How They Wrote Religion Out of Australian History

I was in the staff club with the late Geoffrey Bolton when out of the blue he said: “I find the intensity of opposition to you in the department surprising.” I explained that I was an outspoken Tory among militant radicals, and my politics offended them. “No,” explained Bolton, “it’s your ordination.” This astounded me. It was the early 1990s.

I had originally graduated from a theological college (more a boot-camp than a treasury of learning) and then attended university to equip myself for a school chaplaincy. The expanding university system of the 1960s and 1970s opened the way to a career in tertiary education rather than secondary. Both the ANU and the University of Queensland were welcoming. Neither had a problem with my ordination. Both appreciated my scholarship and were aware of my conservative Anglicanism.

During this period, from the 1970s onwards, universities introduced religion into the curriculum as an independent discipline. This terminated the…