Counter Revolution

An Australian Historian Lobs Some Grenades

Stuart Piggin was the director of the Centre for the History of Christian Thought and Experience at Macquarie University and head of the Department of Christian Thought of the Australian College of Theology.  Mark Powell published an interview with Dr Piggin in the Australian Presbyterian (Spring 2018).

Piggin has written numerous articles for academic books.  His most recent book is entitled The Fountain of Public Prosperity: Evangelical Christians in Australian History, 1740-1914 (Monash University.)  Part of the interview with Powell covered the supporting role of British evangelicals (Anglican and Methodist) in the transportation of convicts to Australia.  How could evangelical Christians be involved in such a horrid practice?


Piggin responds:

History is a process and you've got to take into account where you start and where you end.  And where you start is a society where people who were poor and who never had any access to education of any kind often ended up in trouble.  And if they were in trouble then they were often hanged for it. 

Now the evangelicals believed that transportation was a more merciful way than handing, so they supported that.  And then when it was going they went about abolishing it.  They first supported transportation.  Then they improved it.  Then they abolished it.  Because they were conscious of the process in history. 

But in the phase when influential evangelicals  supported transportation, they sought to humanise it--thus the remarkable steps to which they went to insure that the convicts were well fed and cared for on the First Fleet.  That was a great  maritime achievement, and its success owed much to the evangelicals who controlled the selection and provisioning of the ships of the First Fleet.  

Powell then went on to ask:  "Another fascinating insight that you had was Jonathan Edwards' post-millennialism view of the improvement of history.  Can you explain what you mean by that?"

Piggins responds:

Edwards changed the prevailing pre-millennialism into post-millennialism.  He believed that the Holy Spirit would be poured out for a thousand years in a time of great prosperity for the church.  That was in his book, The History of Redemption, the evangelical equivalent of Augustine's The City of God.  This is what God is doing in heaven, earth and hell.  So this is the great theology of history you get from Edwards.

Anyway, for what it's worth, I think that Edwards was probably right.  I think we are witnessing the beginning of the thousand years of the pouring out of the Holy Spirit because Christianity the world over has been making more rapid gains in the last two centuries than it ever has.  It is incredibly dynamic.  The 19th century was the great century of missions; the 20th century witnessed the explosive growth of Christianity, especially in Africa, South America and parts of Asia such as South Korea and China.

Just a little something to light the fires of hope and promise!