Mapping the boundaries of relationships between church and state is a vital part of religious history. Walter Phillips makes a major contribution to our understanding of the changes which followed the ending of state aid in the nineteenth century. The pressures of voluntaryism made the retention of vision of a Christian country very hard, for protestant individualism and denominational competition made the shaping of a common ethos impossible. Nevertheless, Phillips makes it clear that the protestant churches, through their leadership, put up stiff resistance to the trends of the times.
Defending ‘A Christian Country’: Churchmen and society in New South Wales in the 1800s and after by Walter Phillips
University of Queensland Press, $30.00 pb, 332 pp
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