A university student gruffly dismissed the local vicar for ‘peddling nonsense from an old book’. Indeed the Bible is an old book and we have to admit that a great deal of nonsense, and much worse, has been propagated in its name or claiming to be ‘biblical’. Yet there are many who insist that the Bible must be recognized as a profoundly important part of our common culture, with or without religious belief. So argues Meredith Lake in her exceptionally well researched The Bible in Australia: A cultural history (NewSouth Publishing, 2018). This, like the other ‘terrific tomes’ I am citing, is well worth spending time with, digesting its detail and reflecting upon its insights.
The work begins with the image of a tattoo across a surfer’s shoulder’s, ‘My brother’s keeper’. This biblical phrase has actually become the slogan for a sub-culture which defines itself in resistance to immigrants, an ‘us and them’ mentality. Thus, Lake explains that ‘there are traces everywhere’ of the Bible and its place in twenty-first century Australia. Some of these involve religious elements deep within the collective psyche or provide values, identities and something like a creed to live by.
In this sense, Lake argues, the Bible is more than a book. ‘It has belonged not only to the upright or the educated: it is a word for all kinds of people.’ (p.3) She notes also those who celebrate the ‘King James Version’, published in 1611, which, in the opinion of Clive Hamilton, ‘has profoundly shaped our use of language, the language of the atheist as much as the parish priest’. (Quote from Clive Hamilton, p.9)
The rationale Lake sets forward for her book identifies the Bible and its influence in what she calls Australian cultural history—meaning the history of the settler communities. There are several important distinctions here. Lake begins with the global context, referring to the fact that the Bible came to Australia with the movement of Europeans into many parts of the world, colonizing as well as evangelizing. The Bible has also a cultural history distinct from its theological role in the life of faith. On the basis of these distinct but interwoven strands, Lake argues that the Bible has an ‘enduring importance to Australia not only because it is part of what connects us to other people and places, and because of its dynamic relationship to culture; people strive to follow its teaching, and in some way take on its vision of the world.’ (p.15)
The work is divided into four major parts, each of three chapters:
Colonial Foundations;
The Great Age of the Bible;
Bible and Nation; and
A Secular Australia?
In the first section, it is particularly confronting to read of exceptionally early efforts by settlers and missionaries to learn Australian languages and to translate portions of the Bible. Most of these efforts were resisted by authorities who saw them as a waste of time or prohibited the use of indigenous languages. Lutheran missionaries in particular resisted these official attitudes, believing that language work provided convincing proof that the people of the land have ‘an equal share of intellectual power with others of the human race’. Whilst this argument in itself uses the coloniser’s intellectual framework, it nonetheless indicates a principled resistance to the racism that so devastated the cultures and lives of the first peoples.
Lake goes on to demonstrate how biblical motifs such as ‘wilderness’ and ‘God’s immigrants’ were used as the foundations of the developing nation.
The second section documents in rich detail the role of the Bible in colonial Australia: ‘spreading the Word’. Here the Bible provided an ethical foundation for the good society, whilst in the later nineteenth century the text itself came into question as critical studies led to a re-valuation of its history and relationship with other ancient religious texts.
‘The Bible and Nation’ explores the influence of the Bible in nationalist movements and literature before and into the era of Federation. For Henry Lawson, for example, Jesus of Nazareth represented ‘ a portrait of the ideal man, if not of God incarnate’ (p.211). Lawson admired Jesus as a champion of the underdog, prostitutes, gamblers, drunkards, prisoners and the poor. Here Lake identifies one of those deeply abiding aspects of biblical values which, as she argued at the outset, has gotten ‘under our skin’, whether we profess any explicit religious faith or not.
In exploring ‘Politics and the Bible’, Lake noted that the formation of the Australian Constitution ‘was not meant to exclude all religion from federal institutions, and still less to prevent public or political expressions of faith’—though arguably it has largely had this effect. Rather, in the spirit of the time there was an avowed rejection of dogmatic and sectarian positions, in favour of a focus on ethical conduct. In the middle of the twentieth century, Robert Menzies, Australia’s longest serving Prime Minister, described this ethos as a civic Protestantism.
The last chapter in this section on Bible and Nation is especially significant, ‘War and its aftermath’. The war referred to here is the First World War. The use of the Bible in both support for and opposition to the war is one key element here, but perhaps far more significant is the development of the commemoration of Anzac Day. Lake asserts that more than a century later, ‘the task of making meaning from war arguably remains a theological one’ and that ‘the Bible may well be more evident in Australian public life on Anzac Day than on any other occasion’. (p.268, 271) The ideas of ‘laying down one’s life for one’s friends’ and the images of vicarious sacrifice as somehow providing atonement undergird this commemoration.
All of this seems at once so long ago and yet it remains within the collective psyche, there to be exploited by political rhetoric, as it has been in this century.
The final section of the book engages with the perception of a growing secularism in Australian society. The situation is far from clear, however. Lake begins with consideration of the extraordinary response to the Billy Graham Crusades in 1959 and 1961 and the resurgence in evangelistic activity that followed, for a short time. The 1960s saw challenges to many forms of authority, including the Bible—as represented in a pop song, ‘It ain’t necessarily so … The things that you’re liable to read in the Bible just ain’t necessarily so.’
On the other hand, much theological effort was put into ‘Australianising’ the Bible and, as Lake puts it, ‘unravelling the Bible from the baggage of European culture and imperialism’. (p.327) The tasks of re-imagining the Bible and its place within our diverse social, political and cultural life remains and is a continuing challenge in this new millennium.
Meredith Lake has offered a rich resource for anyone interested in understanding some of the intellectual, moral and spiritual foundations of Australian society. These include many points of tension, aspects of deep regret and sources of shame, which are not avoided. There are, too, challenges: Lake is unashamedly writing as a Christian who values the Bible and believes that to do so does not require intellectual dishonesty. Rather, she seeks to provide an even-handed account of the use and abuse of the Bible in the period of European settlement in Australia. Inevitably, it is one person’s perspective, though overall it seems to me to be very well researched. At the same time she has achieved a very readable style, which commends itself to a wide audience—which this tome richly deserves.