From Church to State: the Queensland Government take-over of Anglican Missions in North Queensland
Year: 2011
Type: article
Abstract: In 1886 the Griffith Government in Queensland began a policy of supporting Christian missions to Aborigines which subsequent governments continued so that Queensland provided much more support to missions than any other government in Australia until the second half of the twentieth century.1This meant that the Queensland Government and the churches entered into a partnership through the various missionary bodies.The churches thus became important arms of government policy.Increasingly, the advantage of this system was with the government which obtained an Aboriginal social service and control agency on the cheap.The Lutherans, Presbyterians, Anglicans, and Brethren established twelve large missions in remote areas of North Queensland, ten of which still exist, under the 1984 Deeds of Grant in Trust legislation, as self-governing Aboriginal Communities.The Anglican Church, through its constitutionally appointed mission agency, the Australian Board of Missions (ABM), and in conjunction with the local dioceses, founded four of these missions: Yarrabah (1892), Mitchell River, now Kowanyama (1906), Lockhart River (1924), and Edward River, now Pormpuraaw (1938).Yarrabah is in the Diocese of North Queensland; the other three missions are in the Diocese of Carpentaria.ABM also supported Forrest River Mission in Western Australia, founded in 1913, and a number of chaplaincies.In 1915, it accepted the Torres Strait Mission from the London Missionary Society and converted it to the Anglican rite.The story of the Torres Strait Island Mission is very different from the missions established for Aboriginal people and will not be discussed in this paper.Nor was the Torres Strait Island Mission involved in the take-over with which this paper is concerned.The transfer of administrative and financial responsibility from the Anglican Church to the Queensland Government was an epiphanal event, in that it brought to the surface many issues underlying Anglican missionary policy and practice, the relationship between church and state, and the relationship of both with the Aboriginal people through the 75 years of Anglican government.Significantly the Aborigines who grew up on missions were thought of, and referred to, as 'inmates' until the end of this missionary era.The Australian Board of Missions (ABM) is the missionary agency of the General Synod of the Anglican Church of Australia.It attempts to co-ordinate missionary outreach within Australia and overseas on a nationwide scale and to educate Anglicans about what ABM sees as their missionary responsibilities.Since its establishment in 1850 it has emphasised its special responsibility to support Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander ministries within Australia.In the 1980s almost one-third of the mission grants were still
Source: Aboriginal History Journal
Author: Noel Loos
Institution: James Cook University
Language: English
Subfield: Religious studies
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: bronze
OpenAlex ID: W2298957699