholic missions among Aborigines in northern Australia were reestablished beginning around 1900, with varying success. Among Europeans, an understanding of Aboriginal culture remained rare, and protests against the conditions under which many Aborigines lived was rarer. More hopefully, significant indigenous ministry had real beginnings, notably with the evangelist Uraiakurai and with James Noble, the first Aboriginal Anglican deacon.

Women, often in significant educational, medical, and missionary roles, outnumbered men in overseas missions, but the roles that women could take locally changed only slowly. In 1927 Winifred Kiek, a South Australian Congregationalist, was the first woman ordained in either country, although deaconesses increasingly exercised ministry in major Protestant churches after about 1900. In the Catholic and, to some extent, the Anglican Church, laywomen's organizations were supervised by clergy and bishops and confined to devotional, missionary, and charitable activities. Anglican and Catholic leadership, including leading laywomen, remained strongly supportive of traditional patterns of marriage, family, and women's roles, and they were more resistant to changes in divorce law than other denominations.

A higher birth rate, along with immigration after World War II, especially from Italy and other predominantly Catholic countries in Europe, buttressed Catholic numbers in Australia. Migration brought numerical strength, ethnic and ecclesiastical variety, and concomitant tensions with the Orthodox churches. New Zealand was less affected by such immigration because numbers were smaller. There was some leveling off of active membership in Protestant churches in the interwar years, but the majority of children were baptized and attended Sunday school. In both countries about 90 percent of all marriages were performed by a religious celebrant. Liberalizing trends in theology, present from the late nineteenth century, gained added strength in Protestantism, but less so among Anglicans. Conservative evangelicals, edged from influential roles in some theological colleges and leadership positions, established a network of bible colleges, summer conferences, and transdenominational organizations. The diocese of Sydney and its theological college, Moore College, emerged as guardians of conservative, confessional, and firmly Protestant Anglicanism within and beyond Australia.

The years between approximately 1945 and 1960 were comparatively placid and prosperous. During the immediate postwar years there was a strong desire to return to normalcy; rising affluence benefited some, and suburbs mushroomed. Fund-raising schemes financed the construction of church buildings and Catholic schools. Church life was relatively stable: theology, structures, and piety were still largely intact from earlier times. Missions, notably those led in both countries by the Australian Methodist Alan Walker or by Billy Graham, expressed and enhanced Protestant confidence. Traditional Catholic devotionalism was similarly buoyed up by revivalist missions led by local clergy and religious, and by overseas visitors like Father Patrick Peyton, who preached a "rosary crusade" in both countries.

Controversy, Change, and Challenge

The 1960s were labeled the "hinge years"—their cultural turbulence generated by longstanding trends and catalytic events, and their legacy compounded during subsequent decades. Technological developments, notably in contraception, television, computing, and electronic media, helped engender far-reaching social consequences. Customary patterns of employment, recreation, censorship, women's roles, and family life underwent change. Christians were as polarized as their fellow citizens on questions of race, culture, gender, and national identity, and likewise on specific issues like the Vietnam War, abortion, homosexuality, and free-market policies. In addition, Catholics faced the upheaval precipitated by the Second Vatican Council (1962–1965), strains on schooling systems, reaction to the birth-control encyclical Humanae Vitae (1968), allegations of sexual abuse by clergy and other religious, the dilution of Catholic distinctiveness, and a decline in vocations to the priesthood and religious life—along with a high dropout rate from both. Some laity responded by adopting an autonomous attitude towards belief and practice, others by maintaining a traditionalist stance; one official response has been the appointment of such trusty conservatives as George Pell, archbishop, successively, of Melbourne and Sydney and a cardinal since 2001.

Moves towards organic union, first mooted about 1900 and never entirely shelved, slowed. In Australia the two Lutheran denominations united in 1966, and in 1977 the Uniting Church brought together Methodists, Congregationalists, and about two-thirds of Presbyterians. In New Zealand, moves to achieve organic union between Anglicans, Churches of Christ, Congregationalists, Methodists, and Presbyterians stalled by 1981. National councils of churches, founded in New Zealand in 1941 and Australia in 1946, continue functioning, but with diminished support and vigor. Since the Second Vatican Council, Catholics participated in some joint ventures, including theological education and local, less formalized ecumenical endeavors. At the same time that reunion moves abated, the internal unity of major Protestant denominations became strained over various theological and moral issues, including the ordination of persons in same-sex relationships. Moreover, Pacific Islanders, Indonesians, Chinese, Koreans, and Vietnamese have established church communities in the region that are strongly attached to traditional beliefs and morality.

Pentecostalism, represented from the 1920s by numerically small denominations, the largest being the Assemblies of God, burgeoned from the 1960s, but gains in this sector of Christianity do not outweigh losses elsewhere. Pentecostalism, along with the charismatic movement in major denominations, forms one aspect of a strong resurgence in conservative evangelicalism. The foundation of "Christian schools" and the increase in parental home schooling are important aspects of this revival. From the 1960s and 1970s, large increases in state aid to schools outside the public system have helped increase their number, sustain their viability, and widen educational options. Some denominational schools have rejected integration with the state system on the grounds that it propagates secular values. Despite sniping from teachers' unions and opposition from organizations such as the Australian Council for the Defence of Government Schools, the provision of governmental assistance to schools outside the public system has continued. Complete reversal of this policy seems unlikely, not least because it would be politically hazardous.

Maori and Aborigines, increasingly urbanized, have become more outspoken about discrimination and land issues. Some in the churches have taken up their cause, especially the Conference of Churches (formerly the National Council of Churches) in Aotearoa, New Zealand, the Uniting Church in Australia, and the National Council of Churches in Australia. Beginning in the 1960s, all major denominations in New Zealand made structural changes to give Maori more determinative roles. In Australia, as governmental and ecclesiastical policies shifted from assimilation to self-determination, some Aborigines have been ordained by major denominations, and more genuinely indigenous expressions of Christianity have emerged. In both countries these changes have helped open the way to the deployment of indigenous art in Christian contexts.

Women have increasingly undertaken theological study and wider roles in church governance and ordained ministry. In New Zealand, women were ordained in the Methodist (1959) and Presbyterian (1965) churches shortly before their Australian counterparts. Among Australian Anglicans, controversy over ordaining women to the priesthood was more divisive and protracted than in New Zealand, where the first such ordinations were held in 1977, compared with 1992 in Australia. Penelope Jamieson became the first woman diocesan bishop in Anglicanism on her appointment to Dunedin in 1990. The Catholic and Orthodox churches and, where priesthood is concerned, some sections of Anglicanism, notably the diocese of Sydney, have resisted this change while utilizing the ministry of women in other ways. Especially in some smaller denominations and independent congregations, traditional views of women's roles find support from the predominantly male leadership and associated women's groups. Conversely, feminism has led some women to various responses, including seeking reform of existing structures, developing feminist theologies and liturgies, or abandoning the churches.

In both countries most major denominations are experiencing a decline in numbers of adherents as a proportion of the total population. Major denominations are also seeing changing patterns of attendance, with fewer people attending services weekly. All such denominations, but some more than others, have an aging population, and as a result Sunday-school enrollments have plummeted. Churches and congregations of an evangelical or charismatic character have a lower age profile. Censuses from 1971 onward show substantial increases in those indicating "no religion" or opting for an increasing number of non-Christian options. Denominational loyalty is less of a concern for younger generations, including some church leaders. Except among relatively recent immigrants, the linkage between ethnic identity and ecclesiastical affiliation has weakened. Rites of passage are less often observed in Christian settings, and the number of people who attend church occasionally is probably falling. In explaining the downturn, some scholars invoke theories of secularization variously interpreted; others stress accelerating cultural and social changes dating back to the 1960s. Some scholars also note the decline in support for voluntary organizations and the alleged corrosiveness of liberal theologies, while others focus on evidence for the survival of religious beliefs—"believing without belonging"—and suggest strategies for church growth accordingly.

Concluding Perspectives

There was much in nineteenth-century church life in Australia and New Zealand that was derivative. Until about 1900, the churches in Australia and New Zealand were substantially dependent on clerical personnel from abroad. Overseas newspapers, periodicals, and books fuelled local theological debates. While some immigrants were eager to shake off the shackles of their past, real and imagined, others preferred to follow familiar ways in church life. The main sources of influence and personnel for Protestants and Anglicans were England, Scotland, and Wales; for Catholics, Ireland and Italy; and for Australian Lutherans, Germany. The United States, too, played its part with the arrival of Seventh-day Adventists, Mormons, and Jehovah's Witnesses; the visits of American Protestant and Catholic revivalists; and the precedent that the Episcopal Church provided for the constitutional arrangements of colonial Anglicanism. There were local initiatives before 1900, but they did not extend to the creation of new denominations or major sectarian movements, although significant Maori reactive movements emerged. While much local church architecture was imitative, timber was sometimes used effectively for construction, interior enhancement, and furnishings. Some local musicians, while influenced by overseas styles, contributed original compositions to hymnody and church music. Where ministry is concerned, lay preachers and, among Anglicans, lay readers were widely used, and in Australia the Australian Inland Mission (Presbyterian) and Anglo-Catholic Anglicans developed forms of ministry adapted for ministry to settlers in the outback.

Overseas influences remain important and pervasive. Air travel and speedier communication via electronic media, tape cassettes, the internet, and video ensure that this is the case. Liberal, radical, and conservative theologians, feminists and their critics, world leaders in Pentecostalism and the charismatic movement, spiritual guides, and church leaders visit Australia and New Zealand frequently. But the situation has changed in two respects. Australians and New Zealanders, now firmly ensconced in leadership positions, are part of an international interchange. Especially in Australia, which has more substantial financial, institutional, and personnel resources, there are now theologians of international standing, including Charles Birch in Sydney and Elaine Wainwright, an Australian and head of the school of theology at the University of Auckland. Church leaders, clerical and lay, participate in international commissions, conferences, and consultations. Along with much that remains derivative, significant local initiatives in architecture, liturgy, religious dance, church music, theology, and spirituality have emerged, some displaying the influence of indigenous cultures and sensitivity to local natural environments. The transition from colonial dependence has led to interdependence and interaction rather than complete independence.

Estimating the impact and significance of Christianity and the churches on cultural and public life is a complex task. In Australia the poet Francis Webb and the painter Arthur Boyd, and in New Zealand James K. Baxter and Colin McCahon (in the same roles, respectively), are examples of the artists, dramatists, novelists, and poets who have drawn on the Christian heritage in richly varied ways. Among historians, sociologists, and social commentators, some claim too much for the influence of Christianity and the churches, others too little. Some see the influence of Christianity and Christian churches as predominantly conservative, while others highlight the espousal of radical causes by groups and individuals, and yet others stress the historically ambiguous record of the treatment of indigenous peoples, children, and women by religious institutions and some professionals.

Where influence is concerned, there are differences in extent and character over time, between social groupings, and from one region to another, especially in Australia. Statistics of attendance and participation have their uses, especially where they disclose trends, but they hardly touch and test the inner essence of religious faith and practice. All this said, some things are clear. Legislative enactments governing Sunday observance, censorship, abortion, gambling, alcohol, and homosexual behavior, once strongly backed by many Christians, have been progressively eroded, despite the opposition of Christian conservatives. In this respect, and more generally, public life has become more secular. Church leaders no longer have the extent of informal contact with politicians they once had; with fewer members (and therefore fewer potential voters), church leaders have less clout with government. Anglican cathedrals in both countries are often still the setting for important national and civic occasions, but only remnants of quasi-establishment status linger.

Even apart from strictly religious considerations there is more to be said. Church-related institutions—hospitals, schools, university residence halls, city missions and other welfare agencies, and voluntary organizations— have made important contributions in areas where government assistance is sometimes parsimonious. It is difficult to point to any one major reform or protest movement sponsored solely by churches, but some leaders and members have participated in such moves, and, on the basis of local and overseas contacts, have contributed valuable perspectives. Christians involved in such activities have had their values shaped and efforts upheld by the worship and fellowship of church communities. Although the major churches still have substantial financial and personnel resources, as well as a degree of public goodwill, they face an uncertain future. Their current weaknesses mirror their diminished, although still significant, influence in the culture and public life of Australia and New Zealand.

See Also

Australian Indigenous Religions, article on Aboriginal Christianity.

Bibliography

Black, Alan W., ed. Religion in Australia: Sociological Perspectives. Sydney, 1991.

Breward, Ian. A History of the Australian Churches. Sydney, 1993. With extensive bibliography.

Breward, Ian. A History of the Churches in Australasia. Oxford, 2001. The best single treatment of the topic, with comprehensive bibliography.

Carey, Hilary M. Believing in Australia: A Cultural History of Religions. Sydney, 1996.

Crumlin, Rosemary. Images of Religion in Australian Art. Sydney, 1988.

Davidson, Allan. Christianity in Aotearoa: A History of Church and Society in New Zealand. 2d ed. Wellington, 1997. Comprehensive in coverage, with bibliography.

Davidson, Allan K., and Peter J. Lineham. Transplanted Christianity: Documents Illustrating Aspects of New Zealand Church History. 3d ed. Palmerston North, New Zealand, 1997.

Donovan, Peter, ed. Religions of New Zealanders. 2d ed. Palmerston North, New Zealand, 1996.

Emilsen, Susan, and William W. Emilsen, eds. Mapping the Landscape: Essays in Australian and New Zealand Christianity, Festschrift in Honour of Professor Ian Breward. New York, 2000.

Harris, John. One Blood: 200 Years of Aboriginal Encounter with Christianity, A Story of Hope. Sydney, 1990.

Hilliard, David. "Australasia and the Pacific." In A World History of Christianity, edited by Adrian Hastings, pp. 508–535. Grand Rapids, Mich., and Cambridge, UK, 1999. Succinct survey with useful bibliographical note.

Jackson, H. R. Churches and People in Australia and New Zealand, 1860–1930. Wellington, New Zealand, and Sydney, 1987.

Kaye, Bruce, Tom Frame, Colin Holden, and Geoff Treloar, eds. Anglicanism in Australia: A History. Melbourne, 2002.

McEldowney, Dennis, ed. Presbyterians in Aotearoa, 1840–1990. Wellington, New Zealand, 1990.

Moore, Albert C. Arts in the Religions of the Pacific: Symbols of Life. London and New York, 1995. Introductory survey of the arts of indigenous peoples, with bibliography.

O'Farrell, Patrick. The Catholic Church and Community: An Australian History. 2d ed. Sydney, 1985.

O'Farrell, Patrick, and Deirdre O'Farrell, eds. Documents in Australian Catholic History, 1788–1968. 2 vols. London, 1969.

Piggin, Stuart. Evangelical Christianity in Australia: Spirit, Word, and World. Melbourne, 1996.

Thompson, Roger C. Religion in Australia: A History. 2d ed. Melbourne, 2002. Lucid and compact, stresses the generally conservative role of the churches.

West, Janet. Daughters of Freedom: A History of Women in the Australian Church. Sydney, 1997.

Colin Brown (1987 and 2005)