Christianity has always been more sympathetic to the realm of the‘this
worldly’than both other religions and other forms of Christianity, especially
Orthodox Christianity. If this is the case, then British Protestantism took this
sympathy for things secular to a new level, with an emphasis on natural
religion and an appreciation of utilitarianism, such as is found in the works
of William Paley ([1785] 2002, bk 6.10). Christianity for Protestants was not
only world-affirming, but affirming the world was inconceivable without
Christianity. Rev. Professor John Woolley (1862, pp. 88–9) of Sydney Univer-
sity could speak of the‘real connexion between the secular and the sacred’,
that they are‘not independent’:‘The churchman shall hear the voice of God
in civil institutions...the citizen shall glorify the divine source of earthly
virtue...’Likewise, Alfred Deakin (n.d.) could write privately,‘Without God
and without immortality there can be no true or efficient morality from
generation to generation, no task for the race, and no goal for it to attain.’
The other way of considering secularism, and this does not contradict the
first, is that it was a means to manage religious pluralism, of attempting to
ensure that differences of dogma could be accommodated within a common
Christian culture. It needs to be appreciated that the Australian colonies, as
settler societies, were decidedly unsettled, as they were composed of people
who had to come to terms with living in a society of strangers. Moreover, at
various stages, such as in Victoria in the 1850s and NSW in the 1870s, there
was a large influx of new people who had to be accommodated into the
existing social order and for whom infrastructure needed to be provided.
The remarkable thing is that this process occurred without much in the way
of conflict and violence, except in the case of the extraordinary hatred at times
directed towards the Chinese who came to Australia. The Chinese were con-
sidered to be outside the tent; everyone from the British Isles, plus small
minorities from other parts of Europe, including the not insignificant
Lutheran community, were inside. Parkes (1890, p. 222) spoke for nearly
everyone in the Federation debates in demanding an immigration policy
appropriate‘for a people modelled on the type of the British nation; and it is
on that ground, and on that ground alone, that I have opposed the introduc-
tion of the Chinese’. Therefore the issue became one of managing diversity,
not on the basis of ethnicity, but on religion. Religion was understood to be an
essential, even necessary, element of society. It was the basis of morality and
hence public order. Religion, declared Patrick Glynn, a South Australian dele-
gate to the Federation conventions,‘pervades all the relations of our civil life.
It is felt in the forms of our courts of justice, in the language of our Statutes, in
the oath that binds the sovereign to the observance of our liberties...’(Glynn
1897, p. 1185).
What this means is that the idea of creating a purely secular society, one
from which religion had been banished, at least from the public sphere, was
Utilitarianism contra Sectarianism