A New Story for an Old Land: 200 Years of the Bible Society in Australia

Rev. Dr John Harris is the Senior Bible Consultant for Bible Society Australia. You can listen to John Harris in conversation with James Carleton on God Forbid on RN.

When the Auxiliary Bible Society of New South Wales was established in 1817, Australia as we now know it did not exist.

NSW officially covered two-thirds of the continent. What is now Western Australia was yet to experience European colonisation and New Zealand was part of NSW.

This new Society was the most distant branch of the Bible Society, formed at what most Europeans considered to be the very end of the earth.

In the two hundred years which have passed since then, the little remote Auxiliary has grown into a vibrant twenty-first century organisation, dedicated as it always has been to the dissemination of God's Word in the world.

It is hard to overestimate the contribution which the Bible Society movement has made to the progress and development of contemporary Australia. From putting Bibles into the hands of convicts, translating the Scriptures into Indigenous languages and to giving Bibles to Australian serving in the Defence Forces in Afghanistan, the Bible Society has always been there, actively ensuring that the Bible was available to all Australians in a language they can understand and at a price they can afford.

Here is the Bible Society's Australian Story.

When the Bible was first being written, Aboriginal people had already lived in Australia for many thousands of years. They were here before Abraham, before the Greek and Roman Empires, before the Chinese dynasties began. To the north of the continent, humans had settled the Torres Strait Islands well before the birth of Christ.

Long before the Anglo-Saxon ancestors of the English invaded Britain, Australia was possessed by its own Indigenous peoples. The first European sighting of Australia by the Dutch in 1602 and the claiming of Australia for Britain in 1770 by James Cook were very recent events indeed.

"Aborigines spearing fish, others diving for crayfish, a party seated beside a fire cooking fish" (Joseph Lycett, 1817, National Library of Australia).

In just over two short centuries, the Bible has been a book of immeasurable significance to Australians of all kinds: European settlers, Indigenous peoples and more recent migrants and refugees. But British preparations for peopling Australia as a remote penal colony ignored any spiritual needs. There were to be no clergy. Among the 8,000 fish hooks, 747,000 nails and 300 gallons of brandy, the manifest for the First Fleet officially listed just one Bible.

Some concerned English Christians put pressure on the government. King George III finally appointed "our trusty and wellbeloved Richard Johnson ... to be chaplain to the settlement within our territory called New South Wales." The manifest also listed "boxes of books" which were in fact 2,000 Bibles given to Johnson by English missionary societies.

The First Fleet sailed from Portsmouth on 13 May 1787. Seven months later, on 26 January 1788, eleven ships disgorged 700 convicts and their 250 gaolers in the virgin bush of Sydney Cove. There was no religious ceremony on the landing day but eight days later, on Sunday, 3 February, "divine service was performed under a great tree by the Rev. Richard Johnson."

The text of Johnson's sermon was Psalm 116:12: "What shall I render unto the Lord for all his benefits towards me?" An obelisk in Hunter Street, Sydney marks the spot. Johnson later built a "wattle and daub" church with his own hands. This Church of England church, Australia's first church building, was later burnt down, probably by convicts resenting the compulsory church services.

The corruption and brutality of the earliest years of white Australia are legendary. Lash and gallows provided daily entertainment. The Marine Corps, glad to relinquish their role as gaolers, were replaced in 1792 with the specially recruited New South Wales Corps, soon nicknamed "The Rum Corps" because of their distillation and control of rum as the colony's unofficial currency.

The initial settlement at Sydney, and every other colonial settlement throughout the continent, were imposed upon the local inhabitants without negotiation, based upon the false notion of terra nullius, "nobody's land." Among Sydney Aboriginal groups such as the Kameraigal, Dharug and Baramadagal peoples, a few courageous warriors resisted this invasion including Pemulwy and his son Tedbury. Others were more accepting, willing to come close, not yet realising the extent or permanency of what was happening.

This ignoring of any Indigenous rights was to be repeated throughout the continent. Only in what is now Melbourne was there an effort to negotiate a purchase of land but John Batman's treaty with the local people has never been officially recognised.

John Batman making his treaty with the Wurundjeri elders (John Wesley Burtt, 1835, State Library of Victoria).

White colonial society in Sydney was unbalanced. The convicts - mostly petty offenders from London slums and poor rural areas and Irish political prisoners - outnumbered everyone else. Men far outnumbered the women convicts, who were frequently forced into prostitution or to become mistresses of the colonial "gentry" - the naval, military or civilian officers. Then there were the Aboriginal people, keen observers of all that was happening, but susceptible to European diseases and degraded with rum and prostitution by unscrupulous whites.

Colonial New South Wales was once labelled "the most Godless place under heaven," but a Christian presence was never totally lacking. There were Christians in all sections of colonial society, among the convicts and the marines, and, increasingly, among the free settlers. While the organised churches had only a token presence, Christian people met in small groups when and where they could. Those few who owned a Bible counted it among their most treasured possessions.

The Church of England was the official church, but it was a long time before clergy and resources matched the needs of New South Wales. By 1830 there were eight churches and twelve clergy, many of whom, such as Samuel Marsden and Thomas Scott, were important contributors to early Australian colonial life. Parts of their church buildings still remain, including several in central Sydney and, as symbols of the expansion of the colony, at Parramatta, Liverpool, Windsor and Campbelltown.

Irish political prisoners among the convicts included several Catholic priests. James Dixon was granted permission to celebrate a monthly mass in 1803 but there was no official Catholic presence until Father John Therry arrived in 1820. Some Methodist lay people worked as teachers in the early years but the first ordained Methodist preacher, Samuel Leigh, arrived in 1816. In 1823, Wesleyan minister William Walker baptised the first Aboriginal Christian, Thomas, son of Sydney's famed Bennelong.

The first Presbyterian clergyman, the controversial John Dunmore Lang, arrived in 1823. Having no clergy, ordinary Christian people had already begun the first Presbyterian congregations. In 1802 a little group of Scottish settlers arrived at the Hawkesbury River. They worshipped regularly, initially in the open but later in their small cottages. In 1809 they finished building their own church, naming it "Ebenezer." Built of local rock, it is the oldest standing church in Australia and a monument to the faith of this group of early settlers.

Ebenezer Presbyterian Church, the oldest entire church building in Australia (Wikimedia Commons).

A remarkable feature of the developing society was the first true non-Aboriginal Australians - the children born in colonial New South Wales. Describing the original mix of convicts and their gaolers, Governor Hunter wrote in 1798 that "a more wicked, abandoned, and irreligious set of people have never been brought together in any part of the world." Officialdom held little hope for the "national children" born mostly of prostitution and casual liaison.

Yet they defied the odds. The first three were baptised by Richard Johnson on 10 January 1788. Unanimous pessimism turned into widespread praise. They were soon nicknamed the "currency lads and lasses" because they were not sterling, but locally manufactured like the "holey dollars" and traders' tokens which served as makeshift currency.

"Reared in the very midst of scenes of drunkenness of the most revolting description, they are almost uniformly temperate," wrote John Dunmore Lang. "The currency lads and lasses show openness and strength of character," said the colony surgeon, Peter Cunningham. Raised in a healthier environment than their parents, Commissioner Bigge's report in 1823 described them as strong, tall, slim, active, moral and forgiving. These fine people and their children were already becoming the legendary, healthy white Australian stereotype, the ancestors of the "bronzed Aussie."

There was a drastic shortage of Scriptures in early colonial times. The British and Foreign Bible Society was formed in London in 1804 and after that regular grants of Bibles were sent to Australia.

Moved by the dearth of Scriptures in the new colony, Lady Elizabeth Macquarie, the real instigator of the Bible Society in Australia, influenced her husband to respond to the need.

Governor Lachlan Macquarie called a meeting of "the Magistrates, Clergymen and other inhabitants of Sydney." In a packed court house on 7 March 1817, the leading citizens of Sydney established the New South Wales Auxiliary of the British and Foreign Bible Society.

The meeting elected no less than 52 leading citizens to its first committee - clergy, judges, military officers, medical practitioners and businessmen. They collected 300 pounds at the meeting, half of which was immediately sent to the parent society in London. The Bank of NSW was founded a fortnight later. Every member of the first bank board was also a member of the Bible Society committee.

50 Bibles were donated at the meeting to form the basis of a lending library. William Cowper set up Bible "Depository" at his rectory at St. Phillip's Church on the corner of Pitt and Spring Streets, Sydney, from where Bibles were lent and, as new stocks arrived, sold and distributed.

The parent society had been founded on the principle of providing the Bible in the language of the people and so the new NSW Auxiliary immediately recognised the needs of non-English-speaking readers. Many British convicts spoke only Welsh or Gaelic. The first Scripture published by the fledgling New South Wales Bible Society was a volume of Bible portions in Maori for new Christians in New Zealand. Bibles were also obtained in the languages spoken by the crews of visiting ships such as Portuguese, Russian and South Asian languages.

In Sydney, European encroachment on Indigenous land had been relatively benign compared with what was to come. What followed was the unremitting and consciously aggressive invasion of Aboriginal land. Inland expansion from Sydney after 1813 began the massive destruction of Aboriginal people and their society which would continue throughout the continent.

Aboriginal people resisted this invasion, their efforts doomed in the face of white weapons and brutality. The resistance fighters rarely attacked the invaders indiscriminately, often trying to deter rather than kill. Many of the relatively small number of Europeans who were killed were singled out because of offences against the local people, particularly the abuse of Aboriginal women. In retaliation, uncountable Aboriginal people were massacred, many more in determined attempts to wipe them out completely.

Courageous Christian missionary Lancelot Threlkeld reported in 1838 that on the Liverpool plains in New South Wales, 500 Aboriginal men, women and children had been killed in two years. Despite such white depravity, Aboriginal people knew whom they could trust. Not one of the Christian missionaries venturing alone into Aboriginal Australia was ever killed. Indeed, many of them provided physical protection to threatened Aboriginal people.

After many abortive attempts to settle other parts of the continent, the difficulties were slowly overcome. Permanent settlement was achieved in what is now Tasmania in 1804, Queensland in 1824, Western Australia in 1829, Victoria in 1834, South Australia in 1836 and the Northern Territory in 1870.

The Christian Church was a key institution in the growing colonies. Around the continent, what were initially colonial Church of England chaplaincies expanded with the arrival of free settlers to include most major Christian denominations - Catholic, Methodist, Presbyterian, Congregational, Baptist and Lutheran. There was a high demand for Bibles among colonists of all walks of life and the Bible Society responded generously.

The Tasmanian Bible Society Auxiliary began in 1819. The one guinea annual membership was still a guinea in 1966, when, with decimal currency, the fee was rounded down to $2. The treatment of convicts was not always brutal, as shown by the arrival in Hobart of convict ship Theresa in 1847. The illiterate prisoners had been taught to read the Bible. Leg irons had not once been needed on the journey. Every convict landed with a copy of the Bible and in gratitude the convicts raised among themselves a donation of over 8 pounds for the Bible Society.

Victoria had not yet been separated from NSW to become a separate colony when the first Bible Society was formed in Melbourne in 1840 with the grand title of the Auxiliary Bible Society of Australia Felix.

The non-Aboriginal population of the Melbourne region was 10,000. In less than 20 years, the gold rush brought 400,000 more. There was a huge demand for Bibles, not only in English but many other languages including Chinese.

The Bible Society appointed an itinerant agent, the enthusiastic Brian Abbey. In his horse-drawn cart he visited the goldfields where he became well known to the rebel miners of the Eureka Stockade.

South Australia was developed by free settlers through George Fife Angas's South Australia Company. The first Lutheran pastor, Augustus Kavel, arrived in 1838 with all 200 members of his congregation from Klemzig in Germany. Bibles were sent from London on the first ships and a local Auxiliary of the Bible Society was formed in 1845. The committee's goal was identical to that of all the new colonial Bible Societies, "that there should be a copy of the Scriptures in every home and every man, woman and child in the colony should have God's word in their hands."

Some settlers had been given Bibles by the Bible Society in London when embarking, but the committee found eager demand "for both English and German Bibles in hotels among people who claimed to have left their Bibles at home."

Queensland was still part of NSW and generally referred to as Moreton Bay, the site of the main colonial settlement. Interested Christians in Moreton Bay had been sending gifts to the Bible Society in London. They finally formed the Auxiliary Bible Society of Moreton Bay in 1855.

In Western Australia, Bible distribution was carried for 40 years by grants from London. There was no direct link with the Eastern states until the transcontinental railway was constructed in 1917. A Bible Society Auxiliary was founded in 1871. Bible distribution began in earnest with the huge rise in population during the gold rush. Coolgardie was made the depot from which Bibles in eleven languages were distributed around the goldfields. One donation received was "a nugget worth 14 pounds."

Bible Society field staff - "colporteurs" - were an important and recognised feature of early Australian colonial life. In cities and towns, on the goldfields, at isolated squatters' homesteads and timber camps, they brought the word of God to people hungry for it. Some travelled on horseback, some in carts, some walked. Some were held up by bushrangers. James Robinson rowed up and down the Hawkesbury River. John Kennedy carried medical supplies with his Bibles and extracted teeth.

The Australian Bible Society Auxiliaries were anxious to publish Scriptures in Indigenous languages but few nineteenth century missions lasted very long and few missionaries had the skill or persistence to engage in language work.

In 1845 in the far north, shipwrecked Catholic priest Angelo Confalonieri wrote in Iwaidja the first Christian sentences recorded in any Indigenous language. At his Lake Macquarie mission near present-day Newcastle, Lancelot Threlkeld and his Aboriginal colleague Biraban completed their translation of Luke's Gospel into the Awabakal language in 1831. Australia's first Indigenous Scriptures, they remained unpublished for 150 years due to the near-extermination of the Awabakal people.

In northern NSW in 1856, Presbyterian missionary William Ridley published Gurre Kamilaroi, a little book of Bible stories in the Kamilaroi language. At Point Macleay (South Australia), George Taplin completed his translation of Scripture selections into Narrinyeri (Ngarrindjeri) in 1864. Published by the Bible Society in South Australia, they were the first printed Scriptures in any Indigenous language.

After a century of occupation of their lands, most Aboriginal groups of the southern regions of the continent were detribalised. Protectionism became government policy in all states, under which Aboriginal people were "protected" - often forcibly - on reserves, in the expectation that they would soon disappear. Sadly, churches cooperated with this government initiative and so became part of the repressive institutionalising of Aboriginal people.

Yet many Indigenous people had become Christians and many still are today. The claim that they were somehow forced to adopt Christianity is not only ridiculous given the tiny band of nineteenth century missionaries spread over a vast continent, but is also an insult to the intelligence of Indigenous people. They were a spiritual people who knew that their world was a created place.

The Europeans did not bring God to Australia, for God was already present as the creator and sustainer of the universe, the God whom Indigenous people recognised and named. What they did bring was the Gospel, the story of Jesus in whom God was revealed. The arrival of the first missionaries in the Torres Straits is still celebrated today as "The Coming of the Light."

In the remote central and far northern regions, many Aboriginal groups initially escaped the most damaging contact with whites. Not all Christians acted as if Aborigines were doomed to extinction. Far away from European settlement, a new generation of missionaries began to translate the Bible. Those missionaries respected Indigenous people enough to devote their whole lives to studying their languages. These remarkable and dedicated translators became very knowledgeable about Indigenous people and their culture and earned their respect. In Central Australia, for example, Lutheran missionaries worked on the Dieri and Aranda (Arrarnte) languages.

In the Torres Straits, Pacific Islander missionaries were active in Bible translation. In 1879, Mark's Gospel was published in Mer, the language of Murray Island later to become famous as the language of Eddie Mabo in the momentous 1992 land-rights case.

In the 1870s and 80s, the colonies enjoyed a new prosperity based not just on gold but also on the more enduring wealth of wheat, wool and base metals. The Bible Society grew too, becoming a well-loved part of the life of many Australians. Bibles were placed by the beds of every hospital in Australia, in every prison cell and in every hotel room.

Braille Bibles for the blind were first provided in 1881, available free for more than 100 years - although now increasingly being replaced by high-tech electronic formats.

The production of Braille Bibles.

The most famous Bible Society volume was the "Penny Testament" - the price of this pocket-sized book being held at one penny for many decades. Millions were distributed in every part of Australia. In 1887, the Bible Societies gave a Penny Testament to every schoolchild in Australia to mark the diamond jubilee of the reign of Queen Victoria.

Increasing prosperity, together with an ever-increasing Australian-born population, led to growing feelings of nationalism which the 1890s depression did not dampen. After complex and sometimes heated negotiations between the six colonies, they finally federated into the Commonwealth of Australia on the first day of the twentieth century.

Australia took part in both World Wars with great courage but with very heavy loss of life. The famous khaki New Testament was issued to the Australian Army, and in two different blues to the Navy and Air Force. More than one million copies were carried to war in shirt pockets.

Despite the fact that the paper proved thin enough to roll a cigarette, many returned servicemen and women testified to the comfort and hope these little books provided. A grieving father wrote, "My boy will never come back, but a little khaki book has come back and gold could not buy it. I prize it more than I can tell."

The early years of the Commonwealth saw considerable industrial expansion. The development of stable political parties and the growth of trade unionism were prominent features of Australian life. Immigration was actively encouraged, initially only from European countries.

The old colonial Bible Societies were still independent Auxiliaries of the British and Foreign Bible Society. These became state organisations and began to cooperate more closely with each other. A Commonwealth Council was formed with an office in Sydney, later to become the British and Foreign Bible Society in Australia with six affiliated states, mirroring the Australian Commonwealth itself.

Prosperity, however, is a fleeting thing and the 1930s were years of great hardship. The Great Depression created vast unemployment. The Bible Society gave Scriptures away free to the unemployed, funded by self-sacrificing donors. A Tasmanian deputationer recorded that a woman "took the ring from her finger and placed it, still warm, into my hand."

After World War II, with material prosperity once more, the work of the Bible Society was able to expand. Bible Sunday became a fixture in churches throughout Australia. Led by the legendary Canon Herbert "Bert" Arrowsmith, the Bible Society became an increasingly significant organisation, not only in Australia but also on the world stage.

"Bert" Arrowsmith, first General Secretary of the Bible Society in Australia.

The words "British and Foreign" were eventually dropped from the Society's formal title and "The Bible Society in Australia" became an independent member of the United Bible Societies. To house the national office, Memorial Bible House was constructed in Canberra on land donated by the Australian Government in memory of Bible translators, missionaries and chaplains killed in the Pacific war.

At the same time, to avoid being seen as inward-looking, the Bible Society in Australia funded the construction of Bible House in Jakarta, Indonesia. The new Canberra facility became one of the United Bible Societies' five regional Bible translating, editing and publishing centres, producing literally hundreds of Scripture publications in the languages of the Pacific, Papua New Guinea, Southeast Asia and Indigenous Australia.

Enlightened post-war immigration policies allowed large numbers of immigrants from both European and non-European countries. The resulting rich ethnic diversity in Australia has dramatically increased the number of languages spoken. The Bible Society responded to each new need and today provides Scriptures for Australians in over 100 languages. Although the product remained the same, Bible Society transport for field staff changed from horse-drawn to motor vehicles.

With only a handful of notable exceptions, churches and missionary organisations gave very little attention to Bible translation for Australia's first century and a half. This inertia was increasingly due to the widespread view throughout Australia that the Aboriginal people were a dying race. By the 1940s, however, it was becoming become evident that Aboriginal people were not about to die out. In remote parts of Australia, dedicated missionaries slowly began the renewed task of Bible translation.

Len Harris with Bidigainj and Grace Yimambu, translating Mark's Gospel into Nunggubuyu (Wubuy).

The production of the Bible in Aboriginal languages is one of the Bible Society's most significant tasks, increasingly carried out in recent times in partnership with other translation organisations. The past 50 years have seen a huge increase in the translation and publication of Indigenous Scriptures, due very significantly to the enthusiastic demands of Indigenous Christians.

In the modern approach to Bible translation, Indigenous Christians themselves have themselves become the translators with the Bible Society providing professional support through highly qualified translation consultants. Highlights include New Testaments in Pitjantjatjara, Warlpiri, Wubuy and Djambarrpuyngu.

The Bible Society assisted the Christian churches of Newcastle to publish, at last, the Gospel of Luke in Awabakal, 150 years after it was translated. The most recent Indigenous publication is the 2014 Gospel of Luke in Nyoongar, the first Scripture to be translated in southwest Australia.

In the closing decades of the twentieth century, Bible Societies around Australia involved themselves wholeheartedly in youth and children's ministries and in the very successful Bike for Bibles programme.

One of the United Bible Society's greatest success stories was what came to be called the Good News Bible, modern language Bibles in many major world languages including Spanish, French, Indonesian and English. In 1988, to mark Australia's Bicentenary, specifically the arrival in Australia of the "First Fleet" of British settlers in 1788, the Bible Society produced an Australian text of the Good News Bible. It had distinctly Australian vocabulary and grammar, such as use of "paddock" instead of "field" and "meadow."

The Bible Society has long had an enthusiasm for publishing special Bibles for particular groups of Australians. Defence Force Scriptures led to Scriptures for members of other uniformed organisations such as police and emergency services. These were followed by Scriptures specifically designed for a wide range of interest groups - nurses, sports and business people. These Scriptures all contain specially written material dealing with specific issues facing the readers and personal testimonies from Christians in their fields who found encouragement in the Bible.

Technology changes, even though the word of God does not. Just as improvements in the printing press made Scriptures available cheaply to millions of people, so did every advance in communication technology, which the Bible Society was always quick to utilise. As radio reception covered Australia, the "Bibleman" became widely known in Australian homes every Sunday afternoon.

Embracing photography, the Bible Society used glass photographic slides to project its message more graphically, then moved on to film strips, 16mm movie films and, as technology advanced, on through videos, DVDs and now the internet. The words of the Bible itself have been distributed on vinyl records, reel-to-reel tapes, cassettes, CDs and most recently on mobile phone apps.

Technology has also enabled the translation of the Bible into Deaf sign languages. Working with the Deaf, the Bible Society in Australia pioneered advanced digital techniques for recording the Bible in AUSLAN (Australian Sign Language). The Bible Society's AUSLAN Bible project is now a world-leading programme, widely regarded as setting the standard for Deaf sign projects everywhere.

In the opening years of the twenty-first century it was time for the Bible Society movement in Australia to adapt, as it has always done, to new and challenging circumstances.

Two hundred years ago, it had begun in colonial Sydney as an Auxiliary of the British and Foreign Bible Society in a remote and distant land. It had grown into six separate, flourishing Auxiliaries in the six British colonies. When the colonies federated in 1901 to form the Commonwealth of Australia, the six state societies had seen the need to create a structure under which they could better cooperate.

This Commonwealth Secretariat eventually became the independent Bible Society in Australia with its six affiliated state organisations. This national body enabled the Bible Society movement in Australia to contribute even more directly to the provision of Scriptures to the world through active and generous membership of the United Bible Societies (UBS).

Over 150 million Bibles have been printed in China, since Amity Press half owned by UBS, opened in 1987.

The old federal structure, the national body with its six states, had served the Bible cause well. It had enabled countless good and Godly people to make a significant contribution to the spread of God's word in Australia and overseas. But it was becoming evident that this structure had become outdated. The immense Australian distances were no longer a problem in a digital age. A new, more streamlined organisation was needed to take the Bible Society forward into the second millennium. The state Bible Societies, sensing that this was the moment to grasp the future, responded to the challenge. In 2010, the state organisations voted themselves out of existence and voted in a new, unified national body.

Dropping the word "in," the small name change to "Bible Society Australia" (BSA) signals a renewed commitment to bring the Bible Society movement in Australia into its third century of amazing, faithful and effective witness to the Bible. BSA looks forward, under God's guidance, to responding to the needs and challenges of a new age both here in Australia and beyond in an increasingly complex and ever-changing world.

To mark BSA's 200th Anniversary, 78 Aboriginal and Torres Strait artists have contributed artworks to "our Mob; God's Story," Australia's first book of Christian Aboriginal art.

Today, in a climate of increasing secularisation in Western countries and growing Bible illiteracy, Bible Societies recognise an increased need to perform Bible engagement and advocacy work.

For the past six years, Bible Society Australia has published Eternity, a leading national newspaper committed to covering a broad range of news, opinion and features from a Christian viewpoint. This is distributed free to churches of all denominations around the country. In 2016, Eternity launched its own website, which publishes stories daily with the aim of reaching a wider group and increase the public's interest in Christianity.