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Now You See It: Now You Don't! Issues of Secularity and Secularisation in Publicly Funded Elementary Schools in the Australian Colonies during the Middle Third of the Nineteenth Century

journal contribution
posted on 2023-05-18, 08:01 authored by Richard Ely
This article opens and ends with reference to two interlinked studies: Charles Taylor's 2007 A Secular Age, and his 2011 Dilemmas and Connections: Selected Essays. These are often magnificent but sometimes flawed works. This article aims to explore the implications and ramifications of Taylor's failure to discuss, in either study, nineteenth-century provision for secular instruction by government elementary schools in Ireland, Great Britain, and the Australian colonies. What these did or did not mean should have been grist to Taylor's mill, especially since, in these places (and other English-speaking countries, such as the United States, Canada, and New Zealand) "secular instruction" provisions soon attracted energetic imputations of infidelity and atheism, as well as support. "Secular Instruction" Acts in two Australian colonies (Victoria in 1872, South Australia in 1851 and 1875) are here considered in detail, for these, especially the Victorian, were interpreted by some then and more recently as emphatically secular (in the sense of "Godless"). My argument is that this emphatic secularity, for emphatic it often was, mostly should not be read as "Godless" but as an often Protestant-inflected statutory expression - of the kind usefully defined - by reference to an ideal type - as "Civic Protestantism."

History

Publication title

Journal of Religious History

Volume

38

Pagination

356-376

ISSN

0022-4227

Department/School

School of Humanities

Publisher

Blackwell Publ Ltd

Place of publication

108 Cowley Rd, Oxford, England, Oxon, Ox4 1Jf

Rights statement

Copyright 2014 The Author and Religious History Association

Repository Status

  • Restricted

Socio-economic Objectives

Expanding knowledge in history, heritage and archaeology

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