The Sydney Family Album — 1 — Richard Johnson

In 2011, Mark Thompson, Principal of Moore College, penned a series of posts entitled The Sydney Family Album, for his website, Theological Theology.

We felt they merit wider distribution, so, with Mark’s kind permission, we are re-posting them on the ACL website, at the rate of one a week.

Here’s the first, along with the introduction –

“I’ve been banging on a little lately about the importance of Christians looking at the family album (i.e. remembering those who have come before us, who have shaped our identity and have given us the inheritance we currently enjoy). Evangelicals in Sydney have especially good reasons to remember our forebears and give thanks to God. The strong and clear evangelical witness of the Anglican Diocese of Sydney has not been an accident. Under God, it has been the result of the faithful labour of many men and women.

I propose periodically over this year to post brief entries reminding us about some of the key figures who have shaped Sydney Anglicanism. I will inevitably miss out many who should be mentioned, and my selection is bound to reflect my own limited knowledge, so please accept my apologies in advance if your favourites are omitted. Undoubtedly, there is good reason to start at the beginning …”

Richard Johnson

Richard Johnson was the chaplain sent with the First Fleet to New South Wales in 1788. He was a Yorkshireman, born around 1753 (so he was 35 years old when he arrived in the new colony). His appointment as chaplain to the settlement of New South Wales in 1786 was due to the influence of the Eclectic Society, and especially of William Wilberforce and Henry Thornton. As early as November 1783 the Eclectics had discussed the question ‘What is the best method of planting and propagating the gospel at Botany Bay?’

Provided with resources by the SPG (Society for the Propagation of the Gospel) and the SPCK (Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge), after having been introduced to both groups by Wilberforce himself, Johnson left from Portsmouth with the First Fleet (sailing in the ship The Golden Grove) on 13 May 1787. He had married Mary Burton just five months earlier. His designated salary would be £180 per annum.

Johnson’s ship arrived at Botany Bay on 20 January 1788 and on 3 February 1788 he conducted the first Christian service in Sydney, preaching on Psalm 116:12 — ‘What shall I render unto the Lord for all His benefits toward me?’

Johnson was a determined evangelical and this would lead to clashes with a number of the early governors. Many of them saw religion as an instrument to help maintain civil order and to promote social welfare. They were rather unimpressed by Johnson’s commitment to preaching Christ and calling for repentance and faith in him. Governor Philip asked him to stick to moral subjects. Governor Grose described him as ‘a very troublesome, discontented character’ and did everything in his power to obstruct the exercise of his ministry. Johnson had to build the first church in the colony at his own expense.

But Johnson was interested in seeing men and women come to Christ and so continued to preach gospel sermons. The determined evangelical temper of his ministry set the course for what would eventually become the Diocese of Sydney.

Yet while preaching the gospel remained his lifelong priority, Johnson did not just preach. His almost legendary acts of compassion to convicts and militia are perhaps best typified by his decision to go into the holds of the ships of the Second Fleet (the infamous ‘Death Fleet’), despite the very real risk to his own health and survival, in order to pray, feed and tend to the wounds of those few who had outlasted the voyage. His care and respect for the indigenous people he encountered led him to give his daughter the aboriginal name Milbah Mary. He has a good claim to be the pioneer of education in New South Wales, an education which he extended from the children of free settlers to the children of convicts and even some of the indigenous children. He was also a very successful recreational farmer.

Richard Johnson was willing to risk everything to take the gospel to men and women abandoned by the society of their time. Not knowing what he would encounter, he endured an arduous sea voyage, the privations of those early years, and the hostility of those who saw no need for God and no value in gospel preaching. Yet what he did know was that hostility was just one more demonstration of the desperate need of every human being. Alienated from God and at war with him, their only hope lie with the Jesus who was the constant focus of Johnson’s preaching.

In poor health (Samuel Marsden would describe him as ‘a mere skeleton’), Johnson returned to England in October 1800, after twelve years’ service in the colony, and died on 13 March 1827. His final seventeen years were spent as Rector of St Antholin in the City of London.

Archbishop Donald Robinson summarised Johnson’s life and work in these words: ‘His gift was faithfulness rather than vision, courage and steadfastness rather than aggressiveness, and if we reckon that God demands not success but faithfulness, we can have no doubt that Johnson fulfilled his high calling of God’.

[Sources for this post include Australian Dictionary of Biography and Marcus Loane’s Hewn From the Rock, pp. 2-10.]