Christianity’s Story – Geoffrey Blainey

Professor Geoffrey Blainey is one of Australia’s foremost historians and certainly its most prolific. In recent times, Professor Blainey has published A Short History of the World to which he has now added A Short History of Christianity. Geoffrey Blainey grew up a Methodist and admits that, in the West, “The outward signs of Christianity’s decline are strong.” But he maintains that, in spite of this, “most people still have a religious strand. Some are given to science – a competing religion, if you like – some are given to nature, another religion.” Geoffrey Blainey addressed The Sydney Institute on Friday 13 March 2012 to discuss his most recent book.

CHRISTIANITY’S STORY

GEOFFREY BLAINEY

Thank you very much for the generous introduction. It’s curious the way books are promoted these days. My first book came out in 1954. It was a book set on the West Coast of Tasmania about mining. I wondered when the book would be published and the publisher said he didn’t know – which was typical in those days. And I remember my excitement, walking along Elizabeth St in Melbourne and seeing it in the window of a shop. And that was the first I’d heard the book was published. I later learned it had been published four weeks earlier. And now you know exactly when a book will be published – and they tell you not to leave the country in the week it’s being published. And you speak at functions and on radio and television to promote its sales.

I’m going to speak for half an hour which is the practice and then the meeting is open for questioning. I wrote this book as a historian, not as a theologian, not as a persuader. I had no idea what I would write when I began the book.

I began the book out of curiosity as many people do when they write books. I wanted to know more about it and being old I wasn’t sure I would finish it. I first wrote about the Reformation and I thought I was making good head way and I worked away for several years. It’s the most difficult book I’ve ever worked on. When I came to 1800, I thought I’d had enough. Over lunch, I met a well-known cricket writer and he said, “How’s your book going?” I said, “I’m up to 1800 and I think I’ll finish it.” He said, “You can’t do that. You can’t finish a cricket match when the score is unknown.”

So I worked away and eventually I finished it. I tried to write a book that would please me, the kind of book that, if I were in a bookshop, I would like to buy. I’m conscious that there’s so much talent writing about Christianity still today but like so many learned fields, people write more and more for each other. They become specialists and they write to please the specialists. I thought I would try to write a book where I didn’t have a glossary. And I wouldn’t use a term unless I had enough space to explain it. I’m not sure whether I succeeded adequately but that’s what I tried to do.

I didn’t want the book to be encyclopaedic – there are wonderful encyclopaedias now on so many subjects. There’s an Oxford dictionary of the Christian Church, about 1000-1300 pages, the latest edition in 2006 and there are so many things available for those who want to look up something in particular. I didn’t think I would write about Australia but occasionally I came across something interesting and I mentioned it.

The last time I was in Sydney I went down to Manly. If you are a Victorian it’s a wonderful experience to catch the ferry to Manly; it’s one of the great Australian experiences, just as it was in the days of Henry Lawson. When you cross near the Heads, the waves come in, if there are any waves. And you go ashore to Manly. I went for a walk to the beach and then coming back I passed a church, a Congregational church. I went inside and to my surprise it was of course a typical Congregational church – the foundation stone laid by the Fairfax family of the Sydney Morning Herald and its trustee being David Jones of the well-known emporium, built, around 1862 or 1863.

But one of the first pastors, and I’d forgotten this, was a man named Dowie, a Scot who came to South Australia and had a Congregational church at Hamley Bridge. And then he was invited to Manly. From Manly he pressed on and he became a famous evangelist and moved eventually to Chicago where he founded a religious settlement called Zion City, that became quite famous. Zion City caught on in South Africa. The biggest churches in South Africa are not the old Dutch Reform Church, but the various splintered branches of the Zion Churches. My understanding is that it’s the biggest Protestant celebration of Easter in the world, although it doesn’t necessarily have to be large to be the biggest Protestant celebration of Easter. But it is a huge occasion with more than a million people, and presided over by a pastor who joins a succession of people running back from Dowie.

Could I just begin with a couple of statements that are in the book. Of all the known people of the world, Jesus Christ is the most influential. In a 100 years’ time people may change their mind. If Islam continues to grow, it’s possible it will reach Christianity in a 100 years time or more. Although these predictions are very uncertain, Mohamed may be a competitor. I’ve thought about this a lot, and I think it’s fair to say that of all the known people in the world, Jesus is the most influential.

It’s remarkable that a man who lived 2,000 years ago, and who held no public office, and owned no wealth, should have exerted such influence. It’s remarkable that a man who at no time travelled more than a few days’ walk from his birthplace should have exerted such long term influence. Even our calendar dates from his birth, though we can’t agree when he was born nor when he died. Those are words from my book and I still agree with them after two months.

Some critics say that Christ did not exist. They have their reasons, and it is true that he is not mentioned in writings made while he was alive or in the following ten or 20 years. However, in my view, his life was well documented by the standard of the times. His life indeed is astonishingly documented for someone who lived a simple life in a remote outpost of the huge Roman Empire. In fact, his life as many of you know, is so surrounded by evidence, and most of it compiled in the half century or so after his death, that the problem a glut of evidence. There is so much from so many different sources; and parts of it are inconsistent, and other parts are plain contradictory.

I wrote in the book, that the Bible is a violin on which scores of tunes can be played. I think that’s true. You can play almost too many tunes with diverging moods and meanings. The result is an astonishing mountain of books on the Bible and Christian religion. In our era, one person could never read them. I wouldn’t be surprised if you got all the surviving literature on Christianity written since the first century AD, and divided it amongst 50 smart readers, learned scholars, and they each took one fiftieth, I doubt whether they would complete in their lifetime all that had been written. As late as 1900 in Europe, more books were published on Christ and Christianity than on any other subject. That’s no longer true. I’m tempted to suggest that between AD 400 and AD 1900, more intellectual talent was devoted to studying Christianity than to any five other topics added together. It’s only a guess, I can’t be sure, but the amount of intellectual power that went into that topic is astonishing.

Even today, the talent in that field is still large. But its writings generally do not reach a large audience. Theologians and church historians write for each other, with plenty of exception. But this is increasingly true of most disciplines taught within universities. Even media studies, if you read parts of the Finkelstein report, it’s as if the monastic system has been born again in this rather secular era.

Christ was born and lived his life in semi-rural Palestine. Late in his short life, he became an itinerant preacher with twelve Jewish disciples. He preached a distinctive brand of message; in essence he said love God and love your neighbour, it’s better to give than to receive, and it’s better to forgive than to seek revenge. It’s a pretty impossible religion in some ways. Each of you interested in his life, some of you may be a worshipper or a respecter of him, may prefer to express his message with different emphases. Atheists or agnostics will of course see it differently in their own ways.

While still young, he was crucified by the Roman authorities in Jerusalem. He was buried within the eyes of his closest followers, he rose from the dead. Eagerly, the followers spread his message, at first in the Jewish synagogues that were scattered along the shores of the Mediterranean and in many parts of Asia Minor. It’s believed that in the Roman Empire about the time of the birth of Christ, maybe eight per cent of the population was Jewish. It’s an astonishingly high percentage of the population, but there is evidence for this. It would be interesting to know whether the Christian message would have spread without being part of that remarkable system of synagogues. Of course the Christian message diverged from mainstream Judaism, and as time passed by the Christians broke away or were sometimes expelled. From time to time, Roman emperors or local governors persecuted them. I think it’s fair to say that early Christians were asking for trouble if they did not give loyalty to the Roman Empire or its favoured gods.

In the early 300s, by an astonishing turn of events, the new Roman Emperor Constantine tentatively became one of their followers. There’s great debate on whether he was a strong follower at the start – certainly his mother was a strong follower. He gave them freedom to worship, and soon gave them preference over all other religions. They became the main – but not the only – religion in the Roman Empire. In due course, Goths and Huns and others overran the Western Roman Empire but these invaders were already Christians, with their own distinctive theology. The next invaders of the Christian world were Muslims, who came out of Arabia with their cavalry between about AD 630 and AD 900.

The Muslims conquered Egypt which was then the great granary of the Mediterranean. They conquered Libya and all coastal North Africa. They captured Spain and part of France, and much of Western Asia and Central Asia, and even Jerusalem. Most of this vast territory was never recovered by Christianity. Muslim pirates even raided Rome in about the 840s and pillaged sacred sites. It’s very hard to know what public opinion is on historical events at any one time, but my belief reading Australian, English and American letters to the editors intermittently is that certainly, since September 2001, the belief has been widespread that the hostility between Muslims and Christians really began with the crusades, and it’s as though a vast area of human history has been wiped from common consciousness. How that happens, one doesn’t know.

In the course of the Muslim conquests, Christianity declined. It was now second only to Islam in numbers and influence. If you lived in the year 1000 and you were well informed, and you were asked which religion, if religion survives, would become dominant in the year 2000, I think you would have said without hesitation, Islam.

By 1500, Christianity was rising again. Christian nations especially Spain and Portugal had just discovered the Americas and the new sea route around Asia. Christians became the chief missionaries in these lands. Today, six of the seven main Christian nations of the world lie in these territories opened up and occupied by Europeans. Six of the seven main Christian nations of the world today lie in what loosely was called “the new world”. It’s only in recent centuries that Christianity became the world’s main religion, at least that’s my calculation.

So trade follows the flag, and so does religion. When Christianity came to Australia it came from the British Isles. The first pastor in Sydney was Richard Johnson, of evangelical background, and there’s rather a moving plaque in Johnson Square. Christianity of course has had a profound influence on Australia. The thought struck me the other day – quite clearly the Australian flag is a Christian flag, because it has the crosses of St Patrick and St Andrew and St George, but we forget that the Southern Cross is a Christian cross. The Southern Cross is not there as an abstract commentary on geography, it’s there as a Christian cross. I don’t know whether the major supporters of the Eureka Stockade would think of that, but the Eureka flag is essentially a Christian flag, and to me it is modelled much more on an Irish cross than it is on that glorious constellation which we occasionally see from the city when the lights are not too bright.

Just one little thing about Australia. The 1993 Census was the only census for a long time where people were asked questions about religion, and other things which enabled the census-taker to bring them together. At that time, around 80 per cent of Australians who married, chose someone of the same religious denomination as their partner. Not only Catholic married Catholic, but Congregationalist married Congregationalist and Presbyterian married Presbyterian.

A few comments on the world we live in. A charming e-mail came to me in November, just after the book was published, from a reader who says he’s read the book in one weekend. I’m not sure what to think of that, or what his wife thought of it. He said he had not intended to devour it so quickly. He said, “The Qantas troubles forced me to go from Sydney to South Africa via Dubai.” And here is a note about the changing world of the church from a former nun, now married. She says, “I have ordered a copy of your book for the two Indian priests in our Parish.” One reader sent me six postage stamps and a printed prayer from St Francis of Assisi. I take that as a gesture of good will, but I don’t know what the postage stamps are for.

The history of Christianity and of atheism and agnosticism is a vital part of our civilisation. It’s a vital part too, of the history of Australia. But we don’t know enough about it, and it’s not easily taught.

I’ll just finish with these thoughts. Why is Christianity in decline in the more prosperous and educated of the modern nations? Most of us envisage the history of Christianity as a wide fast flowing river that within a few centuries of the life of Christ became very powerful and dominant in most of the areas where it existed. But it’s now narrowing and slowing for the first time, especially in the prosperous western nations.

I think the following are fair comments. First, the decline is very uneven. It is far less in Poland than in Holland, While Holland has been withdrawing missionaries from the world in the process of decolonisation, Poland is sending them to Africa in very large numbers. The decline of Christianity is far less in the United States than it is in England and Scotland. The decline in fact is incredibly uneven. I have not heard this said before, but his is my view. Christianity is less in decline in the USA than it was influential in France 200 years ago. In other words, Christianity is stronger in the USA than it was in France 250 years ago, when France was by most definitions the number one nation, certainly the most populous, in Western Europe. Which makes you think about the unevenness of this phenomenon we often hear discussed.

Christianity is obviously stronger now in Australia than it was in 1812. I suspect Christianity is still stronger in Australia – more about Jesus is known today by the average citizen than was known in 1850. The vast Christianisation of Australia took place in the 1850s, in the gold rushes with all the migrations. My impression, though it’s very hard to prove, is that by 1900 church-going was more common in Australia than in England, when England was still one of the great Christian nations of the world. Could I add something that has taken me by surprise.

My own studies, imperfect as they are, suggest that in many periods Christians really only had hold of a small but influential section of the population. Every now and then when you read the original writings, you come across statements that take you by surprise. Many people in the sixteenth century said that Geneva was the most ungodly place known. John Calvin, who used to give several sermons a week, carefully written out, says that most Genevans aren’t really Christians. They believe in luck, or astrology, and change and good fortune are much more influential than Christ or God.

If you read the evidence taken by the factory commission, which in the 1840s in England was investigating the working and social conditions of the new textiles towns and coal mines that were changing the world from the base of north and central England, they find that a surprising proportion of children did not know the name of Jesus. In fact, there’s a well known Australian historian K.S. English who, when he was young, wrote a book on English churchgoing in the nineteenth century. The question was when did the working class – which then I suppose occupied about 60-70 per cent of the households of England – stop going to church. And the answer was they never went to church.

I suppose the same may well be true of atheism in the last 50 years. In Australia, this percentage of atheistic population has vigorously increased, so the census says. Many atheists are articulate and thoughtful, and on the attack. But I think, on most days, atheists are not in the least interested. They have left Christianity, if they ever belonged to it, and now they belong nowhere. I’m not saying that about the articulate thoughtful ones, for whom it’s a kind of crusade.

Finally, has religion declined in the modern world, in the last 100 or 200 years? I’m not sure it has. In countries with a high standard of living – Europe, North America, Australia and so forth – I’m inclined to think religion has not declined. What has happened is that alternative religions have taken the place of Christianity. The alternative religions include communism, which had a wonderful spin in the twentieth century which has now ended. In some form or other I think it will come back, but it won’t have that name. Collectivist movements are too much part of human attitudes to die away completely, and some form of communism will come back. But communism was very much a system of faith, with many characteristics similar to religions.

Nature is an alternative religion. There are two kinds of greens – there are the light greens who say there are important parts of the environment that must be protected but jobs must be created and life must go on, and there are the dark greens who believe that the world is in a permanent state of ecological crisis. The dark greens have nearly all of the seats held by the Greens in parliament, and the dark Greens I think see nature as their religion.

Finally, the third religion is science and technology. Its god is reason. Science has become incredibly powerful and influential – which is understandable. So much of the increased standard of living in the last 100 years has come from science and technology. And, understandably, science is worshipped by large numbers of people. I myself have written widely about the influence of technology and some people say I place more emphasis on technology than any other historian in Australia. Maybe that’s right. So I’m friendly to technology and science.

But science has reached a stage where, in a lot of areas, it’s given the benefit of the doubt which is given to all the dominant religions in their heyday. I don’t say this as an anti-science point, but I marvel at the way in which science, that was taught in schools and was “the truth,” is excused when a new discovery is made. Then we only hear the facts of the new discovery. But there’s no apology for science being so wrong and so misleading to the previous generation. As a powerful discipline, science is remarkably lacking in humility. And any discipline, and any god, that is lacking in humility is ultimately heading for a fall.