(1873), Auckland (1883), and Wellington (1899), sectarian tensions meant that
they were secular institutions that did not include in their structure separate
Schools of Religion nor of Theology (Barnes 1998: 231), although some
religion and theology was taught indirectly within fields such as philosophy
or anthropology.
The formal study of theology was carried out in denominational colleges
associated with the universities, such as St John’s College in Auckland (1843),
Christ’s College at Christchurch (1855), and the Theological Hall at Otago
(1877; later housed within Knox College when it opened in 1909), the
Australian College of Theology (1891) and the Melbourne College of Divinity
(1910). Many of the theological colleges were eventually granted permission
to offer degrees. The University of Otago offered degrees in Divinity from 1946
through Knox Theological Hall. At the University of Melbourne and the
University of Sydney the colleges were permitted to admit Divinity students
eligible for matriculation (Breward 2001: 139). Later, degrees in Divinity
became more formally tied to the universities. At Sydney, a Board of Studies
was established in 1936 to oversee a Bachelor of Divinity (Barnes 1998: 231),
and on the University of Queensland campus, the same degree was administered
through the Department of English, with one full-time lecturer and several part-
time lecturers.
The study of religion in a more global sense was a much smaller enterprise
outside of the universities. One of the most active groups engaged in the study
was the Theosophical Society. As early as 1881 it had study groups in Brisbane
who dealt with various aspects of religion and religions (Roe 1986: 3).
The emergence of the study of religions
First to engage in religious studies as a formal area of university study was
New Zealand, at the University of Canterbury, where the discipline of
philosophy introduced the subject area of religious studies in 1962 with an
emphasis on religious thought. A year later, the Dean of the Theology Faculty
at the University of Otago recommended the introduction of Phenomenology
of Religion, and in 1966 Albert Moore was appointed the first lecturer for the
history and phenomenology of religion (Rae 1991: xix). Religious Studies
followed at Massey University in 1970 with the appointment of Brian Colless,
an expert in patristics and the religions of the ancient Near East. The following
year, Lloyd Geering was appointed as the first chair of Religious Studies in
the region at Victoria University, Wellington (Barrowman 1999: 269–271).
At the University of Queensland and University of Sydney, the programs
for studies in religion grew out of the earlier divinity programs. In 1974, the
University of Queensland established a Department of Studies in Religion,
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