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Upholding Protestantism: The Fear of Tractarianism in the Anglican Church in Early Colonial Queensland

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 March 2011

HOWARD LE COUTEUR
HOWARD LE COUTEUR
Affiliation:
Franciscan Hermitage, Ermophila, PO Box 162, Tabulam, NSW 2469, Australia; e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected]
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Abstract

Gender ideologies have been shown to be an important element in creating national identity. The settler population of early colonial Queensland was largely drawn from Protestant England and Scotland, and Catholic Ireland. In the process of social formation, Anglican men contributed to building a Protestant hegemony that strove to marginalise the Irish Catholic part of the population. In doing so they bracketed Tractarianism with Catholicism in an attempt to assert the essentially Protestant nature of Anglicanism. This paper explores three debates that took place in the public domain in the period 1855–65, and their impact on the local Anglican community and on social formation in the fledgling colonial society.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Ecclesiastical History , Volume 62 , Issue 2 , April 2011 , pp. 297 - 317
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2011

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References

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3 J. G. Steele, Brisbane town in convict days, 1824–1842, St Lucia, QLD 1975; W. Ross Johnston, Brisbane: the first 30 Years, Brisbane 1988.

4 Queensland census figures, 1871.

5 The early figure is from Johnston, Brisbane, 106. Later figures are from the Queensland census figures, 1871.

6 Howard Le Couteur, ‘Brisbane Anglicans, 1842–1875’, unpublished PhD diss. Macquarie 2007, 159–96.

7 David Parker and Angus Edmonds, Fortitude: Dr Lang's vision for Queensland and the United Evangelical Church, Brisbane 1999, 3, 6; D. W. A. Baker, Days of wrath: a life of John Dunmore Lang, Melbourne 1985.

8 Morrison, A. A., ‘Religion and politics in Queensland (to 1881)’, JRHSQ iv (1948–52), 455–70Google Scholar, and ‘Colonial society, 1860–1890’, Queensland Heritage i/5 (1966), 21–30Google Scholar.

9 Idem, ‘Religion’, 450–60.

10 Denis Cryle, The press in colonial Queensland: a social and political history, 1845–1875, St Lucia, QLD 1989, 25–37. For Protestant influence on the press see Morrison, ‘Religion’, 462.

11 Couteur, Howard Le, ‘Winning golden opinions: Bishop Tufnell's early career’, JRHSQ xvii (2001), 448–62Google Scholar.

12 Some have been identified as Anglo-Irish: idem, ‘Brisbane Anglicans’, 175, 258, 389.

13 O'Brien, God's willing workers, 9–15; Penny Russell (ed.), For richer for poorer: early colonial marriages, Melbourne 1994, 1–11; Robert Shoemaker, Gender in English society, 1650–1850: the emergence of separate spheres?, London–New York 1998; James Eli Adams, Dandies and desert saints: styles of Victorian manhood, Ithaca–London 1995.

14 Russell, For richer for poorer, 107, 109, 110, and A wish of distinction, Carlton, VIC 1994, 173.

15 For the role of the colonial journalist in the public sphere see Denis Cryle, ‘Colonial journalists and journalism: an overview’, in Denis Cryle (ed.), Disreputable profession, Rockhampton 1997, 10–16. Marilyn Lake makes a persuasive case along the lines I have argued here for The Bulletin: ‘The politics of respectability’, 117–122, but see Cryle's comments in Disreputable profession, 15.

16 Allen, Judith, ‘Discussion: “mundane” men: historians, masculinity and masculinism’, Historical Studies xxii/89 (1987), 617–28CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

17 The idea of performance is used by Russell in A wish of distinction to explore the ways in which the Melbourne social elite defined and maintained their ‘social’ space, and is a thread connecting different styles of Victorian manliness in Adams Dandies.

18 BC, 9 Nov. 1864. O'Connell was the president of the Legislative Council: http://www.adb.online.anu.edu.au/biogs/A050400b.htm, accessed 13 Jan. 2008.

19 MBC, 14 Apr. 1855. Wickham was the government resident, or local government administrator: http://www.adb.online.anu.edu.au/biogs/A020539b.htm, accessed 13 Jan. 2008.

20 BC, 5 May 1865.

21 Shoemaker, Gender, 216; Beverley Kingston, ‘Women and the history of the Churches in Australia’, in Sabine Willis (ed.), Women, faith and fetes, East Malvern 1977, 22; Teale, ‘Matron’, 119–20.

22 Kingston, ‘Women and the history’, 22; Shoemaker, Gender, 24–5; Teale, ‘Matron’, 118; Tosh, A man's place, 133.

23 MBC, 10 Mar. 1855.

24 The idea of a gathered congregation was not quite Anglican, but reflected the polity of Old Dissent (Congregationalists, Baptists, English Presbyterians and Independents).

25 MBC, 12 May 1855. For the socio-economic stratification of early Queensland Anglicanism see Le Couteur, ‘Brisbane Anglicans’, 197–233.

26 Janet Scarfe, ‘The diocese of Adelaide (and the west)’, in Brian Porter (ed.), Colonial Tractarians, Melbourne 1989, 90.

27 For Bishop Tyrrell see Ken Cable, ‘The diocese of Sydney and Newcastle’, ibid. 39, 42; for Irwin see n. 37 below.

28 There was a tendency in Tractarianism to increased clericalisation of church life: Norman Vance, Sinews of the spirit: the ideal of Christian manliness in Victorian literature and religious thought, Cambridge 1985, 16; Geoffrey Best, ‘Popular Protestantism in Victorian Britain’, in Robert Robson (ed.), Ideas and institutions of Victorian Britain: essays in honour of George Kitson Clark, London 1967, 116–18. For private judgement see Peter Toon, Evangelical theology, 1835–185: a response to Tractarianism. London 1979, 135–7.

29 Creyke held the bishop's licence. He was the civil registrar of births, deaths and marriages.

30 QDG, 7 Sept. 1867. The issue of whether women could vote for synod delegates was discussed in the context of the framing of a constitution for the diocese. Even if this decision is viewed as conventional legal wisdom of the time it nevertheless confirmed the nexus between gender and participation in the public sphere.

31 MBC, 10, 31 Mar. 1855. For women signatories see Le Couteur, ‘Brisbane Anglicans’, 297 n. 28.

32 Adams, Dandies, 74–106; Yates, Nigel, ‘“Jesuits in disguise”? Ritualist confessors and their critics in the 1870s’, this Journal xxxix (1988), 202–16Google Scholar. The undue influence of Tractarian priests over women had its origin in their encouragement of spiritual direction and auricular confession. These practices came to notice in women's religious communities in the Church of England from the mid-1840s onwards. Bishop Samuel Wilberforce excluded Pusey from the convent at Clewer on these grounds in 1853. See A. M. Allchin, The silent rebellion: Anglican religious communities, 1845–1900, London 198, 71–3. Jeremy Gregory addresses hostility to Tractarianism in his ‘Gender and the clerical profession’, in R. N. Swanson (ed.), Gender and Christian religion (Studies in Church History xxxiv, 1998), 235–71. See also Paz, Popular Anti-Catholicism, 131–52.

33 A. E. Selwyn, an ordinand who stayed with Irwin in 1851, suggests this: Selwyn letters, Sydney 1902; www.adbonline.anu.edu/biogs/A060118b.htm, accessed 3 Feb. 2008.

34 Hilliard, David, ‘UnEnglish and unmanly: Anglo-Catholicism and homosexuality’, VS xxv (1982), 181–210Google Scholar. The title of Hilliard's article comes from Geoffrey Best's comment on Kingsley's attitude that ‘the sacerdotal system was unmanly, unEnglish and unnatural’. Best's article on popular Protestantism is an elegant delineation of the issues: ‘Popular Protestantism’, 115–42.

35 MBC, 10 Mar. 1855.

36 Ibid. 4 Aug. 1855.

37 H. O. Irwin: Cambridge BA; MA 1843; curate, Earnley, Sussex, 1845–6; SPG missionary, Singleton, NSW, diocese of Newcastle, 1850; Brisbane, 1850–5; Hagley, Tasmania, 1855–82. See A. P. Elkin, The diocese of Newcastle, Glebe 1955, 142, 144, 155, 167, 177, 187, 739, 741.

38 E. R. Wyeth, Education in Queensland, Melbourne, c. 1955; J. R. Lawry, ‘Bishop Tufnell and Queensland education, 1860–1874’, in E. L. French (ed.), Melbourne Studies in Education, 1966, Melbourne 1966, 181–203; Gawne, P. C., ‘State aid and primary education in Queensland, 1860’, Journal of Religious History ix/1 (1976), 50–64CrossRefGoogle Scholar; K. Rayner, ‘The history of the Church of England in Queensland’, unpubl. PhD diss. Queensland 1962, accessible online at www.anglicanarchives.org.au/raynerthesis.htm

39 Gawne, ‘State aid’, 52; for Bowen see www.adbonline.anu.edu.au/biogs/A030192b.htm, accessed 3 Feb. 2008.

40 Henry Buckley, MBC, 21 Feb. 1860.

41 Charles Coxen, Thomas de Lacy Moffat, John Kent, R. G. W. Herbert, Arnold Weinholt, Nehemiah Bartley and George Thorn supported limited state aid: editorial, ibid. 8 May 1860.

42 Paradoxically, it passed with strong Anglican support: Lawry, ‘Bishop Tufnell’, 193. See also the speech by R. R. Mackenzie at the meeting held at St John's church: MBC, 9 Nov. 1864.

43 Gawne, ‘State aid’, 56–62. For Tufnell see http://www.adb.online.anu.edu.au/biogs/A060329b.htm, accessed 13 Jan. 2008.

44 MBC, 15 Sept., 4 Oct. 1860; Lawry, ‘Bishop Tufnell’, 181.

45 The editor of the Courier was George Wight, a Congregational minister and vigorous campaigner for the abolition of state aid and denominational education: MBC, 3 Nov. 1860.

46 All these issues were aired at the visitation of the metropolitan and bishop of Sydney, Bishop Frederic Barker, in July of 1864: ibid. 19, 23, 25 July, 20 Aug. 12 Oct. 1864.

47 The bishop made these claims at a meeting at Ipswich to discuss the appointment of a successor to the Revd Lacy Rumsey: ibid. 6 Dec. 1864. The Roman Catholic bishop used similar logic for his claims to authority when he was dealing with dissident parishioners, also in Ipswich, when he said: ‘I am a sacred person; I have been ordained and received the Holy Ghost: anyone attacking my character commits a most gross and sacrilegious act.’ Whereas Bishop Tufnell based his authority on civil law, Bishop Quinn rested his on his episcopal ordination. For Quinn see T. L. Suttor, Hierarchy and democracy in Australia, 1788–1870, Melbourne 1965, 290.

48 MBC, 21 Oct. 1864.

49 Tufnell was a contemporary of the Tractarians R. W. Church and A. Mackonochie at Wadham, the curate of the Revd G. A. Denison, and friend of Bishop W. K. Hamilton, the first openly Tractarian bishop in England. He was always suspected of Tractarian sympathies, although he never publicly proclaimed them. To use Joh Bjelke Peterson's apt phrase, ‘if you fly with the crows, you get shot with the crows’.

50 Norman, Anti-Catholicism, 105; Best, ‘Popular Protestantism’, 117.

51 Letter signed ‘J’, QDG, 29 Sept. 1864.

52 Letter signed ‘Vivis Sperandum’, ibid. 25 Oct. 1864.

53 MBC, 12 Oct. 1864. Lewis Bernays was clerk to the Legislative Assembly: http://www.adb.online.anu.edu.au/biogs/A030141b.htm, accessed 13 Jan. 2008.

54 Editorial, MBC, 3 Oct. 1864; article on the meeting, 7 Oct. 1864; editorial, 12 Oct. 1864. For anti-Catholic sentiment see Bridges, Barry, ‘John Dunmore Lang's crusade to keep Australia Protestant’, Church Heritage xi/3 (2000), 146–54Google Scholar.

55 Editorial, QDG, 11 Oct. 1864.

56 Dispatch 1759, Queensland, 18 Dec.1864, CO 234/11: Australian Joint Copying Project, reel no 1912, Australian National Library.

57 Speech before Queensland parliament, 9 Aug. 1865: The Queensland years of Robert Herbert, premier: letters and papers, ed. Bruce Knox, St Lucia, QLD 1977, 224.

58 Mackenzie, an Anglican, served as chairman of the Board of Education, and later as premier. He was speaking in defence of national education: MBC, 22 Oct. 1864.

59 Ibid. 24 Oct., 5 Nov. 1864, citing a letter to the Darling Downs Gazette.

60 Notable was R. R. Mackenzie's approving assessment of the writings of the Brisbane Presbyterian minister the Revd B. G. Wilson on education in Ireland, and Lewis Bernays's defence of ‘Dissenters’: MBC, 9 Nov. 1864. For the creation of a Protestant hegemony see Morrison, ‘Religion and politics’, 455–70, and Ely, R., ‘The forgotten nationalism: Australian civic Protestantism in the Second World War’, JAS xx (1987), 59–69Google Scholar, esp. pp. 68–9.

61 Linda Colley, Britons: forging the nation, 1707–1837, New Haven–London 1992, 11–54, and ‘Britishness and otherness: an argument’, Journal of British Studies xxxi (1992), 309–29Google Scholar.

62 Editorial, QDG, 7 Oct. 1864.

63 Pressure from the laity was not the only factor contributing to the development of synodical government. Australian bishops had met as early as 1850 to discuss the issue, and Bishop Tufnell had himself raised it in 1864 without convincing his clergy and leading laity. I thank the anonymous reviewer of this article for this clarification.

64 A. E. Bridge, ‘The nineteenth-century revivification of Salisbury Cathedral: Walter Kerr Hamilton, 1841–1854’, in D. Marcombe and C. S. Knights (eds), Close encounters: English cathedrals and society since 1540, Nottingham 1991, 137–90; J. Wolffe, ‘“Praise to the holiest in the height”: hymns and church music’, in J. Wolffe (ed.), Religion in Victorian Britain, V: Culture and empire, Manchester 1997, 59–99.

65 Scarfe, ‘Adelaide’, 75–104; Grant, ‘Melbourne’, 63–74; Pender, Graeme, ‘Improvisatory musical practices in Australia's Church of England’, JRAHS lxxxxiii (2007), 77–93Google Scholar.

66 Another that was becoming common was Hymns ancient and modern: Scarfe, ‘Adelaide’, 90. Both hymn books were considered to be Tractarian productions.

67 BC, 15 Apr. 1865. Hamilton's views, as expressed in a diocesan charge, were the origin of the dispute in Salisbury diocese, aired in the Bridport News and the Dorset, Devon and Somerset Advertiser on 28 January and 4 February respectively. The hymn book was evidence of his ‘unsound’ theology. For this background see BC, 29 Apr. 1865. This is an excellent example of the maintenance of close links between Queensland immigrants and their places of origin.

68 Letter signed N. W. W., BC, 15 Apr. 1865.

69 Ibid. 25 Apr., 3 May 1865. The theological inaccuracies of the letter were pointed out by other correspondents.

70 Ibid. 15 Apr. 1865.

71 H. T. Kerr (ed.), Readings in Christian thought, Nashville, Tn 1966, 245; John Macquarrie, Mary for all Christians, London 1991, 51–77. For the significance of the doctrine to Australian Catholics, especially the Irish, see John N. Moloney, The Roman mould of the Australian Catholic Church, Carlton, VIC 1969, 94–102.

72 BC, 21 Apr. 1865. The parishioner was Abraham Fitzgibbon, the Queensland Commissioner for Railways.

73 Ibid. 25 Apr. 1865.

74 Ibid. 29 Apr. 1865.

75 Ibid. 5 May 1865.

76 Ibid. 1, 2, 3 June 1865.

77 Wolffe, Protestant Crusade, 107–44, esp. p. 113; Singleton, J., ‘The Virgin Mary and religious conflict in Victorian Britain’, this Journal xliii (1992), 16–34Google Scholar; Gregory, ‘Gender and the clerical profession’, passim.

78 Contemporary Protestant attitudes to Catholic teaching and devotional practices are expressed in letters signed Ex Dissentientibus to the Sydney Morning Herald in the wake of the promulgation of the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception: SMH, 7, 8, 14, 18 May 1855. For anti-Catholic sentiment with a violent response see Boer, Catherine, ‘An early clergyman of the Hunter’, JRAHS lxxii (1987), 130–48Google Scholar, and Bridges, ‘John Dunmore Lang's crusade’, passim.

79 Wolffe, Protestant crusade, 109–10.

80 The Sydney Morning Herald extracted passages on the promulgation of the doctrine from the London Times and The Examiner.

81 W. M. Cowper, Frederic Barker, D. D. bishop of Sydney, London 1888, 111–12.

82 A.deQ. Robin, Charles Perry, bishop of Melbourne, Perth 1967, 133.

83 SMH, 8 May 1855.

84 SMH, 17, 14 May 1855.

85 Moloney, Roman mould, 100, 102.

86 This is the substance of the argument of Ex Dissentientibus.

87 Wallis, Popular anti-Catholicism, 26–7. For anti-Catholic literature see Gregory, ‘Gender and the clerical profession’, 252–4.

88 Carol Marie Engelhardt, ‘Victorian masculinity and the Virgin Mary’, in Andrew Bradstock, Sean Gill, Anne Hogan and Sue Morgan, Masculinity and spirituality in Victorian culture, London 2000, 44–57.

89 Adams, Dandies, 98, 101, 103–4, 108; Barker, Charles, ‘Erotic martyrdom: Kingsley's sexuality beyond sex’, VS xliv (2002), 467–9Google Scholar. Even some Catholics had difficulties with clerical celibacy: Edmund Campion, Australian Catholics, Ringwood, VIC (1987) 1988, 108–9. Kingsley was bothered by sexual purity itself, as in Newman's ideal of clerical celibacy: John Maynard, Victorian discourses on sexuality and religion, Cambridge 1993, 89, 143.

90 Maynard, Victorian discourses, 89, 94, 143; Buckton, Oliver S., ‘“An unnatural state”: gender, “perversion”, and Newman's Apologia pro vita sua’, VS xxxv (1991–2), 359–83Google Scholar. Barker (‘Erotic martyrdom’, 467, 469) draws attention to Kingsley's ‘fervent anti-Catholicism’. For the rhetoric of Tractarian unmanliness see Hilliard, ‘UnEnglish and unmanly’, 181–210. Adams has reservations concerning Hilliard's interpretation: Dandies, 74–106. For the inspection of convents see Walter L. Arnstein, Protestant versus Catholic in mid-Victorian England: Mr. Newdegate and the nuns, Columbia–London 1982, passim.

91 Macquarrie, Mary for all Christians, 38–9, 120.

92 Pietro Corsi, Science and religion: Baden Powell and the Anglican debate, 1800–1860. Cambridge 1988, 218. Miracles were an important part of Baden Powell's thinking, when science was increasingly used to question belief in miracles. Corsi deftly outlines the situation.

93 Walter Houghton, The Victorian frame of mind, New Haven–London (1957) 1985, 54–8; Colley, Britons, 18–30, 324–34, 368–9. Houghton argues that the fear of revolution contributed to the passage of the Reform Act in 1832.

94 Paz, Popular Anti-Catholicism, 55; Norman, Anti-Catholicism, 16–19.

95 Paz, Popular Anti-Catholicism, 3; Colley, Britons, 11–54.

96 Paz, Popular Anti-Catholicism, 106–7, 137.

97 See n. 30 above.

98 O'Brien, Anne, ‘Missionary masculinities, the homoerotic gaze and the politics of race: Gilbert White in Northern Australia, 1885–1915’, Gender and History xx (2008), 74–5Google Scholar.

99 As far as I am aware there has been no scholarly study of colonial freemasonry. For founding members of lodges see E. W. H. Fowles and E. G. White, The jubilee of English freemasonry in Queensland, Brisbane 1909.

100 Sherlock, ‘“Leave it to the women”’, figure 1.

101 Ibid. 14, 15, 18.

102 Le Couteur, ‘Brisbane Anglicans’, 359–93.