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Australian Anglican Clergymen, Science and Religion, 1820–1850*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 January 2016

Michael R. Gladwin
Michael R. Gladwin*
Affiliation:
University of Cambridge
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Extract

The second quarter of the nineteenth century has long been recognized as a formative period for public discussion of the relationship between science and religion, particularly in emerging sciences such as geology, where new evidence raised questions about the interpretation of the Bible. Recent scholarly studies of scientific publishing, theologies of nature and links between missionaries and scientific endeavour have drawn attention to various ways in which the relationship between religion and science was understood during the period. A common theme has been the key role of clergymen in public discourse. A lacuna in this literature, however, has been analysis of colonial sites in which these debates took place. In colonies such as New South Wales, for example, public discussion of these issues was dominated by Anglican clergyman-scientists. Yet they have attracted little attention from scholars.

Type
Research Article
Information
Studies in Church History , Volume 46: God’s Bounty? The Churches and the Natural World , 2010 , pp. 293 - 306
Copyright
Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 2010

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Footnotes

*

Thanks are due for the support of the Australian Research Theology Foundation and the Cambridge Commonwealth Trust, without which this paper could not have been written, and to Professor David Bebbington for helpful comments and criticisms.

References

1 For a useful overview and bibliography, see Rupke, Nicolaas A., ‘Christianity and the Sciences’, in Gilley, Sheridan and Stanley, Brian, eds, Cambridge History of Christianity. 8: World Christianities c. 1815 – c. 1914 (Cambridge, 2006), 164–80 Google Scholar; Hilton, Boyd, A Mad, Bad and Dangerous People? England, 1783–1846 (Oxford, 2006), 248–49, 339–41, 440–60, 694–96.Google Scholar

2 Livingstone, David N., Hart, D. G. and Noll, Mark A., eds, Evangelicals and Science in Historical Perspective (Oxford, 1999)Google Scholar; Cantor, Geoffrey et al., Science in the Nineteenth-Century Periodical: Reading the Magazine of Nature (Cambridge, 2004)Google Scholar; Fyfe, Aileen, Science and Salvation: Evangelical Popular Science Publishing in Victorian Britain (Chicago, 2004)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Sivasundaram, Sujit, Nature and the Godly Empire: Science and Evangelical Mission in the Pacific, 1795–1850 (Cambridge, 2005).Google Scholar

3 Notable exceptions include Ann Mozley’s seminal ‘ Evolution and the Climate of Opinion in Australia, 1840–76’, Victorian Studies 10 (1967), 411–30 Google Scholar; Finney, C. M., To Sail beyond the Sunset: Natural History in Australia, 1699–1829 (Adelaide, 1984), 184, 187 Google Scholar; idem, Paradise Revealed: Natural History in Nineteenth-Century Australia (Melbourne, 1993). 6–9 Google Scholar; Frame, Tom, Evolution in the Antipodes: Charles Darwin and Australia (Sydney, 2009)Google Scholar, ch.6.

4 Quarterly 1.1, 4.

5 Quarterly 1.1, 3.

6 Quarterly 1.1, 7–15.

7 Quarterly 1.2, 192.

8 Berry, Alexander, ‘On the Geology of Part of the Coast of New South Wales’, in Field, Barron, ed., Geographical Memoirs on New South Wales (Sydney, 1825)Google Scholar; Cunningham, Peter, Two Years in New South Wales, 2nd edn (London, 1827)Google Scholar. For Hutton’s early uniformitarian ideas, see Hutton, James, A Theory of the Earth (London, 1785).Google Scholar

9 Quarterly, 1.2, 133–34.

10 Buckland, William, Vindiciae Geologicae (London, 1820), 25–33 Google Scholar; see also Geology and Mineralogy considered with reference to Natural Theology, 3rd edn, 2 vols (London, 1858), 1: 13–31.Google Scholar

11 Quarterly, 1.4, 376–77.

12 Quarterly, 1.2, 3, 194.

13 Ibid. 194–98.

14 Ibid, (emphasis in original).

15 Quarterly, 1.1, v-vi. The subscription list included the governors of New South Wales and Van Diemen’s Land, the Chief Justice, scientists such as Alexander Macleay, all major newspaper editors and the leading gentry of New South Wales.

16 Murray’s Austral-Asiatic Review, August 1828; The Tasmanian, 1 August 1828.

17 Lyell, Charles, Principles of Geology, 3 vols (London, 1830–33).Google Scholar

18 1833 Calendar and Directory of New South Wales (Sydney, 1833).Google Scholar

19 For the contributions of Presbyterian ministers to colonial intellectual life, see Roe, Michael, Quest for Authority in Eastern Australia, 1835–1851 (Melbourne, 1965), 140—81 Google Scholar. In contrast, Roman Catholics and Nonconformists, both clerical and lay, contributed relatively little during this early period to public discussion of religion and science.

20 Sydney Monitor, 13 and 20 July 1833, quoted in Gascoigne, John, The Enlightenment and the Origins of European Australia (Cambridge, 2002), 89–90.Google Scholar

21 The best introduction to Clarke and his scholarship is Moyal, Ann, ed., The Web of Science: The Scientific Correspondence of the Rev. W.B, Clarke, Australia’s Pioneer Geologist, 2 vols (Melbourne, 2003).Google Scholar

22 The best account of the Society’s role in providing Australian clergymen, both High Church and Evangelical, is Shaw, G. P., Patriarch and Prophet: William Grant Broughton, 1788–1853 (Melbourne, 1978), chs 6–9.Google Scholar

23 Moyal, Web of Science, 1: 15–16, 51–54. Correspondents included luminaries such as Adam Sedgwick, Charles Darwin, Richard Owen and the American geologist James Dwight Dana.

24 The only scholarly analysis of Clarke’s journalism is Michael Organ, ‘W. B. Clarke as Scientific Journalist’, Historical Records of Australian Science 9 (1992), 1–16; cf. Moyal, Web of Science, 1:10–13.

25 Chambers, Robert, Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation (London, 1844).Google Scholar

26 Herald, 23 October 1841.

27 Herald, 16 March 1846. See also 27 March and 3 April 1846.

28 Herald, 18 November 1841.

29 Herald, 7 April 1843 (emphasis in original).

30 Compare Clarke’s developing views on the age of Australia: Herald, 8 October 1842; 3 January, 7 April 1843; 27 March, 3 April 1846; 6 December 1847.

31 Herald, 8 October 1842 (emphasis in original). See also 19, 26 October, 11, 19 November, 9 December 1842.

32 Herald, 8 September 1842 (emphasis in original).

33 Clark, John Willis, The Life and Letters of Adam Sedgwick, 2 vols (London, 1890), vol. 1, ch. 8.Google Scholar

34 Herald, 30 November, 6 December 1847.

35 Herald, 7 April 1846.

36 Herald, 3 October 1846.

37 Herald, 10 November 1846.

38 Herald, 10 January, 12 February 1842; 10 November, 1 December 1846.

39 Herald, 10 November 1846.

40 Herald, 27 March 1846.

41 Herald, 1 January 1847.

42 Herald, 23 October 1841.

43 Stanley, Brian, ‘Commerce and Christianity’: Providence Theory, the Missionary Movement, and the Imperialism of Free Trade, 1842–1860’, HistJ 26 (1983), 71–94, at 78.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

44 For examples of criticism and debate generated by Clarke’s articles, see Herald letters and editorials for 21 December 1841, 10 January 1842, 31 January 1847.

45 Herald, 30 November, 6 December 1847. It should be noted, however, that after the 1850s Clarke moved towards a uniformitarian position, in part due to Macleay’s influence and friendship.

46 See, for example, Clarke’s criticisms of Polish explorer Strzelecki’s geological conclusions: Herald, 16, 27 March, 3 April 1846.

47 The Atlas, 16, 30 January 1847; Herald, 31 January 1847.

48 Broughton, W. G., The Present Position and Duties of the Church of England: A Sermon Preached in Canterbury Cathedral, on Thursday September the 17th, 1835 (London, 1835)Google Scholar, quoted in Mozley,’Evolution’, 417.

49 Mozley, ‘Evolution’, 418; Shaw, Patriarch and Prophet, 29–30. See also, in this volume, Keith A. Franics,’William Paley, Samuel Wilberforce, Charles Darwin and the Natural World: An Anglican Conversation’, 353–65.

50 Full title: The Sydney Guardian: A Journal of Religion, Literature and Scientific Information (Sydney, 1848–50).Google Scholar

51 Bebbington, David W., ‘Science and Evangelical Theology in Britain from Wesley to Orr’, in Livingstone, et al, Evangelicals, 120–41, at 124 Google Scholar. For evidence of Clarke’s evangelical views, see Clarke, W. B., The Dead Which Are Blessed: A Sermon Preached in the Church of St. Thomas, Willoughby, N. S. W., on Sunday, 2nd March, 1856 (Sydney, 1856)Google Scholar; Grainger, Elena, The Remarkable Reverend Clarke:The Life and Times of the Father of Australian Geology (Oxford, 1982).Google Scholar

52 Hilton, Boyd, The Age of Atonement: The Influence of Evangelicalism on Social and Economic Thought, 1785–1865 (Oxford, 1988), 1–1O Google Scholar; idem, A Mad, Bad and Dangerous People?, 174–86; Clark, C. M. H., History of Australia, 6 vols (Sydney, 1962–87)Google Scholar, esp. 1: 91—110; 3: 383—414, 456—62; Gascoigne, Enlightenment, 96, 99.

53 Fyfe, Science and Salvation, 3.

54 See Fyfe, Science and Salvation; Cantor et al., Science in the Nineteenth-Century Periodical.

55 Mozley,’Evolution’, 419.

56 See Rupke, , ‘Christianity and the Sciences’, 163–68 Google Scholar; Barrett, John, That Better Country: The Religious Aspect of Life in Eastern Australia, 1835–1850 (Melbourne, 1966), 192–95.Google Scholar

57 Mozley, ‘Evolution’, 419; cf. Frame, Evolution, ch. 6.

58 For a succinct overview of past debates and recent scholarship, see Kaye, Bruce, ed., Anglicanism in Australia: A History (Melbourne, 2002) 7–51.Google Scholar