Australia's Secular Foundations

Book excerpt: Explaining how Australia’s secular society derives from its colonial past, this book examines: • the environmental and social context that encouraged godlessness, including the convict system, the bush, materialism and cultural development; • religious practice and sectarianism; • the state’s policy of denominational even-handedness to ensure social harmony; • the challenges to faith that science and critical biblical scholarship posed; and • churchmen’s attempts to foist a moral code on society, and their ambivalent attitudes to society’s poor and distressed.