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Although there is a popular understanding that Australia is a secular society, religion and the churches have played a critical historical role in the shaping of the nation. A History of the Australian Churches is the first general history about the role of churches in Australian society. This is a broad canvas covering all of the Australian states and territories. It offers a balanced and thoughtful historical analysis of how the Christian churches have shaped and been shaped by a number of key issues including church-state relations; the churches and education; responses to the stubborn secularity of Australia; and the search for a distinctive Australian Christianity. This book deals with theological, liturgical and constitutional changes in the major churches and relates them to changes in Australian history. It breaks new ground in comparing denominations - Protestant, Roman Catholic and the Orthodox - as well as setting the development of Aboriginal and Islander Christianity in context.
Australia's first white community contained few who gave thought to either their own, or other's, spiritual need. Nonetheless, Christianity began to make its way among the soldier, convicts, merchants, new settlers and eventually Aborigines.
As astonishing as it is compelling -- Steve Cannane's extraordinary insight into Scientology in Australia is investigative journalism at its very best. From Rugby League players trying to improve their game, to Hollywood superstars and the depressed sons of media moguls, Scientology has recruited its share of famous Australians. Less known is that Australia was the first place to ban Scientology, or that Scientology spies helped expose the Chelmsford Deep Sleep Scandal. Numerous Australians have held senior posts in the organisation only to fall foul of the top brass and lose their families as a result. Based on years of interviews and research, Walkley Award-winning journalist Steve Cannane tells for the first time the fascinating story of Australia's vital involvement with this powerful, secretive and punitive cult.
In the pages of this book the history of the Russian Orthodox Church in Australia is diligently chronicled within the wider context of the place of ethnic Russians in a dominantly anglophone society: that of what was at first a British colony and later became an independent state. It begins with the first contact of Russian naval ships with the Australian continent in the early nineteenth century and progresses through to the establishment of the first parish of Orthodox believers in Melbourne in the 1890s, the establishment of further churches, and ultimately the creation of a diocese. The catalyst for much of this was the arrival of thousands of Russians fleeing their homeland via Siberia after the Bolshevik revolution of 1917. For these newly dispossessed, Australia and New Zealand became havens of safety and the Russian Orthodox Church an echo of the Motherland they had lost. They were later joined by successive waves of fellow Russians after the end of World War II in 1945 and again after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991. Together these refugees and their descendants created a unified organism that retained a sense of shared heritage and purpose, and in turn provided a home to spiritual seekers who were not of their ethnic lineage.In writing this work the author has drawn on extensive archival sources spread over several continents together with his own life experience, having arrived as a small boy in Australia over six decades ago. First published in 2006 this new edition includes an added chapter recounting the ongoing story from the beginning of the twenty-first century through to the end of 2020, covering the effects on the Church in Australia of major world events as diverse as the reunification of the Russian Church Abroad with the Patriarchate of Moscow in 2007 and the global coronavirus pandemic that arrived in Australia in 2020.
Over two centuries, Christian have carried their message to Aboriginal people throughout Australia, in the face of abuse, paternalism, prejudice, isolation and crippling hardship. Although sometimes blind to their own faults, those who brought this message were remarkable people of great compassion and courage.
A church cult exposed... When a whistle blower acted in the Melbourne branch, shock waves spread through the country. When the ministers and many from a Presbyterian church joined the Brisbane branch the result was explosive. Both events fuelled the church's cruel and relentless drive for perfection, but the cost has been hundreds of people in broken marriages and divided families.This is the story of a Pentecostal church that emerged in Melbourne in the 1950s and has developed into a nationwide perfectionist cult damaging hundreds of lives. Its cruel and divisive approach to the Christian gospel was highlighted in an ABC Four Corners documentary aired in June 2008. The benign sounding Melbourne Christian Fellowship, Brisbane Christian Fellowship, etc will woo you with their fine music, embrace you into their 'family of families', but then introduce you to their peculiar brand of gnosticism mixed with perfectionism. Leaving may cost you everything...