problem of renegotiating the place of religion in a modern pluralist society.
They resolved it in different ways. Just as every member of the Anglosphere
has a political system which has a family resemblance to the others but is
distinctive, so the place of religion has come to differ in each such country
(Monsma and Soper 2008).
Whereas Britain officially remained a Christian country with an established
church, even as it accommodated non-conformists, Catholics, and many
indifferent members of the Church of England, America became a country
based on a secular constitution and a strong tradition of voluntarism and self-
help which was effectively Christianized in thefirst half of the nineteenth
century. The absence of a church establishment meant that nineteenth-
century America was, in religious terms, a dynamic place where new religions
emerged, from Mormonism to Seventh-day Adventism to Christian Science
(Albanese 2007). In America, unlike France, Christianity and democracy were
not merely reconciled but also self-supporting (Hatch 1989), which may be
one reason why America has resisted secularization more than most other
Western countries.
The Australian experience in terms of dealing with the reality of religious
pluralism is distinctive, but not unique. Clerics, intellectuals, and politicians
have, for different reasons, sought to emphasize that Australia was born, and
remained, modern, secular, and utilitarian. However, this has not been the
case. Religion has played an important role in Australia. As shall be argued, the
religious history of Australia, and the history of Australia generally, makes
perfect sense in the context of a culture which proclaimed itself as proudly
British, and hence Protestant, while containing a large Irish Catholic minority
which made a lie of its pretensions. As with Britain, one of the key factors of
Australian history since the First World War has been the decline of Protest-
antism (Green 2009), which has also meant the decline of Britishness.
4.2 Religion in Australia
The place of religion in Australian history is complex. But then people came to
Australia in an odd mix of circumstances, as convicted criminals at one
extreme, to those seeking their luck in the goldfields at the other. None of
these circumstances led to the renunciation of religion, although it did mean
the role of religion was shaped by the types of people who came to the various
colonies. At one extreme this meant the reformation of criminals, and, at the
other, the beliefs and practices of young men who had travelled halfway
around the world in search of their fortune. On top of all of this was the
effective campaign by evangelicals, especially in NSW and South Australia, to
Greg Melleuish and Stephen A. Chavura