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ABSTRACT
Throughout the period between 1790 and 1914 the governments of the Australian colonies asked their populations to suspend work and amusements and join in collective acts of prayer. Australia’s special days of prayer have much historical significance and deserve more scholarly attention. They had an enduring popularity, and they were rare moments when a multi-faith and multi-ethnic community joined together to worship for a common cause. This article builds on recent work on state prayers in Britain by considering what the colonial tradition of special worship can tell us about community attachments in nineteenth-century Australia. ‘Fast days’ and ‘days of thanksgiving’ had both an imperial and a regional character. A small number of the Australian days were for imperial events (notably wars and royal occasions) that were observed on an empire-wide scale. The great majority, such as the numerous days of fasting and humiliation that were called during periods of drought, were for regional happenings and were appointed by colonial authorities. The article argues that the different types of prayer day map on to the various ways that contemporaries envisaged ‘Greater Britain’ and the ‘British world’. Prayer days for royal events helped the empire’s inhabitants to regard themselves as imperial Britons. Meanwhile, days appointed locally by colonial governments point to the strength of regional attachments. Colonists developed a sense that providence treated them differently from British communities elsewhere, and this sense of ‘national providence’ could underpin a sense of colonial difference—even a colonial nationalism. Days of prayer suggested that Greater Britain was a composite of separate communities and nationalities, but the regional feelings they encouraged could still sit comfortably with attachments to an imperial community defined by commonalities of race, religion and interest.
Acknowledgements
I wish to thank seminar audiences at the Universities of Portsmouth, Ulster and Northumbria for giving feedback on the presentations on which this article is partly based. Thanks also to Gordon Pentland, Philip Williamson and the anonymous reviewers for their enormously helpful comments on earlier drafts.
Disclosure Statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1 Williamson, ‘State Prayers’, 126–32. For the British tradition, see the introduction to the first volume of Mears et al., National Prayers.
2 The first official holiday for the foundation of New South Wales was appointed for 26 Jan. 1818. Hobart Town Gazette, 14 Feb. 1818.
3 Bombay Times, 30 July 1859.
4 https://www.dur.ac.uk/history/research/research_projects/british_state_prayers/, accessed 2 April 2015.
5 Gray, ‘National Humiliation’; Stanley, ‘Christian Responses to the Indian Mutiny’.
6 Cole, ‘Problem of “Nationalism” and “Imperialism”’, 164–65.
7 Brief mention is made in Inglis, The Australian Colonists, 154–56.
8 McKenna, ‘The History Anxiety’, 574, 576.
9 Clarke’s comments on New Zealand days are applicable to Australia. Clarke, ‘“With One Accord”’, 137–38.
10 Pietsch, ‘Rethinking the British World’.
11 Pentland, ‘Indignant Nation’, 60; for ‘loyalist civic culture’, see O’Gorman, ‘Origins and Trajectories’, 37.
12 Cole timed the emergence of a sense of Australian ethnic unity to the federation era and the contributors to The Rise of Colonial Nationalism saw a ‘sense of cultural identity’ emerging in Australia from the 1880s. Cole, ‘Problem of “Nationalism” and “Imperialism”’; Eddy and Schreuder, eds, The Rise of Colonial Nationalism, 7. Recent scholarship has found popular identifications with colonial nations in the 1850s. Coote, ‘Out from the Legend’s Shadow’, 106–07.
13 Williamson, ‘National Days’, 327.
14 Tench, A Complete Account, 47.
15 This article used newspapers collected at http://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper.
16 The Globe (Toronto), 5 Dec. 1862.
17 Sydney Gazette, 13 April 1806.
18 For this earlier tradition, see ‘Introduction’ in Williamson et al., National Prayers, vol. 2.
19 Queanbeyan Age, 11 Jan. 1866; Argus, 5 Jan. 1866; Maryborough Chronicle, 7 April 1866; Burrowa News, 21 Feb. 1902.
20 Here they followed the metropolitan example. Williamson, ‘State Prayers’, 122, n. 2.
21 Eddy, ‘Nationalism and Nation-Making’, 134; Dungog Chronicle, 20 Aug. 1935.
22 The annual accounts of the king’s printers in London for 1804 show that copies of the form of prayer for the British fast day in 1804 were sent to the bishops of Nova Scotia and Quebec, evidently in order to be reprinted for use in their dioceses on colonial fast days. This may have become an established practice. I am grateful to Philip Williamson for this information. T1/934, The National Archives, Kew.
23 Gaynor, ‘Environmental Transformations’, 284.
24 Argus, 14 Feb. 1851; Bellanta, ‘Irrigation Millennium’. For providence and settler understandings of drought elsewhere, see Beinart, The Rise of Conservation, 112–13.
25 For an early example of opposition, see ‘Common Sense’ in Argus, 2 April 1875.
26 A Presbyterian minister said in 1895 that if the fruits of prosperity had been used wisely, New South Wales would not be facing drought. J. Ferguson, reported in the Evening News (Sydney), 16 Sept. 1895.
27 Sermon of H. Handfield reported in the Argus, 6 Jan. 1866. For the ‘religious and millennial imagery’ in Australian irrigation, see Bellanta, ‘Irrigation Millennium’.
28 For special providence, see ‘F.’ in Perth Gazette and West Australian Times, 4 Dec. 1868; ‘A Resident’, Queenslander, 9 Jan. 1869. For ‘general’ and ‘special’ providence, see Williamson, ‘State Prayers’, 133–4 and n. 40.
29 ‘J.P.’ in the Sydney Morning |Herald, 2 Dec. 1897.
30 Williamson, ‘State Prayers’, 149; Williamson, ‘National Days’, 329–30.
31 Gaynor, ‘Environmental Transformations’, 289, 292.
32 Portland Guardian, 3 Aug. 1854.
33 Williamson, ‘State Prayers’, 161.
34 Sydney Gazette, 9 Nov. 1829.
35 Brisbane Courier, 14 April 1902.
36 Sydney Monitor, 27 Sept. 1828; Colonist (Sydney), 19 June 1839; Herald (Fremantle), 27 March 1872.
37 For petitions, see Maitland Mercury, 30 March 1876; for deputations, see the Sydney Morning Herald, 10 April 1876; for the Western Australia day, see the Perth Gazette, 13 Nov. 1868.
38 Government turned down an 1888 request because it came from Anglicans alone. Goulburn Herald, 29 Nov. 1888.
39 See legislative debates in Sydney Morning Herald, 30 March 1876; for abolition demands, see Sydney Morning Herald, 1 March 1878. Opposition in the NSW assembly came from, among others, Angus Cameron, a Presbyterian, James Greenwood, a Baptist, and Edward Greville, an Anglican. For the opposition of William Morgan, an Anglican member of the South Australian assembly, see South Australian R egister, 14 Nov. 1873.
40 For religion and the press, see Macintyre and Scalmer, ‘Colonial States’, 212.
41 Williamson, ‘State Prayers’, 161–62; Empire (NSW), 17 Aug. 1854; for the opposition of one Independent minister, see Argus, 3 April 1869.
42 Phillips, ‘Religious Profession’, 381.
43 Anglicans formed 29.5 per cent of the South Australian population in 1901; Methodists 24.8 per cent. Statistical Register of South Australia, Part VII, 5.
44 In 1897 the moderator of the Presbyterian Church in New South Wales set aside a day of humiliation two days after the state for his denomination. Advertiser (South Australia), 10 April 1897. For compliance, see Argus, 5 Aug. 1854.
45 Some masters still punished convict workers for observing the day. Australian, 20 Nov. 1829; Sydney Gazette, 6 Nov. 1838.
46 ‘Introduction’, in Williamson et al., National Prayers, vol. 2.
47 Guyatt, Providence and the Invention of the United States, 59, 16.
48 Argus, 4 and 7 Aug. 1854.
49 Brisbane Courier, 20 June 1887.
50 South Australian Advertiser, 20 June 1887.
51 Withycombe, ‘Australian Anglicans’, 300.
52 Clarke, ‘“With One Accord”’, 140–45; also Pentland, ‘Indignant Nation’.
53 On the ‘oppositional’ character of later nineteenth-century Australian Catholicism, see O’Brien, ‘Religion’, 431.
54 Pentland, ‘Indignant Nation’, 75; Illustrated Sydney News, 20 April 1868; Sydney Morning Herald, 29 April 1868.
55 Sydney Mail, 25 June 1887; Queenslander, 25 June 1887; Clarke, ‘“With One Accord”’, 148; Davis, ‘Loyalism in Australasia’, 239.
56 Evening News, 6 and 12 March 1902; ‘Aqua Pura’, in Bendigo Advertiser, 24 Oct. 1865; Rasmussen, ‘Networks and Negotiations’.
57 Attwood and Markus, Thinking Black, 28.
58 Pentland, ‘Indignant Nation’, 60; Lowry, ‘The Crown’, 99.
59 Clarke, ‘“With One Accord”’, 156. For the ‘civil religion’ concept, see Bellah, ‘Civil Religion’.
60 Williamson, ‘State Prayers’, 170.
61 Owen, What the Colonies Need.
62 Canadian imperialist George Grant’s church union plans are discussed in Berger, The Sense of Power, 28–32.
63 Davis, ‘Loyalism in Australasia’, 240; Pentland, ‘Indignant Nation’, 65.
64 Sydney Morning Herald, 14 and 22 Aug. 1854; Argus, 24 Aug. 1854.
65 Curthoys, ‘Indigenous Subjects’, 93–94.
66 Sermon by the Rev. Chaffers-Welsh reported in Maitland Daily Mercury, 27 Feb. 1902; O’Brien, ‘Religion’, 425; Cruikshank, ‘The Sermon in the British Colonies’, 525.
67 Rafferty, ‘The Catholic Church’, 308–09; O’Brien, ‘Religion’, 421.
68 ‘Introduction’, in Williamson et al., National Prayers, vol. 2.
69 Claydon, Europe and the Making of England, 7, 168–71.
70 ‘Introduction’, in Williamson et al., National Prayers, vol. 2.
71 Sydney Morning Herald, 2 July 1847.
72 Ibid., 14 April 1897. In 1877 a newspaper correspondent called for Victorians to raise money for Indian famine sufferers when the colony gave thanks for rain. See ‘Gratitude’, Argus, 24 Sept. 1877.
73 Hilton, Age of Atonement, 108–14.
74 Gray, ‘National Humiliation’, 206.
75 Gray et al., ‘Community, Communion, and Drought’, 25.
76 See Bishop Perry on the 1866 drought. Argus, 6 Jan. 1866.
77 Coote, ‘Out from the Legend’s Shadow’. For the ‘local patriotism’ phrase, see Cole, ‘Problem of “Nationalism” and “Imperialism”’, 165.
78 Coote, ‘Out from the Legend’s Shadow’, 108; Macintyre and Scalmer, ‘Colonial States’, 203–06.
79 Queanbeyan Age, 11 Jan. 1866; Sydney Morning Herald, 12 Feb. 1869.
80 Tumut and Adelong Times, 11 Jan. 1866; Maitland Mercury, 16 Jan. 1866.
81 For the usage of ‘local patriotism’, see Cole, ‘Problem of “Nationalism” and “Imperialism”’’, 165; Eddy, ‘Nationalism and Nation-Making’, 134.
82 Clark, ‘Providence, Predestination and Progress’, 587; Coote, ‘Out from the Legend’s Shadow’, 110, 117.
83 Albury Banner and Wodonga Express, 28 Feb. 1902.
84 Brisbane Courier, 18 April 1902; see R. Phillips in Manning River Times, 25 Feb. 1902; also co-authored letter from an Anglican and a Presbyterian minister in Maryborough Chronicle, 25 April 1902.
85 The Rev. J. Bagshaw reported in South Australian Register, 31 July 1854.
86 For an alternative view, see Cruikshank, ‘The Sermon in the British Colonies’, 523–25.
87 South Australian Register, 13 April 1886.
88 ‘A Clergyman Who Cannot Keep the 13th’, Sydney Morning Herald, 11 Feb. 1869; Sydney Morning Herald, 12 Feb. 1869; Australasian (Melbourne), 22 April 1876.
89 Thompson, ‘Languages of Loyalism’, 647; Hirst, Sentimental Nation, 15.
90 Geelong Advertiser, 1 April 1869; Muswellbrook Chronicle, 26 Oct. 1898.
91 Argus, 18 May 1893.
92 Pentland, ‘Indignant Nation’, 74.
93 Cole, ‘The Problem of “Nationalism” and “Imperialism”’, 175.
94 Watchman (NSW), 14 June 1902; Williamson, ‘National Days’, 329.
95 Damousi, ‘War and Commemoration’, 290–93, quotation 289.
96 Gill, ‘Networks of Concern’.
97 Bell, ‘Idea of a Patriot Queen?’.
98 William Greenstock to Ernest Hawkins, Nov. 1856, 41, Diocese of Grahamstown Records, E Series, 96723/3, Archives of the United Society for the Propagation of the Gospel (microfilm), University of York Library.
99 Schreuder, ‘Empire’, 532; Coote, ‘Out from the Legend’s Shadow’, 118.
100 Bell points out that Greater Britain was viewed as by some as ‘one nation’ and by others as a composite of ‘multiple independent nations’. Bell, Idea of Greater Britain, 113–19.
101 For ‘national providence’ as a constitutive element in metropolitan Britishness, see Wolffe, ‘Judging the Nation’, 300.
102 Guyatt, Providence and the Invention of the United States, 4.
103 Ibid., 17.
104 Hirst, Sentimental Nation, chs 1–3.
105 McKenna, ‘Monarchy’, 266.
106 Coote, ‘Out from the Legend’s Shadow’, 121.
107 The petitions can be found in Records of the Australasian Federal Convention, 1897–1898, National Archives of Australia, Canberra.
108 Grimley, ‘The Religion of Englishness’; Williamson, ‘National Prayers’, 341.
109 For the imperial state church idea, see the legislative debates in the South Australian Register, 14 Nov. 1873.
110 For the 1893 Melbourne service, see Argus, 17 May 1893; for deputations, see Sydney Morning Herald, 7 March 1903; for the use of the Anglican liturgy at united services, see Maitland Mercury, 26 Oct. 1882.
111 See letters from ‘German’ and ‘Member of the Wesleyan Church’ supporting plans for a national Anglican cathedral for Queensland. Brisbane Courier, 6 and 7 Feb. 1901.
112 Bayly, Imperial Meridian.