Anglican clergy in Australia 1788-1850: building a British world
Anglican clergymen in Britain's Australian colonies in their earliest years faced very particular challenges. Lacking any relevant training, experience or pastoral theology, these pioneer religious professionals not only had to minister to a convict population unique in the empire, but had also...
| Summary: | Anglican clergymen in Britain's Australian colonies in their earliest years faced very particular challenges. Lacking any relevant training, experience or pastoral theology, these pioneer religious professionals not only had to minister to a convict population unique in the empire, but had also to engage with indigenous peoples and a free-settler population struggling with an often inhospitable environment. Previous accounts have caricatured such clerics - several of whom doubled as magistrates - as the imperial authorities' lackeys: "moral policemen", "flogging parsons". While the clergy did indeed make important contributions to colonial and imperial projects, this book shows that they explicitly rejected the subordination of Church to state, vigorously asserting their independence in relation to both religious duties and humanitarian concern. The author also demonstrates the clergy's vital contribution to the evolution of the new colonies in their economic development, and in the emergence of civil society and distinctive intellectual and cultural institutions and traditions. The clerical contribution was shaped by their social origins, intellectual formation and professional networks in an expanding settler empire, explored systematically here for the first time. What emerges is a much more nuanced understanding of the place of the Anglican Church in thehistory of colonial Australia than has previously been presented, shedding important new light on the religious, social and political history of both Australia and the British World of which it formed a part. Dr MichaelGladwin is Lecturer in History, St Mark's National Theological Centre, School of Theology, Charles Sturt University, Canberra. Sinews : funding, recruitment, backgrounds and motivation, 1788-1850. Anglican imperial designs? : funding, recruitment and national backgrounds ; Gentility, manners and the ideal colonial clergyman ; social background, education and motivation -- Clergymen in colonial Australia, 1788-1850. Ecclesiastical roles : rites of passage and public worship ; Flogging parsons? : chaplaincy, the magistracy and civil roles ; Clergy, culture and society ; Clergy and indigenous peoples -- Scenes of colonial clerical life : Australian clergymen and voluntarism, 1836-50. The impact of voluntarism ; Colonial quiverfuls : clerical family life ; Clerical identity, laity and voluntarism |
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| Item Description: | Title from publisher's bibliographic system (viewed on 21 Dec 2015) |
| ISBN: | 1782044299 |