Denominational Differences in Australia: State Support and the "Church Acts"

Christian denominations arrived in the lands now known as Australia in 1788, as part of the British invasion of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander territories. Over the following century, as six British colonies were established on the continent, many of the cultural forms, institutional structures, and rivalries of British denominations were reproduced. Until the twentieth century, the major Australian denominations imported most of their clergy, hymns, liturgies, books, and theological debates from Britain. Divisions between High, Low, and Broad Church Anglicans; between Wesleyan Methodists and the breakaway Methodist denominations; between Irish, English, and European Roman Catholics; between Particular and General Baptists; and between the Church of Scotland and Free Presbyterians were all faithfully reproduced in the Australian denominations. Yet even as British denominational cultures were transplanted, they were also shaped by the new context of the colonies.

On 26 January 1788, Captain Arthur Phillip, commandant of the First Fleet, proclaimed the establishment of the colony of New South Wales and took an oath to uphold the Protestant succession. The Church of England was thus acknowledged as the Established Church within the colony of New South Wales, and for several decades, it faced little competition. The first Methodist minister, Samuel Leigh, did not arrive in New South Wales until 1815, when he received a frosty reception from the governor (O'Brien 56). A Presbyterian church was not built on Australian soil until 1830. A Catholic priest, sent to the colony as a convict, was permitted to hold mass in 1803–04, but this permission was revoked after Irish convicts used his services to plan a revolt. Catholic priests would not be permitted to minister again in New South Wales until the 1820s. This delay created space for strong traditions of lay independence and leadership to develop in Australian Catholicism (Breward 69–70).

In spite of the official support given to the Church of England, the conditions of colonial society created challenges for Anglican dominance. With a desperate shortage of clergy, the mostly evangelical Church of England clergy were open to co-operation with like-minded Nonconformists. In addition, in the first half of the nineteenth century, increasing numbers of Roman Catholic and Nonconformist clergy and other free settlers arrived, many of whom actively opposed the established status of the Church of England (Carey 339–40).

These settlers found support from Governor Richard Bourke, who arrived in the colony of New South Wales in 1831. Bourke, an Irishman and a liberal Anglican, was alert to the dangers of sectarianism. By the 1830s, at least a fifth of the settler population was Roman Catholic, and Bourke became convinced that if the government continued to exclusively support the Church of England, sectarianism would flourish. Bourke's solution was to propose legislation to "authorize the issue from the Revenue of the said Colony of sums to be supplied in aid of the building of Churches and Chapels and of the maintenance of Ministers of Religion" ("Bourke Church Act" [1836]). Similar acts were passed shortly afterwards in Van Diemen's Land (Tasmania) and Western Australia. In South Australia, the so-called Paradise of Dissent, where half the population were adherents of Nonconformist denominations, denominations were also given access to government funds for church building and ministerial salaries (Cruickshank 298). Throughout the colonies, government funds supported significant growth in the four largest denominations, with extensive church-building programs and clergy recruitment in the following three decades.

Within the churches, the question of state aid was a divisive issue, reflecting the different ways in which particular denominations understood the relationship between church and state. William Grant Broughton, first Bishop of Australia and a High Churchman, fought fiercely against the passing of the Church Act while he was still the archdeacon of New South Wales (Cable 1966). He feared not only the loss of status by the Church of England but the growing influence of the Roman Catholic clergy, buoyed by the Relief Act and by financial support from the Society for the Propagation of the Faith.

Other denominations took a variety of positions in relation to government funding. Baptists and Congregationalists...