The Sydney Family Album – 9 – T. C. Hammond

by Dr Mark Thompson

One of the most important of Howard Mowll’s many influential appointments was that of Thomas Chatterton (T. C.) Hammond as Principal of Moore College. Appointed at a time when the College seemed to be shifting its theological position, Hammond, who already had a worldwide reputation as an evangelical preacher, teacher and apologist, would be, it was hoped, precisely the kind of leader who would strengthen the College and set its course firmly in the mainstream of evangelical Anglican theology. He would meet all of these expectations and surpass them.

T. C. Hammond was born in Cork, Ireland on 20 February 1877, the youngest son of a retired naval captain who had been a CMS missionary to Sierra Leone in the 1850s. His father died when he was 6 years old and he was placed with a Catholic aunt and agnostic uncle — introducing him to fierce debate about religion from an early age. He was educated at Cork Model School and, as a result of his involvement with the YMCA, was converted at age 15. He determined to become an evangelist, took a course in Anglican theology, practical ministry and the ‘Roman Controversy’ offered by the Irish Church Missions, and began street preaching and training in itinerant evangelism. He entered Trinity College, Dublin in 1900 and quickly excelled, especially in philosophy. He won the 1903 Wray Prize for the best dissertation in philosophy. In 1903 he graduated From Trinity College with a BA. The same year he was ordained a deacon in the Church of Ireland and served the congregation of St Kevin’s Dublin for 16 years.

In 1919 Hammond became superintendent of the Irish Church Missions, running missions in Dublin and engaging prominent Roman Catholics in public debate. By all accounts he was a fiery street preacher and would later tell stories about threats on his life during this period and gunfire on the streets. He produced a series of pamphlets during this period and in 1921 published Authority in the Church, a brief study of Anglican ecclesiology occasioned by a stoush he had with the Irish Bishops in the synodical courts. He toured the Commonwealth as Prayer Book revision was being debated in England, making the case for the rejection of the revision that was being proposed. In this connection the Vickery Trust financed his first visit to Australia in 1926. He was immediately recognised by the evangelical leadership in the diocese as a man of formidable intellect, a prodigious memory and strong evangelical convictions.

In 1935 David John Davies, the Principal of Moore Theological College, died. The new Archbishop of Sydney, Howard Mowll (who had been elected in 1933) invited Hammond to take up the post, despite his age (59). He would prove to be one of the most influential of the College’s principals, bringing the College back from a period when modernism (the moderate theological liberalism of the English establishment) had threatened to derail it. On his way out to Australia by boat, he famously corrected the proofs of his IVF manual of doctrine, In Understanding  Be Men, originally prepared to assist in the follow up from a special mission in the University of London. That book has gone through a number of editions, was later revised by David Wright, and remains in print.

Hammond’s principalship re-energised the College and returned it to the evangelical convictions which had been a feature of Nathaniel Jones’ highly influential principalship. He taught most of the subjects in the curriculum, extended the course, instituted a daily sermon, and began the practice of an annual college convention. His theology was standard evangelical fare, anchored in the writings of the Church Fathers and the Reformers, with particular attention given to the Thirty-nine Articles of Religion. His standard practice when teaching doctrine was to work his way through E. J. Bicknell’s On the Thirty-nine Articles paragraph by paragraph, commenting and correcting along the way.

He quickly became the chief theological advisor to the Archbishop, assisting him in his response to the ‘Memorialists’ in 1938 and helping him to prosecute the ‘Red Book Case’ on the Archbishop’s behalf in 1944. Throughout his principalship, he was also the rector of St Philip’s Church Hill. In 1949 Archbishop Mowll made him an Archdeacon. Throughout the 1950s he was heavily involved in the debates over a new constitution for the Church of England in Australia, taking a more positive view of the proposals than some of his younger colleagues.

 

 

Hammond’s sparkling personality and quick wit endeared him to a generation of Moore College students and many more besides. He was a master of repartee and the quick retort. When at one rally a voice cried out, ‘You just don’t understand Karl Barth!’, he is reported to have replied immediately ‘And whose fault is that?’ He wrote regularly for The Australian Church Record and appeared just as regularly on radio 2CH (a fortnightly broadcast was titled ‘The Case for Protestantism’), often to debate the Roman Catholic theologian Leslie Rumble of Sacred Heart Monastery, Kensington. He was a controversialist who genuinely enjoyed debate but above all he was an evangelist at heart.

Hammond assisted Archbishop Mowll at Lambeth in 1948 and upon returning, being 71 years of age, tendered his resignation. It was not accepted and he continued as Principal until 1953 (when he was aged 76). He taught tirelessly right through this period and was increasingly revered throughout the diocese. He encouraged younger evangelical theologians like Marcus Loane, Donald Robinson and Broughton Knox and impressed upon them the need to refute error as well as teach the truth.

Throughout his time as Principal, Hammond continued to write, though none his later works enjoyed the same popularity as In Understanding Be Men. He wrote on Christian ethics (Perfect Freedom, 1938), apologetics (Reasoning Faith, 1943), and the doctrine of regeneration (The New Creation, 1953).

It has often been said that Hammond was one of those who gave global evangelicalism ‘intellectual muscle’ in the years surrounding World War 2. He certainly gave new confidence to the students at Moore and so the clergy of the Diocese of Sydney. His was the evangelicalism of the IVF just as Mowll’s evangelicalism was that of the CICCU. Instead of retreating in the face of a resurgent catholicism and dominant liberalism in the academy, he taught his students that they had nothing to fear from serious intellectual endeavour anchored in an unswerving loyalty to the teaching of Scripture.

‘T.C’ as he was known, died on 16 November 1961, having helped recover and strengthen the evangelical character of Sydney Anglicanism and laying the groundwork for the equally biblical and yet innovative work of the next generation of theological thinkers, especially his successor but one, D. B. Knox, who used Hammond’s In Understanding Be Men as a text in his classes (much in the same way Hammond had used Bicknell, and perhaps because Hammond had used Bicknell in this way) well into the 1980s. Perhaps it is somewhat fitting that when his son went into his study after his death, a Latin edition of the Jesuit polemicist Robert Bellarmine lay open on his desk.

________

Top photo: Canon T.C. Hammond, April 1947. Glass negative by The Rev Frank Cash.

The item is held in the collection of and was digitised by Moore Theological College. Direct link to the Archives page. We have flipped the image left-right to the correct orientation, adjusted the levels to bring out skin tones, and removed dust and scratches. Click the image for the full frame.

Second photo: T.C. Hammond at the gate of Moore College in Carillon Avenue in 1940s footage thanks to the Donald Robinson Library, Moore College.