David Hilliard

The South Sea evangelical mission in the Solomon Islands: The foundation years

labour trade. The Solomon Islands were visited regularly by recruiting vessels from 1870 onwards, but it was not until the 1880s that the group became a major source of labour for the cane fields of Fiji and Queensland. During the period of the labour trade an estimated 15,000 Solomon Islanders were imported into Queensland alone.1 A high proportion of these?perhaps three-quarters?were obtained from Malaita where the population was large, anchorages and harbours abounded and the young men were eager to see distant lands. But, despite the popularity of Malaita as a recruiting ground, the operation was not free of danger. Attacks on labour vessels?chiefly for plunder?were common, and recruiters went ashore only if well armed. Although some of those labourers brought to Queensland from the Loyalty group, the New Hebrides, and the Banks and Solomon Islands had been associated with the London Missionary Society, the Presbyterian Mis sion or the Melanesian Mission respectively, the vast majority were listed officially as heathen.2 The churches of Queensland, preoccupied with the problems of establishing themselves in a vast and rapidly growing colony, and embarrassed by the magnitude of their new evangelistic task, were inclined to pass off the responsibility of Christianizing the Melanesian labourers to those mission bodies already working in the islands. But both the London Missionary Society and the Melanesian Mission turned down requests to send teachers to the Queensland plantations: the former on the ground that it would imply approval of the labour trade, the latter for practical reasons.3

Australian Religion Review, 1980–2000, Part 2: Christian Denominations

This article forms the second part of a review of Australian religious historiography published between 1980 and 2000. 1 The first part considered survey histories of religion in Australia, bibliographies and reference works, religion in non-religious Australian history, Aboriginal religions and missions, Judaism and other religious traditions. This second part covers the Christian denominations: Anglicanism, Catholicism, Non-Anglican Protestantism, and Orthodoxy. Overall, there has been a great deal written since 1980, but not all of it can be considered meritorious. The review concludes with suggestions for future research.

Unorthodox Christianity in South Australia: Was South Australia really a paradise of dissent?

With reference to Jill Roe’s pioneering contribution to the study of minority religious bodies in Australia, this article examines the possibility that the strongly Protestant religious culture of South Australia created an environment that encouraged the growth of unorthodox and sectarian versions of Christianity. It surveys the history and influence in South Australia of a number of small groups that were regarded by contemporaries as unorthodox. Their fortunes varied, but none of them flourished greatly. This article has been peer-reviewed.

The Making of an Anglican Martyr: Bishop John Coleridge Patteson of Melanesia

Since the beginning of Anglican missionary activity in the southwest Pacific in the mid-nineteenth century, fifteen European missionaries and at least seven Pacific Islanders have died violently in the course of their work. In that same region, comprising island Melanesia and New Guinea, Roman Catholics, Presbyterians, Methodists, and the London Missionary Society [L.M.S.] have each had their honour roll of martyrs. Three of these have achieved a measure of fame outside the Pacific and their own denomination: John Williams of the L.M.S., killed at Erromanga in Vanuatu (formerly the New Hebrides) in 1839; James Chalmers, also of the L.M.S., killed in New Guinea in 1901; and John Coleridge Patteson, Missionary Bishop of Melanesia and head of the Melanesian Mission, killed in 1871. Patteson has been the subject of more than fifteen biographies (several of them in German and Dutch), in addition to essays in collections on English missionary heroes, scholarly articles, and pamphlets for popular consumption. In Anglican churches in England, Australia, New Zealand, the United States, and elsewhere he is commemorated as missionary hero in memorial tablets and stained-glass windows.

Some Found a Niche: Same-Sex Attracted People in Australian Anglicanism

David Hilliard (‘Some Found a Niche: Same-Sex Attracted People in Australian Anglicanism’) surveys the relationship of same-sex attracted people to the Anglican Church in Australia from the nineteenth century to the present and how they sought to reconcile their sexuality with their religious faith. He argues that the subject of homosexuality as a moral problem or pastoral issue was almost totally absent from public discussion within the Anglican Church before the 1960s. However, there is evidence from the mid-nineteenth century onwards that some same-sex attracted people, although secretive about their sexuality, were able to find spaces within Anglicanism.

Gender Roles, Homosexuality, and the Anglican Church in Sydney

In September 1992 a periodical published by a conservative evangelical campus ministry led by an Anglican clergyman based at the University of New South Wales in Sydney published an editorial under the heading ‘Is homosexuality next?’ It began with an imaginary dialogue: