Introduction

Iain Murray’s Australian Christian Life is both intentionally and unintentionally a valuable historical source. Intentionally, it offers a biographical doorway into Australia’s Christian history. More than any textbook could, it gives the reader a feel for the Christian culture that was (and wasn’t) as the country found its feet. Grounded in the primary sources of real men and women—Richard Johnson, Samuel Marsden, William Hamilton, Jane Barker, many others—Murray provides a window into the peculiar way in which the Holy Spirit decided to make his presence felt throughout our (it must be said) peculiar population.

Like any consideration of the past, it illustrates both strengths and weaknesses of historical forebears. The strength of duty-bound self-expenditure—especially in the earliest pioneers—must be appreciated. These characters must inspire our attitudes today as we seek to honour our fathers. However, I find myself more concerned with the glaring weaknesses which even Murray himself has not appeared to notice—weaknesses which he seems to unintentionally bring to light.

In a word, Murray’s history of Australia accidentally provides crucial insight into how the Aussie church got that way.

“What way?”, you might ask, with a touch of defensiveness.

Here it is—and don’t blink, or you’ll miss one of the good ones: effeminate to the gizzards, myopic in the extreme, inconsiderate of family and covenant, invertebrate-in-a-sort-of-plushy-beenbag-way, and just plain cringe. To be precise: we have become the corporate embodiment of men’s skinny jeans—made all the worse by the fact that we routinely skip leg day.

I believe the book sheds light on how Australia has become the national equivalent of the awkward nineteen-year-old with imposter syndrome. (Perhaps the song should say “I’m still only nineteen”.) Given culture is downstream from worship, we would expect patterns of worship found in the Aussie church to seep out into Aussie society. If, hypothetically—so very hypothetically, lest I offend—the church were the home of parochial, insubstantial worship, and was intoxicated with the notion of “revival”, it would be no stretch to cite this as the cause of Australia’s larger-scale “cultural cringe.” Worship, as I say, is the food culture eats; and you are what you eat.

Duty-Bound Self-Expenditure

If you ever find yourself rising habitually at 4 a.m. to take a three-hour row down the river where you preach the gospel to convicts—the sort of people who trade their Bibles for wine and “tear them up for waste paper” (p. 10) —and yet you still feel the inclination to say things like, “My little garden also begins to flourish” (p. 8), please call me. I’d like to get to know you.

(I call this the ‘green-beetle-quality’: that untouchable peace of God that allows a Christian, when stressors pummel him on every side, to smile knowingly at the green beetle that just happened to stride providentially into his life—for no other reason than that he appreciates its divinely-endowed beetleness. Of course, I have no way of knowing if Richard Johnson—the man in question—would have acted exactly in this way were a green beetle to have entered his life in the way described; but I maintain that he was a green-beetle sort of man.)

Richard Johnson’s sense of duty exceeded what most modern-day Australians think is possible.

• He preached consistently in a colony that did not want a chaplain.

• He built Australia’s first church by hand, at his own expense.

• He endured the open hostility and sabotage of contemporary officers.

• When the pastoral load was overwhelming, instead of complaining or planning to escape, he wrote home to his friends for help.

It didn’t stop at Johnson, however. Samuel Marsden continued this legacy of duty-bound, gospel-founded resilience. Consider the untold grief contained in the following sentence, describing the death of his two infant sons:

One was thrown from his mother’s arms by a sudden jerk in the gig in which they were driving, another, left in the care of a servant, fell into a pan of boiling water.

(p. 30)

I recall the shock horror that claimed my attention for several minutes after reading this. Children are one of the Lord’s greatest blessings, and to have two wrenched from their hands—like that—must have plunged Marsden and his wife into grief only their own hearts could tell.

Murray’s next sentence, however, mentions Marsden’s “duties,” not his feelings. God gave him work to do. And so he did it.

Today’s Christians—men especially—must smash the idol of untethered emotion that drowns their willpower in a sea of soppy excuses. So things didn’t go your way, eh? You didn’t get the job; you didn’t get the girl; your car broke down. Welcome to Australia, sunshine. Our Christian history began this way, and you can be sure it’ll continue in the same spirit. Our forefathers have already blazed the trail of navigating difficult circumstances, and they did it with a resilience that cannot be trained in a basement, playing Fortnite.

If you want to honour your fathers, therefore, quit the game of Fortnite. (In fact, this would be a good moment to initiate a radical deletion spree if you are a gaming dweeb.) Learn your duties from God’s word and commit to them. Pursue them with everything you have—all your heart, mind, soul and strength.

Inspiring Stories

Before critiquing the influence of Methodism on Australia, I will recount a story of courage from a Methodist minister, whose calmness and resilience in the face of certain death would befit any of the strongest Calvinists from history.

Witness the story of Daniel Draper. In 1838, he lost his wife to sickness, describing it this way in his journal:

This morning, at six o’clock, I was summoned into the chamber of my dear wife. The hand of death was evidently upon her. On my entrance, she threw her arms—cold and emaciated—round my neck, and expressed the conviction that in a few hours she should be in eternity. I spoke to her respecting her spiritual state and prospects; on which she declared her state to be one of settled peace. “Christ,” said she, “is precious—I feel Him to be so. I am a sinner, but blessed be God, I know the blood of Jesus Christ cleanseth from all sin, and it hath cleansed me”... As the morning advanced her strength continued to decline, but her confidence in her Redeemer became stronger… at twenty minutes before ten o’clock she entered into the joy of her Lord.

(p. 324-325)

Moving to 1866, we find Daniel Draper and his second wife on board the London. The journey began on a sea of perfect calmness, with no indication of the nightmare to come.

By Sunday, the weather had soured.

By Monday, the ship was labouring.

By Tuesday, the wind had become a hurricane in the Bay of Biscay.

Waves of seemingly infinite stature pounded onto the decks, sweeping away lifeboats and wrecking the engines. By late Wednesday night, the ship was doomed.

And everyone knew it.

But there was no panic. No rush. No screams. No hysteria.

At midnight, Daniel Draper quietly announced a prayer meeting. Mothers wept for their children; friends embraced each other; and scores of ordinary people opened their Bibles to hear one last word from God.

Draper preached the gospel. Tears streamed down his face—but they were the tears of man upon whose shoulders the weight of responsibility rests heavily. He had one final duty to those around him.

And he did it like a man.

He spoke with “the clear distinct voice of a man calm and collected, exhorting all to come to Christ.” He called them to repent. He said, “In a few moments we must all appear before our Great Judge. Let us prepare to meet Him.”

As the ship went down, he continued to lead them—not in hopeless weeping, but in song. “Rock of ages cleft for me” ascended into the highest heavens as the bodies of those men and women descended into the deepest recesses of the sea.

And so he died like a real Methodist preacher; nay, like a true Christian man, for Christianity is above Methodism.

(p. 328)

One day, I would like to shake Mr Draper’s hand—and perhaps salute or something. He was a true spiritual general, and he deserves our honour.

The Wesleyan/Methodist Influence

Although Anglicanism was the official starting point of Australian Christianity, it was Methodism that drove much of its spread. The sheer volume of Methodist material in Murray’s book reflects its ubiquity in the early Christianity of Australia. The movement’s mobility made it especially suited to a young colony; it had long legs, a loud voice, and a distinct lack of embarrassment—all qualities that aid in unmitigated self-promotion.

Today, it is the Uniting Church (formed in 1977) which institutionally continues the legacy of Methodism. (This ‘Christian denomination’ —if I must call it such—can generally be identified by the presence of a tall cross and a rainbow flag. If you enter the building, I understand, you are likely to be greeted by a “them” in shepherd’s clothing.)

The cultural legacy of Methodism, however, is in my opinion, far more widely spread. It persists in heavy revival-language, chronic individualism, conversion-centred spirituality, and experiential Christianity.

Chronic Individualism

Murray reproduces the 1859 Wesleyan Annual Conference letter, which includes this revealing line:

The great and paramount purpose … is your personal salvation.

(p. 273)

Now, I have nothing against personal salvation. It’s okay, I guess. Okay, sure: it’s essential as a starting point. What I take issue with is the reduction of the Christian faith down to a lonely bloke sitting on a plastic chair in a church hall, asking himself whether he feels sufficiently “saved” today. Once “my personal salvation” is the paramount purpose, everything else becomes a hobby.

• Husbanding becomes a hobby.

• Wifehood becomes a hobby.

• Children become cute inconveniences with shoes.

• The church becomes a service-provider of spiritual experiences.

• “Covenant” becomes a word you only hear from Presbyterians right before they start explaining why they have seventeen children and a family worship liturgy that could outlast the Second Coming.

Recall that Paul routinely nails his exhortations into the floorboards of the home, and the concrete of earthly roles. “Husbands, love your wives.” “Wives, submit to your husbands.” “Children, obey your parents.” “Slaves,” “masters,” “widows,” “young men,” “old men,” etcetera. The church is not a spiritual Tinder date between you and Jesus. It is the household of God embodied in living, relational templates that point back to his own glorious, triune fellowship.

Methodism, throughout Murray’s book, tends to emphasise other aspects of Christian living: personal crisis, personal decision, personal relief. It produces men who can tell you exactly where they were standing when Jesus set them free, who seem to spend the rest of their life trying to regain that spot.

This, I suggest, is one of the catalysts for our national skinny-jeans epidemic. Aussie Christians know how to get people in the door and jumping around like gay kangaroos, but are clueless on what is arguably the linchpin to obeying the Great Commission: creating faithful households that remain steadfast over generations, knit together by the concrete of God’s covenants.

Thin Sacraments, Thinner Covenant

On the subject of covenants, here is another revealing line from the book:

Communion was seldom celebrated more than once a month; in small churches, it could be quarterly.

(p. 286)

Taking quarterly communion is like filling up your car every time you take it in for a rego check. It betrays the fact that covenant-renewal was not front-of-mind in these churches. When the covenant meal with our Lord is occasional, covenant thinking becomes occasional. The members of the church no longer “discern the body [of Christ]” on a regular basis, and, as such, a dissolution into chronic individualism follows.

Doctrinal Anorexia

Murray describes a modern shift that is very accurate:

The loss of distinctive doctrinal convictions… became an argument for ‘Christian unity’.

(p. 339)

When the experience of faith is paramount, the content of that faith finds itself the victim of a cruel defenestration. Conviction becomes arrogance; “works” becomes a dirty word; “obedience” is relegated to those rarest of Bible studies that actually consider God’s law.

Without the skeletal rigidity of conviction, Christians become vacuous globules of warmth and sunshine, oozing about with all the direction of a lost trout.

Now, I ought to clarify that I have nothing against warmth and sunshine. Please—be warm and sunny. (I myself am a fan of the summer vibe and its purveyors.) But do not be form without structure; body without skeleton; fire without fireplace.

Conclusion

If Murray’s book teaches us anything, it is this: Australia is the home of brave adventurers and committed missionaries; but also those new editions of young ‘men’ who have voices dyed pink and the testosterone levels of a duck. Her church has learned to chase conversions, but not to build covenant households. And a church that cannot build households is a church that cannot build a culture.

This, to reiterate, spells out why the Aussie church is the way it is: spiritually breathless, theologically underweight, emotionally overcaffeinated, and culturally cringe. To honour our fathers, we must continue to be adventurous, duty-bound, and inspirational. But what would truly honour the spirit of Richard Johnson and Samuel Marsden is if more Australians had the discipline of Johnson and the family-commitment of Marsden. This is what is truly missing.

There is no grand mystery to obeying the Great Commission. God did not hide the secret of obedience in church growth strategies or contemporary music. He has made it very clear what we are to do, and it is nothing flashy. In fact, it reeks of mundanity:

• Men: love your wife like Christ loves the church, lead your family in worshipping the Lord every Lord’s Day, and raise your children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. This is your calling as a Christian.

• Women: respect your husband like the church respects Christ, submit to his leadership, and help him raise your children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. This is your calling as a Christian.

This is the key to Christian obedience, and it is the key to Christian joy. This is how Australia may one day call itself a Christian nation.