For Australia Day: Analysing popular stereotypes on the foundation of Christianity in Australia

Posted on January 24, 2019 
Filed under Australia, History

In 2015, Associate Professor Stuart Piggin gave this fascinating address at a gathering to commemorate the First Christian Service in Australia.

The event, in Richard Johnson Square on 3rd February, was close to where the Rev. Richard Johnson conducted the first Christian service in the Colony, on 3rd February 1788.

With Dr. Piggin’s permission, we published this at the time. We think it is well worth reading again.

“The preacher at that service, held under a ‘great tree’, beginning at 10 o’clock on 3 February 1788, a hot midsummer’s day, was the Rev Richard Johnson, Australia’s –

  • first minister,
  • first educator,
  • first carer for orphans,
  • first carer for aboriginal children.

With all those firsts, he was quite a pioneer – and John Newton, author of the much loved hymn ‘Amazing grace’, who recommended Johnson to MP William Wilberforce who recommended him to PM William Pitt, bestowed on Richard Johnson the title, ‘Patriarch of the Southern Hemisphere’, that is, if you will, founding father of the Christian movement in Australia.

Now, since this was the site of the first school house, it is surely fair to put a question to you. Here is the question:

If Newton gave Johnson the title ‘Patriarch of the Southern Hemisphere’, what title did the Eora people, the Aboriginal people who lived in the Sydney Basin, give Richard Johnson?

Well, class, I don’t see a forest of hands of those keen to answer the question. But I ask it to make a point. The basic question asked by the organisers of this event is:

‘Does our heritage matter?’ What they really mean is ‘does our Christian heritage matter?’

Well surely we must know what our Christian heritage is before we can decide if it matters. But I doubt if we have ever found what our Christian heritage is – we are in great danger of losing it before we ever find it. Nobody has ever told us.

Has anyone ever told us what title the Eora people gave Richard Johnson? I will tell you at the end of this address, but my point is that there are parts of our Christian heritage we just don’t know because no-one has ever told us.

Then there are other matters which we think we do know. We have been told them so often they have become stereotypes.

But maybe they are false stereotypes.…”

Do read the whole address. (PDF file.) Photos courtesy Ramon Williams, Worldwide Photos.

Related:

Richard Johnson’s Address To The Inhabitants Of The Colonies (PDF file).

See also:

John Anderson’s Conversations: Featuring Associate Professor Stuart Piggin (June 2018). Take the time to watch.

and

The Fountain of Public Prosperity – Evangelical Christians in Australian History 1740–1914, published by Monash University Publishing.