Beyond Big Billy

Bill Lawton’s real (if not explicitly argued) insight is that an emphasis on a discontinuous and futurist eschatology has had an impact on the way in which Anglicans from Sydney have responded to the rising tide of secularism since the 1960s – a period which does indeed have some strong echoes of the late 19th century. In between these two eras was the high-water mark of church influence in Australian, and in Sydney especially. In the midst of the Great Depression Sydney Anglicans like the extraordinary Rev R.B.S. Hammond at St Barnabas’ Broadway distinguished themselves in remarkable service of the poor. The 1950s in particular was a time in which Australian society seemed more congenial to the influence of the church than it had previously.

This was demonstrated by the dramatic impact of the Billy Graham crusade of 1959 – an event which had all the appearance of the dawn of a new glorious age of Christian social influence through the work of the Holy Spirit in the hearts of thousands of people who went forward in Sydney and Melbourne. More than 130,000 people made a commitment to Christ – a figure which represents nearly 2% of the Australian population at the time. Evangelical historian Stuart Piggin makes the case from the figures of the Australian Bureau of Statistics to show that there was a drop in alcohol consumption, extra-marital births and crime statistics during that time – signs as far as he is concerned that here was a genuine revival. Yet what looked like the herald of the new day turned out to be the evening star. The Graham crusade, at which a generation of the diocese of Sydney’s future leadership encountered Jesus Christ himself in a profound and life-changing way, coincided with a renewed impetus for secularisation and liberalisation in Australian society.

It would be impossible to understate the scale of the social changes that have occurred in a single generation, and which have direct impact on the church’s relationship with society. Anglicanism carries within its DNA an expectation that it is part of the social order and that it contributes to social cohesion. And yet along with other institutions that played this role in the old Australia, the church’s influence was now under attack. Australia’s development as a society of leisure had a lot to do with it – whereas once the churches were the hub of the local community’s social life, there were now many alternative way to make use of the freedom afforded by Sunday. The sexual liberation and the rise of feminism have been well-documented to the point of cliché. Successively, the churches failed to halt changes to laws providing for Sunday trading, no-fault divorce, later pub closing times, more gambling and casinos, the right abortion, rights for de facto marriages, homosexual practice and the removal of censorship. Whereas once the local media took a respectful interest in church affairs and sought the opinion of the clergy, it now could and wanted to tell a different story: of the decline and fall of a once mighty and vibrant institution. Attendance at church dropped away; though, somewhat mysteriously, belief in Christian teachings did not.

Observing this rapid loss of influence, it is not surprising that the churches feel somewhat besieged. They cannot keep the society Christianised, so they have sought to maintain their own identity and to negotiate their right to exist within the new social framework. Sydney Anglicans are not unique in this. Along with other churches they have sought to maintain their right to freedom from anti-discrimination laws. The vehement opposition of church groups to the proposal for a Bill of Rights under the Rudd government (2007-09) was largely because of the fear that the Bill of Rights would represent an opportunity for secularists to place churches under the anti-discrimination laws. Instead of considering what an opportunity for good the affirmation of human rights might mean for the vulnerable, the churches bemoaned the potential loss of their own privileged separation.

But Sydney Anglicans have not been inert in those decades. Far from it: they have pursued their understanding of mission with extraordinary vigour in those times. Sydney Anglicans faced their loss of social influence in the law and in the running of people’s workaday lives by reminding each other that that this was not what the call to make disciples of all nations meant anyhow. Perhaps more quickly than other Anglicans, these evangelical Anglicans realised that they depended on a divine work for the transformation of individuals. They did not become more politicised, but less. Where other Anglicans jumped on the bandwagon of progressivist social change, Sydney Anglicans saw this as craven capitulation to the spirit of the age. They did not pursue a reactionary politics, however. They pinned their hopes on evangelism and building the church through recruiting a generation of clergy.

Billy Graham was invited back in 1968 and 1979 and his brother-in-law Leighton Ford in 198? in an effort to recapture the atmosphere of the halcyon days of ‘59. These crusades were in themselves indicators of just how much had changed in a few short years. Whereas in 1959 the organisers could bus in thousands of nominal church-goers in hats and gloves, in 1968 and 1979 this was no longer a reality. In 1959 youth groups were full of young people for whom confirmation or baptism was a rite of passage. Only the children of church-goers remained by the 1970s. The conversions of 1959 had not arrested the slide into de-christianisation. The evangelists were now coming to a society for whom church involvement was a fading memory. Baptisms, church weddings and funerals conducted by clergy would in time become exceptions rather than the habit of Sydneysiders.

Sydney Anglicans pursued another strategy with better success – university ministry. This was not new for evangelical Anglicans of course - their presence at the leading British universities through the Inter-Varsity Fellowship (now the UCCF) was longstanding. The Sydney University Evangelical Union had long been the recruiting ground for Sydney Anglican leaders, lay and clerical. By the early 1970s, however, the EU had become distracted by a variety of social causes and had lost numbers. At the University of New South Wales, however, the new chaplain, Phillip Jensen, was beginning a remarkable ministry of evangelism, bible exposition and recruitment for ministry which would reach its height by the early 1990s. By the late 1980s, the Sydney University EU had likewise experienced a remarkable renovation of purpose, with evangelistic missions in 1977, 1980, 1981, 1984, 1989 and 1991 (check EU website). The national student movement, AFES, rapidly came to be dominated by graduates of the UNSW programmes. Moore College’s numbers doubled in a decade. That this occurred when churches everywhere – and especially Anglican churches elsewhere in Australia – were in rapid decline made the achievement all the more remarkable.

The fundamental principle of this new strategy was the priority of gospel work over and against ‘ordinary’ work. The key to the advancement of the gospel in the secular age was to recruit young people for full-time ministry from the university campuses. Put in nineteenth century terms, the emphasis was on clerical rather than on lay ministry. The Ministry Training Scheme (MTS) invited young university graduates to embark on a two-year ministry apprenticeship at the university prior to theological training. This trainee period would prove to be the formative experience for a generation of Anglican clergy, university workers and missionaries – diminishing the impact of Moore College somewhat in the process.

As a scheme for ensuring the evangelical character and the strength of churches and other institutions it was, and continues to be, very successful. It produced competent, energetic and well-trained clergy and church leaders with a clear sense of what to do. Other theological colleges around the country relied on handfuls of part-time students and middle-aged ordinands. Sydney’s ordinands were well under that median age and had signed up for a life time of arduous work in the Lord’s vineyards. It was a less obviously successful strategy for evangelising a nation. It produced churches that were (and are) well taught, but by making the paid minister the focus it disempowered the best evangelistic asset that the church had – the laity.
An underlying eschatology of separation was to blame. Valuing gospel over secular work was a decision for the eternal rather than the ephemeral – because ‘the time is short’ (1 Cor 7). 2 Peter 3 was a passage often invoked in this regard – explained as a description of the coming destruction of the heavens and the earth. This theology had enormous power as a critique of middle-class idolatry of careers in the hothouse environment of the university campus. However it served less well as a theology to help Christian people who actually had to work for a living. The contrast between clerical and lay vocations had not been as starkly drawn since the monastic movement in the medieval period.

Christianity in Australia has never been as politicised as it is in the USA or even in the UK. There are obvious exceptions such as Daniel Mannix (dates), Roman Catholic Archbishop of Melbourne for much of the 20th century, who openly intervened in political debates amid much controversy. But he is the exception that proves the rule. The relatively quietistic approach of Sydney Anglicans then should not be seen in isolation from that broader cultural pattern. Yet it is still the case that Sydney Anglicans find a particular basis for non-intervention in their theological understanding of the world. The transformation of the community at large is a happy by-product of preaching of the gospel for which thanks and praise ought to be given to God. It is certainly a proof of the truth of the gospel that it ‘works’ as a lifestyle. But the Christian task is to preach the gospel first and foremost as a matter of eschatological urgency. Social transformation is only ever a stopgap solution. Though Sydney Anglicans were prominent in the Lausanne movement which declared in 1974 that pursuit of social justice was not incompatible with preaching the gospel, they were not enthusiastic for political and social ends. They were in fact strong critics of a kind of Christianity that denied the pressing claims of the coming end of all things and instead become a social gospel.

Australia’s political culture is robustly democratic and so a quietist stance is not in itself problematic for the most part. Other groups tend to take up the cudgels against social injustices, and there are few issues in which the lines are sharply drawn. However, the cost of this passivity can be observed in the history of the Church of England in South Africa, with whom the diocese of Sydney has had historic links. CESA was not a racist church and it has long had black and white South African bishops. It did not provide a theological justification for the apartheid policies of the South African government. However, in the aftermath of the apartheid years, Bishop Frank Retief of CESA made this submission, in 1997, to a hearing of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission:

...when the government made legislation that accorded with our moral or biblical understanding, we supported them. However, on the great issue of justice for all, we were often insensitive. We had not made the connection between gospel and society…We were witnesses to how the Bible and its message can be misused to support an evil ideology. National government used the Bible to support its policies, to give the impression that they were a Christian government. But then so did some liberation theologians who finally supported violence as a means of continuing the struggle…Where we have been negligent, careless and insensitive to biblical injunctions and mandates as we have been, may the Lord graciously forgive us….The fact that the Bible was used in the past to condone injustice does not mean its true message may be ignored today…It is our belief that this day and hour calls for men and women of conviction and integrity to apply the message of the Bible more accurately and faithfully to our emerging society…

This is a courageous, impressive and moving statement from a cousin of the Sydney diocese recognising that the strategy of political withdrawal was a mistake for biblical Christians in South Africa, but recognising also that it was not the Bible itself that was to blame. Retief’s theological convictions are the same as Sydney’s, and he has often spoken in the pulpits of Sydney. What he notes here - and the message that Sydney needs - is that the theology of eschatological deferment runs the risk of becoming unable to say anything about the presence of a real evil.