- Title
- Religion and society
- Creator
- Carey, Hilary M.
- Relation
- Australia's Empire p. 186-210
- Relation
- Oxford History of the British Empire Companion Series
- Relation
- http://www.oup.com.au/titles/academic/history/history/9780199273737
- Publisher
- Oxford University Press
- Resource Type
- book chapter
- Date
- 2008
- Description
- Within the archives of the United Society for the Propagation of the Gospel - now held in Rhodes House, Oxford - there is a set of forty lantern slides, one of many produced by church organizations at the height of the imperial age. The slides evoke the great diversity of the Society's work in supporting the missionary thrust of the church in the British Empire at the turn of the twentieth century. Here are churches, mission stations, and peoples drawn from across the globe, together with prayers and hymns. Among the latter, Bishop Heber's popular 'From Greenland's icy mountains' would have been a suitable choice of hymn to open a lantern show in aid of the SPG, even if incongruous for Anglican congregations and potential converts in tropical climates. The SPG lantern show includes only two images relating to Australia. Imperial support for religion in the colonies was supplied in both formal and informal ways; and was probably strongest in three fields of action. In the first place, there was the direct provision of religious services through the appointment and financial support of clergy in the colonies; secondly, there was a range of liberal and humanitarian interventions led by religious leaders at home and abroad to mitigate the perceived evils of Empire such as the dispossession of Indigenous peoples; lastly, there was ideological support by the colonial churches for the imperial ideal. This chapter will consider each of these themes and reflect on the ways in which national Australian institutions, together with the beliefs and habits of religion, ultimately came to emerge in the post-colonial decades following the Second World War.
- Subject
- religion; society; church organizations; missions; SPG; British Empire; colonies
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/804458
- Identifier
- uon:6619
- Identifier
- ISBN:9780199273737
- Language
- eng
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