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An Anglican Odyssey: The Ecumenical Vision of Canon David John Garland (1864–1939) OBE and his Hidden Christian Agenda for Anzac Day

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 November 2021

Abstract

There is still much unclear about the nature of the origins of Australia’s most respected and hallowed national day, namely Anzac Day, 25 April, and about who was primarily responsible for instituting a day of solemn commemoration for the fallen in the Great War of 1914–18. Much has been written by mostly unqualified would-be ‘authorities’ that is either patently false, uninformed or hostile to the commemoration. This is either because of resentment in some quarters of the distinctly Anglican contribution to the nature of the commemoration or pacifist misunderstanding that the celebration of Anzac Day is somehow a glorification of war. This paper based on original research into the files of the Queensland Anzac Day Commemoration Committee establishes the key role of Canon David John Garland (1864–1939) in shaping a liturgy of civic religion for the day which he hoped would become a means of reminding the population of their calling as part of the British Empire to emphasize the reign of Almighty God over all nations of the earth. That was the hidden Christian agenda in the mind of Canon Garland. Naturally he had his opponents to this objective.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press

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Footnotes

1

John A. Moses is a Professorial Associate of St Mark’s National Theological Centre in Canberra, ACT, Australia.

References

2 Garland had a reputation in the Church as a priest with an extensive knowledge of the law, though he had no formal legal training or qualifications. What he knew had been obviously gleaned from his employment as a ‘gopher’ or ‘gofor’ in Toowoomba, that is, as a general factotum in the office. Enquiries reveal that the firm in question no longer exists. Whereas in the general record, at least by some authorities, Canon Garland’s work in establishing Anzac Day is acknowledged, its deeper significance is yet to be unearthed and advertised. As with most problems of understanding history and politics the essential spiritual-intellectual aspects remain obscure to the general public.

3 Jones had arrived in Australia as member of a band of six clergy accompanying Bishop Tufnell who founded the Diocese of Brisbane. At that time he was a deacon and was duly ordained priest in St John’s pro-cathedral 26 May 1861. When Jones died in 1918, Garland published a warm eulogy of his mentor in the Brisbane daily The Courier Mail, 7 December 1918. See also The Church Chronicle, 1 July 1934, p. 206, for Garland’s speech to the Brisbane Synod on the occasion of his award of an OBE when he paid tribute to the shaping influence of the mentor of his youth in Toowoomba.

4 Cf. David Bebbington, Evangelicalism in Modern Britain: A History from the 1730s to the 1980s (London: Routledge, 1988). Garland’s entire ministry is distinguished by his most vigorous Activism, for example. Indeed, his energy was acknowledged by his Ordinary who called him a ‘Triton among the minnows’. See n. 13.

5 Some clergy designating themselves ‘Anglo-Catholic’ seem to insist that they distinguish themselves by pursuing a largely ritualistic and anti-feminist agenda. These people, as do fundamentalist champions of biblical inerrancy, advocate a doctrinaire submission to what they are pleased to call ‘the Church’. In either case ecumenical dialogue is rejected as is the ordination of women to either the priesthood or the episcopate.

6 See Bruce Kaye, A Church without Walls: Being an Anglican in Australia (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1995).

7 See Hans Küng, On Being a Christian (London: Fount Paper Backs, 1974), pp. 466. ‘… Christianity is not a book religion. The Scriptures are not themselves divine revelation. They are merely the human testimonies [emphasis added] of divine revelation in which the humanity, independence and historicity of the human authors always remain intact.’ It is fair to observe that Garland would have understood this. Nevertheless, his point is still valid, namely that the Bible is the source of our spiritual and political culture. With regard to Jones, as Garland himself attested, he was the priest who led Garland to the Faith by making clear that the Church was there to heal the world, that is to make it ‘whole’ again.

8 It is instructive to use the concept of conflicting paradigms here: There is the Evangelical paradigm that ascribes inerrancy to Scripture and there is the Catholic paradigm that prioritizes the Word and the Sacraments in the task of sacralizing human society. Crucially, the German Protestant theologians by the time of the First World War had evolved a new paradigm that elevated the German Power State (Machtstaat) to the status of being God’s instrument for the conversion of the world. One may call that the Harnack paradigm after its foremost champion, Professor Adolf von Harnack (1851–1930). It was, however, vigorously contested by the Swiss Social Democratic theologian, Karl Barth, in his path-breaking study, The Epistle to the Romans (1918).

9 Hans Küng, The Church (London: Search Press Ltd, 1973). On p. 486, Küng proclaims, ‘The Church has the gift and responsibility of being in the world and with the world; of thinking, speaking and acting as part of the world. But even this ministry is not sufficient. The Church exists for the world by being committed to the world.’ Garland’s ministry bears this out quite dramatically in his concept of Anzac Commemoration and his energetic dedication to it.

10 Why Garland was not made Deacon in his own Diocese of Brisbane instead of the neighbouring Diocese of Grafton-Armidale in New South Wales is not clear. It may have had to do with some disagreement between Jones and Bishop Webber of Brisbane (1885–1903) but a satisfactory answer cannot be found in the surviving archives. The point is that Jones’s influence on Garland was of crucial significance in his overall development as both priest and citizen.

11 Riley Diaries, held in the Perth Public Library. See entries for period, 16 October 1901 to 24 March 1902.

12 John A. Moses, ‘The Faith of David John Garland (1864–1939): An Australian Gladstonian Imperialist’, St Mark’s Review 225 (August 2013), pp. 72-84, and John A. Moses, ‘David John Garland: “A Triton among the Minnows”’, St Mark’s Review 230 (December 2014). pp. 60-71. In the West Australian Church News, 17 December 1898, p. 157, which Garland edited, he published an article entitled, ‘What Mr. Gladstone Believed – Selected from his Writings’, in which he set out Gladstone’s views on national policy and Christian principles.

13 See the summary of the work of the Bible in State Schools League prepared by Garland for presentation to the New Zealand Parliament in 1914. This document of 260 printed pages provides information on all the dominions and colonies of the then British Empire on the legislation allowing religious instruction in government schools. See Religious Instruction in State Schools – Statement prepared by the Rev. Canon D.J. Garland for the Education Committee of the Parliament of New Zealand (Wellington, 1914).

14 For an outstanding example, see Christian Patriotism by Archbishop St Clair Donaldson (1915) reprinted in John A. Moses and Peter Overlack, First Know your Enemy: Comprehending Imperial German War-Aims and Deciphering the Enigma of Kultur (Melbourne: Australian Scholarly, 2019), pp. 258-73.

15 Bismarck was the celebrated practitioner of Hegelian Realpolitik, which means the politics of raison d’état totally disregarding concerns for Christian morality. The Prusso-German elder statesman of Lutheran faith was openly contemptuous of Gladstone’s theological position. See Frederick B.M. Hollyday (ed.), Bismarck – Great Lives Observed (Engelwood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall,1970), p. 160, and Hajo Holborn, ‘Bismarck’s Realpolitik’, Journal of the History of Ideas 21 (1960), pp. 88-91; Jonathan Steinberg, Bismarck – A Life (Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press, 2011).

16 John A. Moses, ‘British and German Churches and the Perception of War 1908–1915’, War & Society 5.1 (1987), pp. 23-44. There is a considerable literature on this subject, the most recent being from John Horn and Alan Kramer, German Atrocities, 1914: A History of Denial (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2001). See also Albrecht Gerber, Deissmann the Philologist (New York/Berlin: Walther de Gruyter, 2010), pp. 245-82. In this lengthy section Gerber has fleshed out the differences between Western theological thinking about war and the then prevailing Protestant German attitude.

17 This subject has also attracted considerable attention. For outstanding examples, see Hilary M. Carey, God’s Empire: Religion and Colonialism in the British World c. 1808–1908 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011); Rowan Strong, Anglicanism and the British Empire (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007) and Rowan Strong (ed.), The Oxford History of Anglicanism. III. Partisan Anglicanism and its Global Expansion (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017).

18 Obviously not all political leaders conceived of the Empire in such exalted theological categories. Gladstone’s vision would not necessarily have been uppermost in the mind of many other British statesmen.

19 When the German Lutheran leadership tried to explain to the British churches why the Reich was entirely justified in invading Belgium it elicited a very firm rebuttal from the Archbishop of Canterbury. See Moses, ‘British and German Churches’.

20 John A. Moses and George F. Davis, Anzac Day Origins: Canon D J Garland and Trans-Tasman Commemoration (Canberra: Barton Books, 2013), pp. 112-15. Frodsham was Bishop of North Queensland from 1902 to 1913.

21 Moses and Davis, Anzac Day Origins, p. 89.

22 Donaldson was Brisbane’s first archbishop, appointed in 1904, a scholarly Cambridge graduate and Empire patriot who shared Garland’s commitment to the spread of biblical knowledge but otherwise did not warm to the Dubliner, although he referred to Garland as a ‘Triton among the minnows’ (see Moses, ‘David John Garland’). On Davidson, see Alexander Philip Kidd, ‘The Brisbane Episcopate of St. Clair Donaldson 1904–1921’, PhD thesis, University of Queensland, 1996, and John A. Moses, ‘A Doughty War-time Leader: Brisbane’s First Archbishop, St. Clair George Alfred Donaldson 1904–1921’, Queensland History Journal 24.2 (August 2019), pp.184-96.

23 See Yvonne Perkins, ‘Queensland’s Bible in State Schools Referendum 1910: A Case Study in Democracy’, BA Hons Thesis, University of Sydney, 2010, pp. 65-67.

24 The Roman Catholic hierarchy had always opposed the notion that school children of their flock could be exposed to heretical doctrines if the Act were to be amended. To meet this objection children of Roman Catholic families were exempted from attending these lessons as were those of professed atheist or agnostic parentage. Subsequently the Queensland Education Act has been amended to allow the discretion of principals to regulate the admission of ministers of religion or ‘chaplains’ to conduct Bible lessons.

25 From the Preface to Bible Lessons: Arranged from the Old and New Testaments for the Use of Queensland State Schools (Brisbane: Queensland Government Printer, 1911).

26 See ch. 6, by George F. Davis, in Moses and Davis, Anzac Day Origins, pp. 118-33, passim.

27 Donaldson minuted that the Canon had no learning, but that he was, however, ‘extraordinarily well-informed’. See Moses, ‘David John Garland’.

28 For the full account of the public meeting in Brisbane held on 10 January 1916 that sparked these events, see John A. Moses and George F. Davis, Anzac Day Origins: Canon D J Garland and Trans-Tasman Commemoration (Canberra: Barton Books, 2013), pp. 76-101. See also Nic Maclellan, ‘Gallipoli and Forgetting’, Inside Story, 23 April 2015, in which the author draws attention to the greater casualties suffered by the French colonial troops at Gallipoli.

29 The Turkish name is Ari Burnu.

30 Peter Rees, Bearing Witness: The Remarkable Life of Charles Bean, Australia’s Greatest War Correspondent (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 2015), pp. 124-28.

31 For biographical details about Donaldson, see A.P. Kidd, ‘The Brisbane Episcopate of St Clair Donaldson 1904–1924’, PhD thesis, University of Queensland, 1996.

32 G.P. Shaw in 1988 and All That (St Lucia: University of Queensland Press, 1988).

33 Personal recollection of author.

34 ‘No jubilation’ was the phrase used by the ADCC to oppose the holding of all sporting events or entertainments such as theatre or cinema on 25 April because the day should be kept ‘holy’ and observed like Good Friday in complete solemnity. See John A. Moses, ‘The Struggle for Anzac Day 1916–1930 and the Role of the Anzac Day Commemoration Committee’, Journal of Royal Australian Historical Society 88.1 (June 2002), pp. 58-77.

35 See David Stephens and Alison Broinowski (eds.), The Honest History Book (Sydney: Newsouth, 2017). This collection contains contributions from prominent Australian historians and writers very few of whom take little or no account of the spiritual nature of Anzac Day. There are a number of Australian historians whose world view excludes the evaluation of religion in the nation’s history, or at least minimize its significance. Among the more strident advocates would be the separate publications of Alison Broinowski, Marilyn Lake, Henry Reynolds, Joy Damousi and Mark McKenna. See Carolyn Holbrook’s chapter ‘Adaptable Anzac: Past, present and future’ in The Honest History Book, pp.4 8-63. It is, of course, not surprising that in our ‘open speech situation’ (Jürgen Habermas) it cannot be expected that every one with an opinion who wishes to publish their views will not be ‘on the same page’. We live in a pluralistic society, after all.

36 See the work of Michael Gladwin on this precise question, ‘Anzac Day’s Religious Custodians’, in Tom Frame (ed.), Anzac Day Then and Now (Sydney: UNSW Press, 216), pp. 90-111. Gladwin’s extensive work on the history of army and navy chaplaincy in Australian military history has broken important new ground in the national story, particularly in his analyses of spiritual attitudes of service people under fire and of the varied work of chaplains especially under front line conditions.

37 See Tim Soutphommasane, Reclaiming Patriotism: Nationality for Australian Progressives, (Melbourne: Monash University Press, 2009) and Tim Soutphommasane, The Victorious Citizen: Patriotism in a Multi-Cultural Society (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012).

38 Michael Lattke, ‘Ten Theses on Christian Freedom’, reprinted in John A. Moses, Anglicanism: Catholic Evangelical or Evangelical Catholic? Essays Ecumenical and Polemical (Adelaide: ATF Theology: 2019), pp. 110-13.