(2014) “...but in its proper place....” Religion, Enlightenment, and Australia’s Secular...

STEPHEN CHAVURA

“. . . but in its proper place. . . .”Religion, Enlightenment, and Australia’s SecularHeritage: The Case of Robert Lowe in Colonial

NSW 1842–1850*

Over the last few decades historians have been rediscovering Australia’s religiousheritage, often in response to entrenched narratives depicting Australia’s social,intellectual, and political history as a triumph of secular enlightenment over vestigesof Old World partnerships of religion, state, and society. That Australia has a richsecular heritage is indisputable, but to draw a sharp distinction between the “secular”and the “religious” is anachronistic and misguided, and any attempt to tell the storyof Australia’s secular heritage must acknowledge that the “secular” often found itsjustification flowing from more general religious premises grounded in enlighten-ment ideals such as rational religion, rational piety, and general Christianity. Indeed,when liberal democracy was emerging in the colonies the “secular” had to be justifiedin terms acceptable to the public square and these terms were broadly religious.Robert Lowe is an apt case study for divining the nature of the secular in colonialAustralia, for his thought and political activity show the subtle and complex way thatideals such as “enlightenment,” “religion,” and “secular” entered into dialogue ratherthan warfare with one another and contributed to social institutions judged suitablefor a fledgling pluralist nation.

IntroductionIt is only with his activity in New South Wales that Robert Lowe, later ViscountSherbrooke, is remembered as being on the right side of history. Unfortunatefor a supremely gifted man who only came to Sydney for health and wealth and

Dr Stephen Chavura is an independent scholar.* Paper originally delivered to the Centre for the History of Christian Thought and Experience,2 June 2011, Macquarie University, and the Rethinking Secularism in Australia and Beyondseminar held at Robert Menzies College, Macquarie University, 30 September 2011. Thanks to theanonymous reviewers of this Journal for their comments. For support and advice special thanks toRaymond Heslehurst, Stuart Piggin, Meredith Lake, Geoff Treloar, Ian Tregenza, Wayne Hudson,and Steve Wood. For advice on the fate of Robert and Georgiana Lowe’s letters to William SharpMacleay I thank staff at the Macleay Museum, University of Sydney. Thanks also to the documentdelivery services staff at the National Library of Australia. Finally, thanks to Kim Robinson and thestaff at Moore Theological College, Newtown, for access to the W. G. Broughton papers.

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Journal of Religious HistoryVol. 38, No. 3, September 2014doi: 10.1111/1467-9809.12075

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returned to London to make a name for himself in a much bigger pond. Hisinternational fame rests principally on his frustrations: his eloquent oppositionto the democratic 1867 Reform Act,1 and his attempt to base English elemen-tary education on “payment by results.”2 His failures of personality are alsolegendary; merciless, caustic, sarcastic, and ideologically blinded are descrip-tions that pepper all serious biographical accounts, except that of his officialbiography.3 Yet in NSW he is remembered as a champion of causes vindicatedshortly after his departure, most notably colonial self-government and generaleducation.4 For Lowe, these causes were merely institutional expressions ofthe terminus ad quem of human history: enlightenment. In this way New SouthWales held promise for Lowe as a young potential showcase of enlightenmentplanning, and it is in Lowe’s attempts to justify his enlightenment vision forthe colony that we get a good insight into the relationship of enlightenment,religion, and the secular in colonial New South Wales.

Current debate over the nature of eighteenth and nineteenth-century secu-larism resembles debate over the nature of the Enlightenment, for in bothcases historians have come to reject exclusive conceptual categories formore porous and reciprocal accounts of crucial concepts, such as “reason,”“religion,” “enlightenment,” and “secular.”5 John Gascoigne suggests that weshould look at the Enlightenment more “as an attitude of mind rather than aformal creed with clearly defined articles.”6 This is promising, for it becomeseasier to appreciate popular Victorian notions of “enlightened religion”and “rational piety.” Similar comments may be made about secularisation asa European phenomenon occurring concurrently with the Enlightenment.As well as occurring very differently in different European states during theeighteenth and nineteenth centuries, secularisation was, for the most part, less

1. R. Lowe, Speeches and Letters on Reform (London: Robert John Bush, 1867). See A. Briggs,“Robert Lowe and the Fear of Democracy,” in Victorian People: A Reassessment of Persons andThemes (NewYork: Harper and Row, 1955), 232–63. T. D. L. Morgan, “All For a Wise Despotism?Robert Lowe and the Politics of Meritocracy,” PhD diss., University of Cambridge, 1983;C. Ingham, “Liberalism against Democracy: A Study of the Life, Thought and Work of RobertLowe, to 1867,” PhD diss., University of Leeds, 2007.2. In 1903 James Bryce could write: “He left his mark on our elementary school system byestablishing the system of payment by results, but nearly every change made in that system sincehis day has tended to destroy the alterations he made and to bring back the older conditionof things, though no doubt in an amended form.” J. Bryce, Studies in Contemporary Biography(New York: Macmillan, 1903), 304–305.3. A. P. Martin, Life and Letters of the Honourable Right Robert Lowe, Viscount Sherbrooke, 2vols. (London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1893). For Lowe’s personal shortcoming JamesBryce’s portrait remains unsurpassed. See above n. 2.4. Henry Parkes’ thought and reforms on education bear striking similarity to Lowe’s own policy.Parks was an admirer of Lowe and helped him get elected to the Legislative Council in 1844. SeeA. W. Martin, Henry Parkes: A Biography (Carlton: Melbourne University Press, 1980).5. See, for example, W. R. Ward, Christianity under the Ancien Régime 1648–1789 (Cambridge:Cambridge University Press, 1999), 20; N. Aston, Christianity and Revolutionary Europe c.1750–1830 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 2; H. McLeod, “Introduction,” in TheDecline of Christendom in Western Europe, 1750–2000, ed. H. McLeod and W. Ustorf (Cambridge:Cambridge University Press, 2003).6. J. Gascoigne, The Enlightenment and the European Origins of Australia (Cambridge:Cambridge University Press, 2002), p. 1. The same is true of other contestable concepts: seeS. Macintyre on liberalism, A Colonial Liberalism: The Lost World of Three Victorian Visionaries(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991), 12.

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a matter of anti-religion as it was a process of Christian pluralisation. InEngland and Germany, for example, what at the time may have been consideredsecularisation was what we would call pluralisation; the state loosening itsconnection with a single favoured church, but not with Christianity itself.7

Taking all this into consideration I wish to continue the research programmeboth of historians of the Enlightenment and secularisation and consider theconcept of the secular and how it related to the Enlightenment and religion inAustralia. Indeed, the concepts of the “secular,” “enlightenment,” and “reli-gion” were crucial in education debates in New South Wales in the 1840s; buthow, if at all, did they relate to one another?8 The barrister, journalist, andmember of the Legislative Council of New South Wales from 1843 to1850,Robert Lowe, is an apt case-study, for he is universally considered an enlight-enment liberal, yet in accounts of his Australian career his religious thoughtand relationship with the colonial church has usually had to play second fiddleto his political and economic thought and his relationship with the LegislativeCouncil.9 This is despite the fact that much of Lowe’s polemical energy wastaken up in ecclesiastical and even theological controversy. I shall explore aslice of the secular in Australian history by discussing the thought of RobertLowe, who was considered an infidel in his time and potentially the greatestenemy to religion then living in colonial New South Wales.10 In the case ofLowe it may be surprising to see that secularisation was partially shaped anddriven by theological convictions and religious concerns; or, at least, impos-sible to recommend in the public sphere without satisfying the social fact thatreligionless education was anathema. Lowe’s conceptions of “enlightenment”and “secular” were capacious enough to include general Christianity, or liberalProtestantism. Thus Lowe was able to champion his liberal enlightenmentvision for general secular education while able sincerely to claim that his wasnot an irreligious system.11

7. See H. McLeod, Secularisation in Western Europe, 1848–1914 (Basingstoke: Macmillan,2000).8. On Enlightenment education as secular see J. Gascoigne, “The Cultural Origins of AustralianUniversities,” Journal of Australian Studies 20, nos. 50–51 (1996).9. Three published biographies of Lowe are: Martin, Life and Letters (vol. 1 is largely concernedwith Lowe’s career in New South Wales); R. Knight, Iliberal Liberal: Robert Lowe in New SouthWales, 1842–1850 (Carlton: Melbourne University Press, 1966); James Winter, Robert Lowe(Toronto and Buffalo: University of Toronto Press, 1976).10. Certainly by Bishop William Grant Broughton as evidenced to his good friend the Rev.Edward Coleridge. He referred to Lowe in 1844 as “a radical of the darkest dye.” Then in 1846,speaking of Lowe’s Clerical Benefices Bill, Broughton said “it was generated out of hatred to theChurch universally, and partly to me personally.” For the quotations see respectively “Broughton toColeridge, 15August 1844,” Broughton Papers (BP), Moore Theological College, Newtown, Letter51; “Broughton to Coleridge, 3 October 1846,” BP, Letter 83. For Lowe’s own account of religionin his upbringing see R. Lowe, “A Chapter of Autobiography” (1876), in Martin, Life and Letters,vol. 1, 7–8, 23; cf. Martin, Life and Letters, vol. 1, 46.11. Numerous commentators have used “secular” or “secularism” to describe Lowe and hispolitical activity. See Knight, Illiberal Liberal, 102; J. Barrett, That Better Country: The ReligiousAspect of Life in Eastern Australia, 1835–1850 (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press), 141;Winter, Robert Lowe, 25. See other comments by J. S. Gregory, Church and State: ChangingGovernment Policies towards Religion in Australia: with Particular Reference to Victoria sinceSeparation (Cassell: North Melbourne, 1973), 38; Gascoigne, Enlightenment and the EuropeanOrigins of Australia, 19, 46. Lowe himself affirmed that his preferred system of education was

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As Alan Atkinson has said, the organisation of an administrative frameworkwithin the Australian colonies to accommodate all “forms of religious life” was“the great challenge of government.” Indeed, religious plurality in the antipo-dean colony had “left in limbo the religious character of government itself.. . .”12 The task of guiding the colonial administration from a de facto Anglicanconcern to a pluralist administration fell to a number of exceptional reformers,clerical and lay. If the decline of denominational education is, as Richard Elyonce suggested, one of the “sacred ‘events’ in the liberal-democratic story,” thisprocess is not merely sacred because it was “sacred, that is, from a certainviewpoint,”13 it is sacred in the sense that it, and other instances of church–statereform, are not describable in terms of a break from religion, for the policyreforms themselves were considered possible because they used theologicalarguments and satisfied religious social requirements.14 This is certainly thecase for outwardly religious reformers like John Dunmore Lang,15 John West,16

and John Fairfax,17 to name a few, but it is also the case with Robert Lowe. Byconsidering Lowe’s religious and philosophical ideas we gain an insight in tothe intellectual backdrop that helped form enduring institutions in Australiaand especially Australia’s secular heritage.

It is difficult to discuss Lowe’s activity in New South Wales without refer-ring back to his religion. In Lowe’s mind one of the great obstacles to freetrade, general education, and land reform in New South Wales was BishopBroughton.18 Furthermore, Lowe’s hostility to Broughton was not merelypolitical, it was also theological, for he saw Broughton as theologically suspect,

made up of “secular instruction.” See “Report from the Select Committee on Education,” Votes andProceedings of the Legislative Council of New South Wales, 1844, 453. A contemporary criticcalled Lowe “the apostle of modern and secular education.” See H. H. Almond, Mr. Lowe’sEducational Theories: Examined from a Practical Point of View (Edinburgh: Edmonston andDouglas, 1868), 31.12. A. Atkinson, The Europeans in Australia: A History, Volume Two (Melbourne: OxfordUniversity Press, 2004), 193–93.13. R. Ely, “Secularisation and the Sacred in Australian History,” Australian Historical Studies19, no. 77 (1981): 565. Alan Atkinson has also pointed out how church and state relations in NewSouth Wales, though disappointing to establishmentarians and many conservatives, were inkeeping with the broad-church theologians and reformers such as S. T. Coleridge and ThomasArnold. Institutional “secularisation” was partially driven by theological movements. A. Atkinson,“Time, Place, and Paternalism: Early Conservative Thinking in New South Wales,” AustralianHistorical Studies 23, no. 90 (April 1988): 17.14. This is what Wayne Hudson calls the “sacro-secular.” See his important monograph Austral-ian Religious Thought: Exploratory Studies (forthcoming).15. D. W. A. Baker, Days of Wrath: A Life of John Dunmore Lang (Carlton: Melbourne UniversityPress, 1985); R. D. Linder, “Australian Evangelicals in Politics in the Victorian Age: The Cases ofJ. D. Lang, W. G. Spence, and J. S. T McGowen,” Lucas: An Evangelical History Review 13 (June1992): 34–60.16. R. Ely, “The Religion of John West: Orthodox Protestant, Deist, Atheist, or What?,” Lucas:An Evangelical History Review, 25 & 26 (1999): 46–74.17. S. Johnson, “ ‘Busy for Both Worlds’: John Fairfax as a Leading Evangelical Layman (Part1),” Lucas: An Evangelical History Review, 27 & 28 (2000): 41–63; S. Johnson, “ ‘Busy for BothWorlds’: John Fairfax as a Leading Evangelical Layman (Part 2),” Lucas: An Evangelical HistoryReview, 33 & 34 (2003): 67–103.18. Lowe’s opinion that Gipps and Broughton were a kind of political duumvirate is rejected byhistorians owing to the scarcity of evidence and also the independent personality of Gipps. SeeKnight, Iliberal Liberal, 93; S. C. McCullloch, “The Attempt to Establish a National System ofEducation in New South Wales, 1830–1850,” Pacific Historical Review 28, no. 1 (February 1959):35.



that is, a Puseyite. Puseyism, whose frequent tendency to Roman Catholicismand ecclesiastical authoritarianism Lowe despised, had been a preoccupationof Lowe’s since 1841. For Lowe, Puseyism was an English betrayal of enlight-enment and Protestantism, the latter which Lowe considered a harbinger ofprogress. Thus, for Lowe, given his opinion that colonial affairs had degener-ated to being a matter between the Bishop of Australia and the Governor,politics was religious and religion was political.19 Lowe’s own vague religiosityproved a liability at times, for his anti-clerical political activism in the name ofmoral and religious improvement could easily be written off as the disinge-nuous lobbying of a crypto-infidel wishing to erase all social and politicalinfluence of religion. This was a slight exaggeration of Lowe’s hostility to thechurch, as indeed Lowe’s doxologies to religion and its importance wereprobably slightly more sanguine than his real feelings on the matter. Whatwe may glean from considering Lowe’s thought and political activity are thereligious dimensions of his justifications for secular education, yet also thereligious requirements and barriers characterising the colonial public spherethat an outsider had to engage with in any attempt at social reform. Put anotherway, colonial New South Wales was profoundly religious and denominational,there was simply no getting around this for anybody who wished to engagesociety for social and political ends. People like Robert Lowe, who were neverparticularly devotional in their religion, had to learn how to negotiate with thefact of colonial religiosity. Enlightenment ideas enabled Lowe to engage thepublic sphere as an advocate of secular causes yet still cast his ideas and policyin the language of colonial public (Protestant) reason: general Christianity.Lowe’s lobbying against denominational education in favour of a generalsystem was couched in terms of the good of general Christianity instead of anyparticular denominational advantage. A glimpse into Robert Lowe’s careerin New South Wales allows us to see how someone rather unecclesiasticalmanaged to justify his political and social vision within a religious culturalmilieu.20 Out of this we see the interplay of various concepts such as “religion,”“secular,” and “enlightenment,” disabusing us of our instinct to bracket thesemodes of thinking off from each other when considering Australia’s political,social, and intellectual heritage.

Robert Lowe was born in Bingham, a small town in the south ofNottinghamshire in 1811, the son of the local rector Robert Lowe Snr.21 He was

19. There is insufficient room here to discuss Lowe’s unsuccessful 1846 “Clerical BeneficesBill,” which was his attempt to remove Broughton’s power over the Anglican clergy. On this seeAtlas, 12 September 1846, 433; Atlas, 19 September 1846, 446; Atlas 3 October 1846, 470; SydneyMorning Herald, 23 September 1846, 4; “Broughton to Coleridge, 3 October 1846,” BP, Letter 83.See also G. P. Shaw, Patriarch and Patriot: William Grant Broughton 1788–1853 (Melbourne:Melbourne University Press, 1978), 193–97.20. Martin describes Lowe as “among the least ecclesiastical of English statesmen.” Martin, Lifeand Letters, vol. 1, 46.21. Biographical information is taken from Martin, Life and Letters; Knight, Iliberal Liberal; andWinter, Robert Lowe. There is not much evidence of deep family devotion in Lowe’s early years.Lowe’s cleric grandfather wrote a book on the improvement of local agriculture which wasabsolutely devoid of even token references to “God,” “providence,” “design,” or “designer.” Lowedid not even use his ecclesiastical nomenclature on the book title-page. See Robert Lowe Esq.,



a severe albino and his lack of pigmentation in his eyes made seeing excruci-atingly painful. He spent his life with his eyes almost completely closed, usingthem only to read when he was able. His physical strangeness compelled himto seek to prove his strength through a powerful caustic wit. He went toUniversity College, Oxford, in 1829 and became a famed debater — alwaystaking the liberal side of the argument — and composer of classical verse.He debated issues with fellow students who would go on to become greatVictorians: Gladstone and the future Archbishop Tait were sparring partners.Narrowly missing out on a double first in classics and mathematics, he stayedon at Oxford as a private classics tutor for seven years before joining the bar.Having passed his bar examination in 1842 his eyesight began to deteriorateeven more rapidly and he was advised by several doctors that he would beblind within seven years and that his best hope to prolong his eyesight was tomove to a more clement climate: they had heard good things about New SouthWales. The truth is that the Lowes’ migration to New South Wales in 1842 wasas much a pecuniary measure as it was therapeutic: Robert heard he couldmake a fortune in the fledgling colony.

In New South Wales his brilliance as a thinker and orator were soon noticedand Governor Gipps, underestimating Lowe’s independent-mindedness,appointed him as a Crown Nominee to the Legislative Council in late 1843.Falling out with Gipps on the issue of land tenure, Lowe resigned his seat asCrown Nominee and was successfully re-elected as Member for St Vincent andAuckland in 1845 and then as Member for Sydney in 1848 until his departureback to London in 1850. As well as making enough money to return to Londonand buy a moderate house, Lowe contributed to debates on every issueof importance in the colony through his speeches in the Legislative Council,membership on numerous Council committees including Chairmanship of theinquiry into general education (1844), and through his involvement in thenewspaper the Atlas, which he helped to found in 1844 and controlled at leastup until June 1845. The paper soon gave Lowe a reputation among manyas a “public pest”22 and was seen by others as merely a “vehicle of his spite,insolence, impudence, and gasconade.”23 Lowe has been remembered as a highliberal advocate of free trade,24 non-sectarian education, anti-transportation,and colonial self-government.25 He made more enemies than friends along the

General View of the Agriculture of the County of Nottingham, with Observations on the Means ofits Improvement (London: W. Smith, 1798). Nor is there much of a hint of family devotion in a codeof domestic conduct written up by an eight-year-old Robert Lowe. See Martin, Life and Letters,vol. 1, 64. Lowe’s rationalist Christianity was a product of a rationalist Christian family heritage.On Christian rationalism see W. Hudson, Enlightenment and Modernity: The English Deists andReform (London: Pickering and Chatto, 2009).22. The Australian, 10 September 1846, 2.23. The Australian, 10 September 1846, 2.24. J. Maloney, The Political Economy of Robert Lowe (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan,2005).25. M. McKenna, The Captive Republic: A History of Republicanism in Australia 1788–1996(Melbourne: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 30–36.



way and, contrary to the custom of throwing a public banquet for talented andinfluential men departing back to England, his departure was publicly ignoredand privately welcomed.

Lowe’s Enlightened ProtestantismGiven the starkness of Lowe’s dislike for divino jure clerical pretentions toauthority over church and society, it is tempting to ascribe his campaign againstdenominational education and his constant hounding of Bishop Broughtonand the colonial clergy as simple pathological irreligious anticlericalism. This,however, does not make sense of the facts, for Lowe’s intelligence was leg-endary and he was always able to show how his policy was to be derived frombroader principles and ultimately from reason. He was once described asthe colony’s “system-fitter-general.”26 Furthermore, if there is one thing forcertain, it is that Lowe was never one to back down in the face of unpopular-ity.27 Lowe was legendary for alienating career benefactors and friends in thename of principle. Despite his anticlericalism, he never advocated the totalocclusion of the clergy or, much less, religion from education or from havinga place in social improvement, as some did. Lowe’s antipathy to ecclesiasticalsocial and political aspirations yet willingness to admit the need for religion isbest seen through his principled commitment to enlightened Protestantism,which emphasised the good of religion within the bounds of reason andconsent. For Lowe, reasonable and non-dominating Christianity was a perfectlylegitimate presence in education and society; anything else was mere supersti-tion or clerical ambition masquerading as religion.

Lowe’s enlightened Protestantism is best expressed in his early forays intotheological debate just prior to his voyage to New South Wales. Lowe enteredtheological disputation on two occasions in his early career, the first entirelyvoluntarily, the second by being drawn. Both occasions revolved aroundsubstantial issues of Christian doctrine such as authority, the afterlife, and freewill, yet on both occasions Lowe steered the debate to less doctrinal and morelegalistic grounds: the interpretation and substance of the Thirty-Nine Articles.Lowe liked theological debate but only felt comfortable debating theologywhen the debate was untheological. Given Lowe’s reputation for anti-clericalism it is interesting to note that Lowe’s first published pamphlet was adefence of the Church of England, or at least the English Reformation, againstAnglo-Catholic theologians in the context of the Tractarian skirmish that raged

26. Sydney Morning Herald, 15 June 1847, 3. The correspondent — “A Squatter” — also offeredthe following verse about Lowe:

All philosophers who findSome favorite system to their mind;In every point to make it fit,Will force all nature to submit.

On Lowe’s penchant for ideology at all costs see especially Winter, Robert Lowe, 54–55.27. Duke writes of Lowe’s “almost masochistic delight” in unpopularity. This is true, but I thinkLowe also revealed a narcissistic delight in unpopularity, for he loved being the centre of attention,and for someone like Lowe, to be hated got the job done as well as being loved. See C. Duke,“Robert Lowe — A Reappraisal,” British Journal of Educational Studies 14, no. 1 (1965): 34.



during the 1830s and 1840s. It was Tract 90 published in 1841 that fired upLowe, then an Oxford Tutor in Classics, to write against the Tractarian party.His first tract, The Articles Construed by Themselves, was a dry and uninspiringhermeneutical argument to the effect that the Thirty-Nine Articles of theChurch of England must be interpreted according to themselves, rather thanaccording to the whole tradition of the Christian Church, as was the practiceof certain Anglo-Catholics.28 This hermeneutical principle, redolent of theReformation doctrine that Scripture is the only authoritative interpreter ofScripture, according to Lowe, undercut the whole Tractarian movement. Lowewas delighted when his former Oxford colleague William George Wardreferred to his tract in his own A Few More Words in Defence of no. 90 of theTracts for the Times and Lowe wrote a reply to Ward, Observations Suggestedby a Few More Words in Support of Tract 90. Neither of Lowe’s tracts could becalled particularly doctrinal. Rather than getting his feet wet by wading throughfirst order doctrinal issues, Lowe preferred to discuss issues of interpretationthat could be universally applied to any text, thus, entering into religious debatewithout being particularly religious.

These early pamphlets are important in that they show that Lowe’s commit-ment to the Church of England was very much a part of his commitment tofreedom and reason, which, for Lowe, were two of the greatest principles ofhuman progress. For example, speaking of the Reformation Lowe describedit as a period when “the human mind” awoke “from a lethargy of a thousandyears.”29 Furthermore, the Reformers’ teaching “That all things necessary tosalvation are to be found from the Scriptures by the ordinary intellect” wasdeclared by Lowe to be “the leading doctrine of Protestantism.”30 By makingthe principle of sola scriptura the fulcrum of Protestantism, Lowe was able tosweep away complex arguments based on detailed and intricate knowledge ofpatristics, councils, and historical theology and affirm a religion that could beunderstood without any special clerical knowledge. The tone of the pamphletswas as much anti-Rome as it was anti-Tractarian. For Lowe, any injunction tolaypeople to interpret texts via ecclesiastical tradition was to burden individ-uals with a yoke that the Reformation had supposedly cast off. There should benothing interfering with the Articles and the interpreter save knowledge of thehistorical context of the Articles themselves, not some ecclesiastical traditionthat occluded all but experts. Indeed, Lowe wrote that the abrogation of tradi-tion as a mediator between the individual and texts, and extolling conscienceabove institution were the mark of “our eternal separation from Rome.”31 Inhis second pamphlet Lowe contrasted Protestant conscience with “CatholicLogic,” the latter being “mean and timeserving enough to stoop to any trick,any sophism, to reconcile their interest with their principles. . . .” Protestant

28. “Lowe’s efforts were negligible; he merely demonstrated the shallowness of his religiousimagination. . . .” Winter, Robert Lowe, 31.29. R. Lowe, The Articles Construed by Themselves (Oxford: W Baxter, 1841), 6.30. Lowe, Articles, 7.31. Lowe, Articles, 24.



conscience, on the other hand, was inviolable.32 Yet Lowe also wanted to affirmthat there was no necessary conflict between conscience, private judgment, andcreeds and asked, “who does not see, that a man may hold the right of privatejudgment, and yet hold what is ruled by the Church, provided he does not holdit wholly because it is so ruled . . . ?”33 He confessed, “I, who consider theArticles of purely human origin, do think that they are entitled to respect fromevery one who has signed them, and publicly read them in Church as theconfession of his belief, and who has subscribed to the Statutes of a Universityin which they are acknowledged text-books for instruction in theology.”34 Theclosest Lowe ever came to any sort of doctrinal confession was in the midstof a debate with the Sydney Morning Herald over the place of free-will inChristian Orthodoxy. Ultimately, as he had done in the Tractarian debate, Lowesteered the conversation to familiar ground: textual interpretation. In the end,rather than engaging the free-willers in theology, Lowe simply pointed out thatthe Thirty-Nine Articles rejected free-will. Lowe went on to confess “the factreally is, that I am a member of the Church of England”:

I therefore beg to subjoin a copy of her tenth article, and refer you to the eleventh,twelfth, and seventeenth, which will, I apprehend, show clearly that though you mayconsider the foundation of the whole system of divine government to be man’s freeagency . . . the Church of England, whose articles I have repeatedly subscribed, doesnot.

But Lowe was no Calvinist, which the Atlas had condemned as completelysubversive of the ideal of moral improvement.35 Much like Thomas Hobbes haddone in the seventeenth century, Lowe explained his rejection of free-will asperfectly congruent with the Articles of the Church of England and challengedfree-willers to explain how they were not Pelagian. Lowe affirmed his ownadherence to the Church of England Articles and then revealed his belief in theunknowability of God:

It was an aspiring wish of the Arian Milton to justify the ways of God to man, but itis a wish that can never be accomplished . . . Dangerous it were, says the eloquent andjudicious Hooker, for the feeble brain of man to wade far into the doings of the MostHigh . . . our soundest knowledge is to know that we know him not . . . and our safesteloquence concerning him is our silence . . . He is above and we upon earth, thereforeit behoveth our words to be wary and few.36

Lowe’s early forays into theological polemic show an early glimpse at theattitude that would govern his thoughts and policy towards religion and thechurches during his eight years in New South Wales. For Lowe, religion, evenrevealed religion, could be eminently reasonable and was a legitimate object ofrespect. Nonetheless, religion that was nourished more by compulsion and

32. R. Lowe, Observations Suggested by a Few More Words in Support of No. 90 (Oxford:W. Baxter, 1841), 15.33. Lowe, Observations, 18–19.34. Lowe, Observations, 17. Lowe did actually subscribe to the Articles. See Sydney MorningHerald, 29 March 1845, 2.35. Atlas, 30 November 1844, 6.36. Sydney Morning Herald, 29 March 1845, 2.



ignorance rather than free assent and understanding was to be reviled. Thisissued in Lowe’s support for general Christian education but hostility to thedenominational system; the former he considered reasonable, whereas thelatter he saw as merely serving the narrow interest of the clerical hierarchy.

Religion in the Atlas under Lowe’s Editorship, November1844–June 1845Enlightened Protestantism informed the Atlas newspaper throughout Lowe’sknown period of control over it. Lowe’s editorship over the Atlas was a matterof debate during its period of circulation. The fact is that there never seems tohave been a time when Lowe was ever the official editor of the paper, but theevidence suggests that Lowe had control over the paper at least up until June1845, his biographer referring to his “virtual editorship” during this period.37

Exactly what his “virtual editorship” involved is not so clear. We know that hewrote two or three leading articles in every issue, and evidence also suggeststhat correspondence had to pass through him before it was published, until atleast 30 May 1845.38 On 22 March 1845 the titular editor, Richard Thompsonwrote a sulky letter to the Sydney Morning Herald announcing his forcedresignation, explaining that “It was desired by those, whose opinions I wasbound to yield to, that the single mind which was to govern the Atlas shouldbe that of Mr. Robert Lowe. . . .”39 On 4 June Lowe denied being editor of theAtlas,40 but this was still being contested as late as September the followingyear, the issue being the definition of an editor. The Australian exclaimed:

Now then, we ask Mr. Lowe, does he not always, or often, write one of those essaysor leading articles, which every week appear in the first, or in the first and secondpages of the Atlas? And, if so, is he not the Editor, or one of the Editors of the Atlas?Such at least we hold him to be, and shall continue to call him so, until he inform thepublic, not simply that he is not the Editor, that is, the compiler, of the Atlas, but thathe never writes in the Atlas at all.41

The Atlas prevaricated, merely denying that Lowe was the editor.42 Nonethe-less, the newspaper from the time that Lowe’s nineteenth-century biographersays that he gave up control until its final print run in 1848 singled out its favouron him and promoted and defended his ideas and acts in the LegislativeCouncil.43 No other colonial liberal enjoyed such favour from the Atlas. If theAtlas was Lowe’s own voice from 1844 to 1845 it was his advocate from 1845to 1848.

37. Martin, Life and Letters, vol. 1, 255. The Atlas also reprinted a congratulatory note from theCornwall Chronicle on the occasion of Lowe’s election as Member for St Vincent and Aucklandwhich referred to Lowe as “the first editor of the ATLAS.” Atlas, 31 March 1845, 316.38. Sydney Morning Herald, 6 June 1845, 2; 10 June 1845, 1.39. Sydney Morning Herald, 22 March 1845, 3.40. Sydney Morning Herald, 4 June 1845, 3.41. The Australian, 10 September 1846, 2.42. Atlas, 12 September 1846, 442.43. Atlas, 3 October 1846, 470; 3 July 1847; 30 October 1847; 11 December 1847; 25 December1847; 5 February 1848.



Although the paper claimed to be a journal concerned with “Politics, Com-merce, and Literature” and even attacked the very idea of a religious news-paper,44 the Atlas was almost always concerned with the religious affairs of thecolony and frequently injected theology into its broader social and politicalobservations. The paper was broadly liberal, meaning an advocate of repre-sentative government (but not democracy), free trade, and religious toleration(or anti colonial ecclesiastical ascendancy). The paper constantly attacked theChurch of England, derided Roman Catholicism, and kept a sharp anti-clericaledge. Never did it attack religion per se or Christianity; in fact, implicit in itsattacks on the Anglican Church and Roman Catholicism was their betrayalor perversion of “true Protestantism” or enlightened religion respectively. Injustifying why its literature reviews would be chiefly from European worksrather than British, it was suggested that the “cold realms of [British] utilitari-anism” were poor soil for “the warm regions of the emotional and the imagi-native.”45 Among the Atlas’s first literature reviews was a book The Expediencyof Preaching against the Amusements of the World, which Lowe used as anopportunity to attack the wowserism of the Sydney clergy and to delineate theirvocational boundaries: “. . . it is . . . the peculiar duty of the Christian pastorto influence the mind and inculcate principles, than to regulate the outwardconduct of those committed to his care.”46 In its first issue the paper alsoreprinted an attack on Calvinism, which it perceived as removing all humanhope for moral improvement:

We do not assent to the dogma, that not a single vestige of original goodness is leftin the human heart, and that vice has altogether crushed its better sympathies. Thisnotion . . . has too long occupied the public mind . . . Man is a palace in ruins . . .allowing Education to be the architect, may not these fragments of former grandeurand greatness be re-established and rebuilt, so as to form a beautiful, though neces-sarily imperfect, structure?47

The first issue of the Atlas set the ground for the paper’s attitude to religionunder Lowe’s editorship. Religion had a role in moral and theological instruc-tion but the clergy needed to disabuse themselves of any aspirations to socialinfluence beyond moral exhortation of a rather general type. Furthermore,any religion which preached a moral hopelessness this side of heaven was an“insult . . . to God and man”;48 a total betrayal of enlightenment.

These themes were reiterated and expanded from issue to issue. The placeof the clergy was to represent the community, not merely a particular sect.

44. Almost certainly in reference to Broughton’s rival paper the Southern Queen, the Atlasdeclared that “A religious newspaper is like a commercial Missionary — a tool made for onepurpose and perverted to another” (15 March 1845). Broughton privately blamed Lowe’s attackson the Church of England for the Southern Queen’s meagre circulation. See “Broughton toColeridge, 22 April 1845,” BP, Letter 68.45. Atlas, 30 November 1844, 5.46. Atlas, 30 November 1844, 6.47. Atlas, 30 November 1844, 6.48. Atlas, 30 November 1844, 6.



Colonisation was not only “duty to our country” but also “commanded by ourfaith, ‘to increase, multiply, and replenish the earth and subdue it’.”49 Clergywere criticised for their opposition to general education and their frequentdabbling in secular offices.50 A laudatory report on education in France wasrepublished in the Atlas which advocated a course of education open bothto Protestants and Catholics with the proviso that “we should join togetherin teaching those main points, the knowledge whereof was so necessary untosalvation, and of the truth whereof there was no controversy betwixt us.”51

Lowe reprinted a letter that had circulated through the Diocese of Meath whichended by reminding readers that “the great end and object we ought to keep inview, in the education of the lower orders, is that every individual of the risinggeneration may be brought, either presently or ultimately, to the knowledge ofGod’s revealed Word. . . .”52 There were also Deistic homilies to the improv-ability of humankind via understanding “the laws appointed by the Creator”53

and the power of the sciences to help humankind appreciate “the bountifulinfluence of the great and wonderful Architect of the Universe.”54 Owing toLowe’s dislike of Tractarian Anglicanism, the paper adopted an avowedlyProtestant identity (and often anti-Romanist), despite its frequent advocacy ofnon-sectarian education.

In many ways Lowe’s hatred of the Puseyites reveals much about his reli-gion. That the new Oxford theology was a threat to freedom and reason — theEnlightenment — was the essence of Lowe’s critique of Tractarianism and hisappreciation for the Reformation. Lowe’s main concerns were clerical influ-ence over the Legislative Council and priestly influence or “priestcraft” insociety at large, both of which he thought Tractarianism encouraged. That is tosay, for Lowe, Tractarianism was the assertion of Roman-style hierarchy oversociety and state; the very thing the Reformation supposedly stood opposed to.For Lowe, the Puseyites were a betrayal of the English Reformation, enlight-enment, and liberty, all of which he considered part of the story of progress.Through the Atlas Lowe was quick to alert colonists to the formation ofthe Church of England Lay Association, which he immediately dubbed the“Puseyite Lay Association,” whose history the newspaper tracked until itceased publication.55 His campaign against the Society was rather successful,with Broughton complaining to his friend Rev. Edward Coleridge of his diffi-culty in attracting members owing to its Puseyite reputation.56 In a leadingarticle on Puseyism probably written by Lowe, he said that “it is characteristicof that system of priestly domination which, unless met, resisted, and put down

49. Atlas, 7 December 1844, 15.50. Atlas, 21 December 1844, 42.51. Atlas, 15 March 1845, 210.52. Atlas, 15 March 1845, 211.53. Atlas, 15 March 1845, 211.54. Atlas, 29 March 1845, 223.55. Atlas, 8 March 1845, 170.56. “Broughton to Coleridge, 22 April 1845,” BP, Letter 68.



with energy, will bring back the ignorance, the superstition, and the terrors ofthe middle ages once more.”57 Lowe described the situation as a battle betweenclerics and enlightenment:

If the ministers of the Church of England are beginning to be regarded with suspicionand dislike, they need to look no further for the reason, than the ridiculous and insaneattempts which they are making in the present period of enlightenment, to enslave theminds of those who recognize them as their spiritual instructors — to deprive the Layportion of the community of the right of private judgment in the most importantmatters which can concern them, and by this means, to put a stop to the progress ofenlightenment, and for the sake of priestly power and influence, to diminish thefreedom, the comfort, and the happiness of mankind.58

The conflict was not so much between religion and enlightenment, and cer-tainly not Christianity and enlightenment, it was between a clerical hierarchyand enlightenment. Lowe’s enlightenment critique of Puseyism revealed theessence of enlightened religion, a religion that allowed for personal freedomand freedom of thought within the confines of a broad, non-sectarian Christi-anity. For many men and women in Victorian Britain, Lowe included, enlight-enment was simply “true” Protestantism, and vice versa.

For the most part, the religiosity of the Atlas was not written by Lowehimself but reprinted from other sources or contained in the correspondence. Ina letter signed by “A Correspondent” which ran into the length of severalarticles over several issues a comprehensive case against Church of Englandpartiality was made. The accusation was made to New South Wales coloniststhat their “want of public spirit” in standing up to the despotism of Gipps wassomewhat owing to “the illegitimate influence of the clergy,” who seem to haveinordinate control over public affairs. The failure of general education is citedas evidence of both clerical tyranny and popular apathy.59 The writer consid-ered Australia “the hope of civilization and religion in the Southern Hemi-sphere,” but claimed that both political and ecclesiastical despotism werecrushing the manly spirit of independence necessary for Australia to emerge asa showcase nation. Republican language was employed to attack the Church ofEngland and Roman Catholicism:

These two bodies of clergy — each constituting a considerable and constantlyincreasing political force, animated throughout with the selfish and exclusive spirit ofits own corporation — are each supported . . . from the public funds of this colonywithout the consent of its inhabitants, and are each subject to the sovereign will andpleasure of a clerical Major-General, or Bishop, who is neither indebted to the peoplefor his appointment nor responsible to them in any way . . . and they are eachtherefore ready at any time to be arrayed, at the whim or caprice of these Bishops,against . . . the political freedom, the intellectual independence, and the socialadvancement of the people.60

57. Atlas, 8 November 1845, 589.58. Atlas, 8 November 1845, 589.59. Atlas, 17 May 1845, 295.60. Atlas, 17 May 1845, 295.



The correspondent sent two more letters to the Atlas arguing for ecclesiasticalreform giving the congregation more powers over the clergy as well as attackingBroughton and the Tractarians as “dangerous to the extreme of our commonProtestantism.”61 The upshot of the whole exercise was to argue for voluntarismrather than state support for the churches. The arguments were several. TheChurch Act was never intended to support Anglo-Catholicism.62 Voluntarismwould make the clergy more accountable to their congregations, effectivelyforcing Puseyites out of unsympathetic parishes.63 Furthermore, the lessons ofConnecticut and Virginia — according to Tocqueville — taught the world thatestablishment tended to strangle religious fervour.64

The Atlas under Lowe was essentially an advocate for land reform, generaleducation, responsible government, and free trade. To the extent that Lowethought that Broughton stood in the way of some of these initiatives the Atlasconcerned itself with pillorying the colonial Church of England in generaland Broughton in particular. Although there is no doubt that Lowe’s hatred ofPuseyism was sincere,65 there is also no doubt that he used its unpopularity asa way of attacking Broughton in his war against “illiberal” colonial policy,political, economic, and social. The Atlas was intensely concerned with reli-gion without being a religious paper, but it was never an irreligious papereither. It was clear to Lowe that religion was a major force in colonial societyand politics and, thus, it had to be engaged. An enlightened religion emergedout of its polemic. For example, general education was right because it taughtchildren to read the Bible; non-sectarian education was possible because Chris-tianity was rational in its essentials. Puseyism was devastatingly misguided forit brought Protestantism back to the unenlightened dark ages which it hadovercome in the sixteenth century. Finally, clergy meddling in secular affairswere forsaking their true calling to be moral and theological instructors, anecessary part of civilised society. In all, if we can speak of the religion of theAtlas under Lowe, it was a non-dogmatic Protestantism which placed reasonand individual conscience at the centre, displacing all authority. Lowe’s reli-gion found its cause in general education and its enemy in Bishop Broughton.

Enlightenment, Religion, and Secular EducationThere is no evidence to suggest that Lowe was an atheist,66 but at the same timewhenever he revealed his own religiosity it was always in the context of scoring

61. Atlas, 31 May 1845, 319.62. Atlas, 24 May 1845, 308.63. Atlas, 31 May 1845, 316.64. Atlas, 31 May 1845, 320. For speculation that J. D. Lang was the author of the letters seeAtlas, 7 June 1845, 332.65. Lowe was still taking swipes at it decades later even when it was of no political threat to him.See R. Lowe, Primary and Classical Education: An Address Delivered before the PhilosophicalInstitution of Edinburgh on Friday, November 1, 1867 (Edinburgh: Edmonston and Douglas,1867), 25.66. See the fascinating letter (1860) sent to the Lowes by the Sydney naturalist William SharpMacleay, who responds to the Lowes” request for some guidance regarding Darwin’s book whichhad just come out. Macleay considers Darwin’s theory a form of atheism and identifies himself,in contrast, as a sort of Pantheist who nevertheless believes in providence. I am advised that the



points in a debate or in politics. Indeed, Lowe could not have argued foreducation reform without invoking some variety of Christianity, for the keyissue in reform was whether general Christian education was possible, and forLowe it was, but only if Christianity was defined by its essentials, which wereopen to the light of reason.67 Thus, whether or not Lowe’s rational piety wasparticularly sincere it was absolutely necessary if he was to enter the publicsphere to lobby for general education. If Lowe’s own Christianity was notparticularly fervent, the Christianity of the public sphere that he had to engagein certainly was.

The controversy that most stirred Lowe’s anticlericalism was the debateover a general system of education in New South Wales.68 Lowe’s activismtook place with the failure of Governor Bourke’s efforts to introduce generaleducation still fresh in the colonial memory.69 The Atlas was generally friendlyto Bourke’s 1836 Church Act reforms, which it judged as a triumph ofliberal principles over Anglican self-interest and religious decay.70 For manycolonials the saga was one played out between liberal reformists and insulardenominationalists, with Broughton being the great scandal to a generalsystem. Lowe thought he could be a match for the clerical opposition toeducational reform. It is with Lowe’s educational thought that we get the bestinsight into his thought on enlightenment, religion, and the secular. For Lowe,the three stood mutually supporting one another. It was only when the clergynarrowly defined religion along creedal lines that religious education andenlightenment clashed. As far as Lowe was concerned, the future happiness andenlightenment of Australia hinged on this question. He used the very first issueof the Atlas “to call upon all forward-thinking men who know that the truepalladium of Australian liberty will consist in the moral, social, and politicalenlightenment of her future children. . . .”71 Lowe spoke of the need for a“comprehensive plan of enlightening the people” and the “glorious task ofenlightening the masses of children now growing up in a state of heathenismand of ignorance.”72 For Lowe, the churches were simply not up to the task ofmass education. The Church of England schools, in particular, were merely in

original letter written to Macleay has almost certainly been lost or destroyed. Martin, Life andLetters, vol. 2, 204–207.67. See the debate of Friday 4 October 1844 as reproduced by the Sydney Morning Herald(7 October). It is universally admitted that education, ideally, should involve religion. J. D. Lang’sstress on general Christianity, although more evangelical than Lowe’s, was, like Lowe’s own useof the argument, used to justify the proposition that general non-denominational education couldstill be Christian.68. On Lowe and education in Australia see Knight, Iliberal Liberal, 82–102; McCulloch, “TheAttempt to Establish a National System of Education”: 29–36.69. See Barrett, That Better Country P. Curthoys, “State Support for Churches 1836–1860,” inB. Kaye (with T. Frame, C. Holden, and G. Treloar), Anglicanism in Australia: A History (CarltonSouth: Melbourne University Press, 2002), 31–51.70. See Atlas, 15 March 1845, 182. The Atlas tended to attack the Church Act only when it couldbe shown how abrogating it would remove all state funding for Puseyite clergy, throwing thepastoral ministry at the mercy of congregations, which were all judged to be anti-Puseyite. SeeAtlas, 29 March 1845, 223; 24 May 1845, 307.71. Atlas, 30 November 1844, 3.72. Atlas, 30 November 1844, 3.



the business of perpetuating the church through memorisation and creeds.Lowe and his party desired “to see something more than a creed gabbledthrough, parrot-like; a catechism got by rote, and the same passages of Scrip-ture repeated day by day, in the genuine hopeless tone of maundering indiffer-ence.” He went on, “We want to rouse the will, to awaken the reason, to touchthe affections; we want the soul, the mind, and the heart.”73 At the same time asbeing carried away by his own vision of general enlightenment, Lowe could notrestrain his anti-clericalism. Indeed, he wrote, “it is not unreasonable to antici-pate that the clergy will lose no opportunity of the many opportunities whichthey must possess, of damaging the cause for which we labour in the eyes of thehumbler classes; that they will denounce the system as pernicious, and seek tocover its advocates with obloquy.”74

Lowe believed that education was to be sharply distinguished from sectarianinstruction. That is not to say that education could not instil the generalprinciples of religion, which were enlightened and reasonable, yet, the purposeof education was to elevate all the human faculties to their potential, not merelyto perpetuate a particular denomination. Lowe reproduced a statement ofthe London-based Committee of Council of Education describing the aims ofeducation:

A true education insures a positive freedom, a permanent development of the bestfaculties of humanity in the richest variety and in the surest unity. It is to turn men,from selfish and erroneous, to true and universal principles; to prevent the waste ofpowers in fruitless contentions; to insure the greatest development in the best order;to confirm, over all the world, true liberty and its sure attendant, lasting peace. . . .75

Typical denominationalism is here described as “selfish and erroneous” asopposed to “universal”; its effects as “fruitless contentions” as opposed to “thegreatest development.” The project of universal or “catholic” religious educa-tion was, ironically, seen as the great legacy of Protestantism. Indeed, “culti-vating catholic principles, and leaving the details of systematic doctrine tothe free development of the conscience and the judgment” were declared “thepositive principle of Protestantism.”76

Lowe’s vision of an enlightened system of education is best captured in his1844 official report as Chairman of the Select Committee on Education, whichrecommended that a general non-denominational system of education be intro-duced in New South Wales as soon as possible. As far as Lowe was concerned,it was the denominational system now in place that was responsible for so fewchildren attending school. As well as economic and logistical objections tothe denominational system, Lowe believed that the denominational systeminvolved an interaction between the church and the state that was bound todisadvantage one of them. Denominational education “places the State in anawkward dilemma, of either supplying money whose expenditure it is not

73. Atlas, 30 November 1844, 4.74. Atlas, 30 November 1844, 4.75. Atlas, 21 December 1844, 42.76. Atlas, 21 December 1844, 42.



permitted to regulate, or of interfering between the Clergy and their superiors,to the manifest derangement of the whole ecclesiastical polity.”77 Lowe’sconcern, indeed the concern of all advocates of a general system of education,was to devise a system that could satisfy all denominations. The Select Com-mittee interviewed around twenty experts on colonial and British education,many of whom were clerics overseeing denominational schools. With a coupleof exceptions, all the interviewees considered it necessary to have religionincluded in the general curriculum with a day set aside (besides Sundays) fordenominational education led by a visiting cleric.78

For Lowe “ordinary school business” or “the scientific or secular business ofthe school” was to be distinguished from sectarian and denominational instruc-tion, not religious and moral instruction per se. Lowe advocated the LordStanley System of primary education, which solved the sectarian problem byinviting clerics one day a week to take the children of their respective denomi-nations aside for catechetical instruction. But Lowe wanted to assure scepticsnot merely that the General System “teaches nothing hostile to any sect” butthat it would not be an “irreligious system”: “It teaches in the ordinary schoolhours as much of the truths of religion as can be imparted without entering oncontroverted subjects. . . .” Lowe quoted approvingly a letter from Lord Stanleyto the Irish office assuring it that “while the interests of religion are notoverlooked, the most scrupulous care should be taken not to interfere with thepeculiar tenets of any description of Christian pupils.”79 For rural studentsaffected by the tyranny of distance Lowe recommended “the distribution ofbooks of a moral and religious tendency, free from sectarianism.”80 Lowe’sproposed system can be said to have been made up of two aspects: “ordinaryor secular” and “denominational.” Within the “secular” sphere Lowe stressedthat, as much as possible, general Christian truths would be imparted so longas they were not controversial and divisive. For Lowe the secular was a havenfor essential Christian doctrines as much as a haven from sectarian controversy;the secular was never intended as a haven from religion.81

77. “Report from the Select Committee on Education,” Votes and Proceedings, 451.78. Mayor Wilshire was an exception, stating that “if any kind of religion at all was taught inthe school, persons differing from that religion would not allow their children to go there.” Herecommended that “the Scriptures should not be taught” and when asked by Lowe whetherhe would “exclude religious instruction from the school altogether,” replied “Yes.” “Report fromthe Select Committee on Education,” Votes and Proceedings, 461.79. “Report from the Select Committee on Education,” Votes and Proceedings, 453.80. “Report from the Select Committee on Education,” Votes and Proceedings, 454.81. Lowe’s non-sectarian system embodied the “general Christianity” that was emerging fromAustralia’s unique experience of religious plurality. On a distinctively Australian Christianity seeD. Hilliard, “Australia: Towards Secularisation and One Step Back,” in Secularisation in theChristian World: Essays in Honour of Hugh McLeod, ed. C. Brown and M. Snape (Farnham andBurlington, VA: Ashgate, 2010), 76. See B. Kaye’s comment on secular education in colonialAustralia: “a state system that was secular in that it was controlled by the state and not the church,but religious in that general religious education was part of the curriculum and churches wereallowed access to teach the particularities of their tradition.” B. Kaye, “From Anglican Gaol toReligious Pluralism: Re-Casting Anglican Views of Church and State in Australia,” in Church andState in Old and New Worlds, ed. H. M. Carey and J. Gascoigne (Leiden: Brill, 2011), 289. SydneyUniversity arose out of this milieu of religious, non-sectarian secularism. In Gascoigne’s words,“Though Sydney University was secular in the sense of being non-denominational, its founders



Many interpreted Lowe’s anti-clericalism and his cause against denomina-tional education as radical secularism, or the total occlusion of the divine fromeducation. The Sydney Morning Herald published a series of letters directed atLowe arguing for the need for denominational education. Reflecting on theFrench Revolution, one correspondent, calling himself “No Parson,” warnedthat “the semblance of religion and morality being cast off, and reason, socalled, elevated to supreme power, what do we see but that which after ages hasgazed upon with horror and amazement?’82 Another correspondent callinghimself “A Clergyman of the Church of England” informed Lowe that thedenominationalists “view education not as the mere enlargement of the under-standing and the exercising of the intellectual faculties; but also as the culti-vation of the heart. And we cannot see how this is to be effected in any propermanner, if education be not religious.”83

Much depended on how one defined “religion” and how one saw the rela-tionship between religion and reason. Lowe’s argument for the morality ofnon-sectarian education was informed by his belief in enlightened religion. Ina speech to the Legislative Council delivered on 30 October 1845 he assuredthe representatives of the colony that “the humanising effects of religion werenecessary to the perfect formation of the human mind” and that such mentalformation would be best attained by “disconnecting the subject of religiousdifferences with the earlier studies of the pupil.”84 He thought the greatestobstacle to the spread of enlightened religion, a religion which did away withsectarianism and focused on the universal, was opposition to general educa-tion. In a lengthy article in the Atlas almost certainly written by Lowe, thecontradictions between the Church of England divines who would prefer noeducation rather than non-denominational education and the hope for a reli-gious colony were pointedly expressed. “How can you argue with a person,”asked Lowe, “who tells you that his greatest anxiety is to teach children to readthe Bible, and in the same breath places the most insuperable obstacle in hispower against their reading at all . . .”? Or “who believes that religion is theresult of enlightenment and the highest development of the human faculties,and yet withholds that enlightenment and obstructs that development”? Lowecould barely restrain himself from inquiring into the deeper psyche of hisopponents: “Whether these men be hypocrites or fools — whether they do notreally desire the spread of reasonable religion (in which case they belong to theformer class) or whether they are too stupid to see that reasonable religioncannot exist without education . . . we shall not stop to enquire.”85 Lowe wasalmost certainly speaking of Bishop Broughton, who a year earlier in hisdeposition to the Select Education Committee, chaired by Lowe, had come

retained the deeply-engrained belief that the disinterested quest for knowledge would ultimatelyserve religious ends. . . .” “The Cultural Origins of Australian Universities”: 21. See also Atkinson,Europeans in Australia, 192–93.82. Sydney Morning Herald, 11 July 1844, 3.83. Sydney Morning Herald, 19 July 1844, 4.84. Atlas, 1 November 1845, 585.85. Atlas, 14 March 1846, 121–22.



close to saying that he would rather rural children be left uneducated ratherthan given access to religious reading aids without the direct instruction ofChurch of England clergy.86 Broughton assured Lowe that “some of the bestmen I have ever known, so far as practical religion went, were among the oldpeasantry of England, who could not read their Bible.”87 It was just this sort ofthinking that Lowe thought was holding Australia back from being the show-case enlightenment nation that it could be.

The following year Lowe poured out all his rhetorical ability before theLegislative Council in defending a general system of education. Lowe correctlypointed out the ambiguity of the word “education,” which could be understoodnarrowly or broadly, as either the mere teaching to count, read, and write, or theprocess of advancing the human capacities as a whole. The Atlas reported onthe essence of Lowe’s argument:

if the word [“education”] meant reading and writing, then ought religion to havenothing to do with the matter, but if it embraced a wider scope-if it contemplated theentire training of man-the fitting for higher views and nobler purposes than those forwhich his original nature fitted him — if it was to raise and improve the wholefaculties of his being to make him a more exalted creature — then would religionbecome a part of that education, but in its proper place, and it was only by educationthat a true sense of religion would be implanted . . . [Indeed] the great object oflooking at nature’s works [is] to look up to nature’s God, and that in speculation onthe effects they [see] around them, they [are] to be led to the contemplation of thecause.88

The place of religion in education was something that Lowe had been con-cerned with since 1844 when he interviewed experts as Chairman of the SelectCommittee on Education. Anxious that the desire of some to have religioninfused into every facet of education would thwart any success of a generalsystem, Lowe asked of Rev Robert Allwood: “Admitting the paramount impor-tance of religion, why is it necessary that religion should be coupled with theart of reading, when nobody considers it necessary that it should be coupledwith the art of shoemaking?”89 Lowe saw the education question as Australia’schance fully to break away from Old World prejudices and become a showcasenation of equality and unity.

One of the vestiges of the Old World was the metaphysical state, or the statethat sought to impose controversial doctrines on citizens. Addressing the Leg-islative Council on the 9th of October 1846 he declared that

it was no part of the duty of a state to see that its population were instructed in thedoctrines of a finely drawn metaphysical faith, and to attempt such a system wouldonly result in making such a state the degrading spectacle of a community torn, notby social or political disagreements, but by the more rancorous and deeply seated warof religious dissension.

86. Votes and Proceedings, 15 July 1844, 545.87. Votes and Proceedings, 15 July 1844, 547.88. Atlas, 17 October 1846, 499.89. Votes and Proceedings, July 5 1844, 495, cf. 516.



Yet it would be a mistake to think that Lowe had no time for any establishedchurch, indeed, Lowe had a Burkean appreciation for traditional establish-ments. He assured his audience, “No doubt the Established Church had a goodeffect in England, where people were taught to look up to it as the establishedchurch of the land. . . .” He went on: “. . . but here, where they were all alike,what were they to anticipate would be the result of this incessant struggle onthe part of each denomination to establish an imperium in imperio withinits own precincts, instead of striving to live in the links of one commonbrotherhood?” It was the conditions of the colony — plurality, to use a modernterm — that made denominationalist dreams of establishment so repulsive toreformers, Lowe included. Australia was not England and different institutionswere needed to suit a different nation. For Lowe the goal was not merelynegative — to end sectarian division — but positively to bring about religiousunity: “How much wiser, how much nobler, to invite a common people,common by birth, by language, and every national tie, to acknowledge in onebrotherhood of feeling, one God, one faith, and one revelation.” Referringagain to Australia’s unique youthfulness, Lowe asked “Was it not such a systemas this (general system) that they would prefer in a young community like this,while it was yet ductile, while the fountains of the river of education were yetunpolluted by the prejudice of older nations? . . . Which . . . was the nobler-purer feeling, to adopt the intended system of social enlightenment, or toencourage the splitting up of the community into sectarian parties . . .?”Indeed, the most important moral contributions of Christianity are not particu-lar to any denomination but “these great principles of religion . . . are inherentto every shade and denomination of Christianity.” It was not Christianity thatpotentially divided a fledgling nation but sectarianism. Again, Lowe found itimpossible to restrain his anti-clericalism: “The clergy never did of themselvesdo anything towards the enlightenment of the people-never did, never will do.”For Lowe the distinction needed to be made between “true religion” andpriestly domination. Religion was always under threat by powerful clerics. Ifthe clergy had their way, that is, “If they refused to give the power to read to themany, in order that the few might be instructed in accordance with religiousprejudices, — instead of becoming the seat of religion, of morality, of enlight-enment, and civilisation, to which it might have been converted, the colonymust sink down into the depths of degradation, too dreadful to describe.”90

Such was Lowe’s hostility to certain clergy that as Chairman of the SelectCommittee he asked the Baptist Rev. John Saunders whether the mere presenceof clergymen on the school grounds would diminish the authority of theschoolmaster in the people’s eyes.91

Despite all of this Lowe never seems to have advocated the view that religionhas no place in education, not in Australia nor in England in the late 1850s and

90. Atlas, 17 October 1846, 499.91. Votes and Proceedings, 17 July 1844, 561.



1860s when he was Vice-President of the Committee of the Council on Edu-cation in Lord Palmerston’s government.92

ConclusionFrom Lowe and the Atlas we learn something of the complexity of the Enlight-enment, religion, and Australia’s secular heritage. Neat dichotomies betweenreason and religion, sacred and secular, and religion and enlightenment asconceptual lenses into colonial New South Wales cannot be sustained now anymore than they were entertained back then. In Australia, Lowe was an advocateof secular education and the separation of church and state, among otherthings. But what was the nature of Lowe’s secularism? This is best approachedby looking at his conception of enlightenment and religion. Religion had aplace in education and in the public sphere. Its place was to enlighten andfurnish people with proper principles of conduct, not to denominationaliseand produce a cleriocracy. For most enlightenment advocates, religion was acrucial aspect of the Enlightenment, not to be conceptually separated fromthe idea of enlightenment. The same could be said of the secular, which wasgenerally not to be understood as occluding the transcendent, as opposed tomodern uses of the word.93 Yet if “secular” has come to mean “without reli-gion,” the paradox emerges that a “secular” history of Australia’s secularheritage cannot be written, for secularism emerged in dialogue with religiouspremises and adopted them as part of its rationale. Although Lowe must beconsidered one of the least ecclesiastical of enlightenment men in Australia,94

he still saw the crucial role that religion had played in the origins of theEnlightenment and the role of “true Protestantism” in stanching ignorance andhierarchy. It was not in spite of Lowe’s religious attachment to enlightenmentbut because of it that he never rejected the place of religion in society and itssecular institutions, but “in its proper place. . . .”

92. Sylvester correctly points out that Lowe never explicitly applied his utilitarian razor toreligious education. D. W. Sylvester, Robert Lowe and Education (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni-versity Press, 1974), 96–97. See also Duke, “Robert Lowe — A Reappraisal”: 23–24. Indeed,Lowe’s conviction that “the State represents in the matter of education not the religious but thesecular element” does not question but affirms that education has a religious component; thequestion being whether the state should have anything to do with this component. See Lowe,Primary and Classical Education, 4, 10. In his 1852 Submission on Oxford Reform Lowe held thata University College had the right “to ensure, as far as possible, their [tutors] moral and religiousfitness for the trust which they are to execute. . . .” Martin, Life and Letters, vol. 1, 21. Yet Lowe’scontemporaries were scathing of Lowe’s “payment by results” reform, partly owing to its predictedchoking of religious instruction. Lowe’s school funding system was based on students’ perfor-mance in the “three Rs” (reading, writing, and arithmetic), which did not include religiousinstruction. Lowe’s critics predicted the decline of religious instruction owing to schoolmasters’natural temptation to focus mainly on those exercises that would guarantee the school’s funding,to the detriment of religion. See C. Bromby, A letter to the Right Hon. Robert Lowe, M.P.,containing strictures upon the false assumptions and inadequate remedies of the Revised Educa-tion Code (London, 1861), 10–11, 24–25. Cf. Hutchinson, Mr. Lowe’s Educational Theories, 5.93. I have written more on the meaning and use of “secular” in current Australian political debatein S. Chavura, “The Secularization Thesis and the Secular State: Reflections with Special Attentionto Debates in Australia,” in Religion and the State: A Comparative Sociology, ed. J. Barbalet,A. Possamaı̈, and B. S. Turner (London: Anthem Press, 2011), 75–81.94. His criticism of Australian clerics continued for decades. See Lowe, Primary and ClassicalEducation, 12.



(2014) “...but in its proper place....” Religion, Enlightenment, and Australia’s Secular...

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