The first Primitive Methodist ministry in the Southern Hemisphere was commenced in Adelaide on July 26, 1840 under the lay leadership of John Wiltshire and John Rowlands. In October 1844 missionaries Joseph Long and John Wilson arrived from England to provide leadership to the South Australian work, and in 1845 John Wilson was reassigned to Sydney at the request of a small number of Primitive Methodists in New South Wales. In 1849 an experienced missionary, John
36 1828-1891 data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics microfiche, La Trobe Australiana
Collections, State Library of Victoria; 1901-2011 data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics, accessed February 27, 2014, http://www.abs.gov.au/websitedbs/D3310114.nsf/home/home? opendocument.
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Ride was sent to Melbourne37 following the establishment of the first class meetings in that city with the first Primitive Methodist chapel in Victoria erected on La Trobe Street in 1850.38
The Bible Christians likewise began their Australian ministry in South Australia. Cornish Bible Christians joined for their first public worship service in the town of Burra in 1849.39 They began holding class meetings and built the first Bible Christian chapel in Australia with the opening service held on August 25, 1850. Missionaries, James Way and James Rowe arrived in November 1850 to find a chapel and congregation already established.40 From South Australia the Bible Christians reached into Victoria in the 1850s, Queensland in the 1860s and Western Australia in the 1890s.41
The Wesleyan Association commenced in Australia in October 1951 through the ministry of Rev. Joseph Townend. Townend had been commissioned by the 1850 Connexional Committee at Bury, England and sailed with his wife to begin a preaching point at Collingwood, Melbourne.42 The mission grew well, reaching from Victoria into the other states. In 1857 the mission became part of the newly formed United Methodist Free Church and the name of the Wesleyan Association ceased to be used.
Another of the Methodist groups from Britain that was present in Australia briefly was the Methodist New Connection. James Maughan commenced a congregation in Adelaide in 1862 and Clement Linley commenced in Melbourne in 1865, but the group never really became established. Instead they merged with the
37
John Petty, The History of the Primitive Methodist Connexion from its Origin to the Conference of 1860 (London: Primitive Methodist Conference, 1864), 474, 482-485.
38 Ian Breward, "Methodist Reunion in Australasia," 120.
39 James Laurence Moss, Sound of Trumpets: History of the Labour Movement in South Australia
(Netley, South Australia: Wakefield, 1985), 57.
40 F.W. Bourne, The Bible Christians: Their Origin and History (1815-1900) (London: Bible Christian
Book Room, 1905), 307-310.
41 Bourne, The Bible Christians, 352, 385, 543. 42
Joseph Townend, Autobiography of the Rev. Joseph Townend: with Reminiscences of his Missionary Labours in Australia, 2nd edition (London: United Methodist Free Churches' Book Room, 1869), 84, 117.
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Bible Christians and the Wesleyan Methodists respectively in 1888 and were part of the subsequent union through those bodies.43
Merger of the four branches of Methodism in Australia became a recurring topic of discussion in the later parts of the nineteenth century. Methodism had already undergone national reunification in Ireland in 1878 and in Canada in 1884 and since Australian society at large was in discussions to form the Commonwealth of Australia it was not surprising that unification of Methodism would also be on the agenda. Eventually merger was achieved state by state in Australia, rather than as one national bloc, and the New Zealand Methodists had to accept a partial solution for a time. South Australia was the first to achieve full unification, on August 14, 1899, celebrating their first united conference in February 1900. This progress in South Australia spurred the other states forward, with Australia-wide merger of the four Methodist streams declared in the formation of the Methodist Church of Australasia on January 1, 1902. A fifth group that opted not to participate in the merger was an indigenous congregation in Newcastle, New South Wales, called the Lay Methodist Church. The Lay Methodists survived until 1951.44 Figure 3.2 illustrates the mergers of British Methodism in Australia and New Zealand early in the twentieth century.
Australian union brought together 78,715 Wesleyan Methodist members (+ 433,070 adherents) and 20,586 members from the three smaller Methodist groups (+ 94,486 adherents), making totals of 99,301 members and 527,556 adherents.45 Figure 3.3 graphically illustrates the numerical dominance of the British Wesleyan Methodist Church in nineteenth century Australian Methodism.
43
Breward, "Methodist Reunion in Australasia," 121.
44 Prentis, "Methodism in New South Wales, 1855-1902," 29.
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Figure 3.2 Four branches of British Methodism merged in Australia & New Zealand
Figure 3.3 The scale of Methodism's merger in Australia 1902 Merger completed in Australia 1902 Merger completed in New Zealand 1913
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Methodist union was celebrated as a wonderful victory and a necessary step toward greater effectiveness. Rev. J. Berry preached at the South Australian celebration in 1900, "I am only a witness, and not a prophet, but I think that every member of this Conference will agree with me that in a new country like ours, united Methodism will be more effective than disunited Methodism."46 Berry may have been overly optimistic however - from the turn of the twentieth century Methodist growth in Australia slowed and began to decline until it disappeared altogether in 1977. The rise and decline of Methodism in Australia as a percentage of the Australian population is illustrated as figure 3.4. Factors that impacted these trends are discussed later in this chapter.
Figure 3.4 Methodist Church as a % of Australian population 1860-197647