Calvin MacKenzie
1The first of a series of three articles based on a paper delivered to the first Youth Conference in Australia.
“To you, as the instrument, we owe the pleasing prospect of an opening for the propagation of the gospel in the Southern Hemisphere. Who can tell what important consequences may depend upon Mr Johnson’s going to New Holland?”2 So wrote John Newton to William Wilberforce MP on 15 November 1786. The Christian religion arrived in New Holland with the First Fleet at what was to become the infant colony of New South Wales, which was established in Sydney Cove on Saturday, 26 January 1788. Richard Johnson, an Evangelical clergyman of the Church of England, stepped ashore with a passion to serve God by preaching to and caring for the souls entrusted to his care. From that day, the ages-old struggle between spiritual and carnal priorities, between a personal and living relationship with God through the atoning merits and shed blood of His only begotten Son Jesus Christ and a cold, formal profession of attachment to established religion was waged in the great land under the southern skies.
In 1792, Richard Johnson, looking back on his calling to the colony, in a letter written to his flock, was to say: “My commission from God extends equally and alike to all the inhabitants, without distinction. It is my duty to preach to all, to pray for all, and to admonish everyone.”3 This paper aims to highlight the nature of the Christianity brought to the colony with the First Fleet against the prevailing rationalism of the day, and Richard Johnson’s struggle, in particular, to gain for Bible-believing Christianity a foothold despite the indifference and opposition of the colonial authorities. While education was also a major interest of Johnson and he took pains to establish it, this paper focuses rather on the origins and progress of Christianity in the colony during Johnson’s 12-year residence.
Beginnings.
Established on Saturday, 26 January 1788, when Governor Arthur Phillip had a flagstaff erected at Sydney Cove, the infant colony of New South Wales owed its early Christian influence to a group of influential Evangelical clergymen and laymen known as the Eclectic Society. This Society was founded five years earlier “for mutual religious intercourse and improvement, and for the investigation of religious truth”.4 It was established in January 1783 in an upper room of the Castle and Falcon on Aldersgate Street, London, where 57-year-old John Newton met with fellow Evangelical clergymen, Richard Cecil and Henry Foster, and Eli Bates an Anglican layman.
Those attending this first meeting resolved to meet fortnightly as a discussion group – which, in time, having relocated to the vestry of St John’s Chapel, Bedford Row, where Richard Cecil was the minister, gained a reputation “as one in which Christian leaders from different strains of Evangelicalism could discuss important issues in a relaxed setting”.5 John Newton proved to be the guiding spirit of the group, which also included, among others, Henry Foster, curate to the eminent William Romaine, John Venn, rector of Clapham and founder of the Church Missionary Society (CMS) and Josiah Pratt, vicar of St Stephen’s, Coleman Street, and for 21 years secretary of the Church Missionary Society (CMS), and some laymen: William Wilberforce MP, John Thornton, a wealthy businessman and philanthropist, and his son Henry.
The Eclectic Society was formed against the background of significant political and religious change in Britain. Twenty years after the costly French and Indian war in 1763, Britain’s economy was still recovering and she was in the process of losing her revenue-producing American colonies. On 3 September 1783, at the Peace of Paris, Britain signed away its 13 American Colonies to commissioners Benjamin Franklin, John Jay and John Adams after the colonies’ seven-years war had resulted in the British granting them independence. The severance of the American colonies was a sharp setback to Britain that presented significant political, economic and social consequences, not the least of which was the need to find somewhere else to send the over-abundance of criminals6 clogging the prison system while, at the same time, opening up the possibilities of new sources of produce and revenue in the new world. This was a time too of religious change in Britain. A grassroots Evangelical movement had been growing steadily in the Church of England since at least the 1760s, a recent result of which had been the instalment of Charles Simeon (arguably the Evangelical patriarch in the Church of England) at Holy Trinity Church in Cambridge.
Four matters of monumental consequence discussed by the Eclectic Society were to be: (1) the best method for planting and propagating the gospel in Botany Bay, (2) the establishment of missions, (3) the abolition of the slave trade, (4) the establishment of a periodical publication “in the interests of religion”. These discussions, in the fullness of time, led to the appointment of the Evangelical Richard Johnson as the Chaplain of the colony to be established in NSW in 1788, the founding of the Church Missionary Society for Africa and the East in 1799, the abolition of the slave trade in 1807 and the founding of The Christian Observer in 1801. What a debt of gratitude we owe these faithful men who, under God and by His grace, had a burden to benefit their fellow men – by implementing decisions that to countless souls, with the blessing of God, were to result in their salvation. Their far-reaching agenda was to disturb and disquiet the cold and Christless rationalism of the day, and who can tell the good they did to poor hell-deserving souls? We should thank God for such prayerful men of action who took a public stance on the issues of their day; may we yet see their like raised up again!
Confining our attention at present to the role the Eclectic Society played in procuring Richard Johnson as Chaplain to the Colony of NSW, it is clear the impetus came from the missionary-minded John Newton; while the friendship of William Wilberforce with the 24-year-old Prime Minister William Pitt the younger was pivotal in providing the political leverage.7
During the summer of 1786, the British Government decided to set up a convict colony on the east coast of New Holland and it is highly likely, given his close association with Pitt, that Wilberforce was familiar with the “Heads of a Plan” that Cabinet had sent to the Lord Commissioners of the Treasury about the proposal. The plan included a provision for the appointment of a chaplain – a provision which, it appears, Wilberforce was instrumental in procuring after mentioning the plan in a meeting of the Eclectic Society and being persuaded by John Newton and others to lobby Pitt.
On 23 September 1786, a 31 year-old Yorkshire man, Richard Johnson, curate to Henry Foster, was asked if he “had the spirit of a missionary”, to which he replied, “No”. It is speculated that either Newton or Foster asked him the question and it is further suggested that a few days later he received a letter from Wilberforce promising he could secure him the appointment if he was interested. After some days of prayer and deliberation, Johnson replied positively and steps were put in place to secure his appointment, which was verified by his commission dated 24 October 1786.8
The Archbishop of Canterbury, John Moore, approved of the appointment of Richard Johnson and recommended him to the Board of the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge (SPCK), requesting the Society to provide him with some books to use in the colony. By the time the First Fleet sailed, Johnson had accumulated over 4000 Bibles, Testaments, Common Prayer Books, Psalters, tracts and other religious publications to take with him.
Who was Richard Johnson?
Richard Johnson was born in 1755 in south-east Yorkshire in the small village of Welton near Brough. Until the birth of Johnson, Welton’s only claim to fame was that the notorious highwayman Dick Turpin was arrested there in 1739! Educated in the Grammar School at Kingston-upon-Hull, he pursued farming and teaching until, at the age of 24 in 1780, he entered Magdalene College, Cambridge, where he distinguished himself as a student and graduated Bachelor of Arts in 1784. During this period as an undergraduate, he was made a Deacon in Winchester Cathedral on 21 December 1783 by the Bishop, Brownlow North, and was ultimately ordained to the Christian ministry as a priest of the Church of England by the Bishop of Oxford, on 31 October, 1784. His first appointment in 1784 was as Curate of St John’s, Boldre, in Hampshire. In 1785, he became assistant to Henry Foster – ten years his senior and one of the leading itinerant Evangelical preachers in London.
Johnson’s first exposure to convicts like those who would become a significant part of his colonial flock allegedly came on 22 October 1786, when he was reported to have preached to 250 of them on board the prison hulk Leviathan moored at Woolwich.9 Until setting sail in May 1787, Johnson prepared for the voyage by acquiring the essentials for life in a strange and uncivilised environment. On 4 December 1786 he married Mary Burton in St John’s Clerkenwell amid speculation that John Newton had played match-maker. William Bull lends weight to the suspicion when writing to Newton: “So at last you have given the good Bishop of Botany Bay a wife to take with him – a very good thing, if she be a good wife. I pity and rejoice, pray for and congratulate them both.”10
Prior to sailing, Johnson received much counsel from his mentor John Newton, who advised him to spend the long days of the voyage immersed in the Scriptures – particularly Paul’s missionary journeys. Upon departure, Newton presented him with a farewell message in the form of a poem that summed up his advice to the younger man:
Omicron to Johnson Going to Botany Bay
The Lord who sends thee hence will be thine aid;
In vain at thee the lion, Danger, roars:
His arm and love shall keep thee undismayed
On tempest tossed seas and all strange shores.
Go bear the Saviour’s name to lands unknown,
Tell to the Southern World His wondrous grace;
An energy divine thy words shall own,
And draw their untaught hearts to seek His face.
Many in quest of gold or empty fame,
Would compass earth, or venture near the Poles
But how much nobler thy reward and aim,
To spread His grace, and win immortal souls.11
On 13 May, 1787, Johnson set sail from Portsmouth with his wife Mary, a servant, and all his worldly goods on the store ship, the Golden Grove, facing a sea voyage of some 15 000 miles that would take eight months punctuated by two stopovers of about a month each in Rio de Janeiro and Cape Town to take on supplies and make repairs. With the Golden Grove, sailed ten other ships under the command of Captain Arthur Phillip containing 759 convicts (568 men and 191 women) of whom 23 died on the way. On board, Johnson made the most of every opportunity to preach the gospel. In writing to his Portsmouth friend Henry Fricker he says, “We have prayer every evening in the great Cabin; the Captain has granted me leave also to preach once at least on a Lord’s Day to the ship’s crew. Accordingly, last Sunday I preached to them. My text was in Matt 5:34, designed to set forth the heinous evil of common swearing; I was pleased to hear that the sailors were satisfied and pleased with my subject – hoped that I do repeat or follow this practice throughout the voyage. Since then I have scarcely heard an oath from any of them. May God convince them of the folly and wickedness of such a conduct.”12
2R I and S Wilberforce, Correspondence of William Wilberforce, London, 1840, vol 1, p 15. Quoted in Neil K Macintosh, Richard Johnson, Chaplain to the Colony of New South Wales, Sydney, 1978, p 26. Australia was first called New Holland as a consequence of the Dutch charting parts of the coast of Australia during the years 1606-1756.
3Rev Richard Johnson, An Address to the Inhabitants of the Colonies Established in New South Wales and Norfolk Island, London, 1792, (facsimile edition).
4Thomas Hartwell Horne, Reminiscences, Personal and Biographical of Thomas Hartwell Horne, DD, London 1852, p 45.
5Aaron Belz, “Plotting the World’s Salvation”, Christian History & Biography, Issue 81, Winter 2004, vol XXIII, no 1, p 40.
6Criminals: for the most part petty thieves. Transportation was seen as a humane alternative to execution, which was the supreme penalty for 222 crimes during this part of the eighteenth century. The majority of these offences were crimes against property, including the stealing of goods worth over 5 shillings, and the cutting down of a tree.
7John Pollock, William Wilberforce, London, 1977, p 137.
8Macintosh, Richard Johnson, pp 27-28.
9Macintosh, Richard Johnson, p 38. (However, if, Johnson did then preach to convicts, it could not have been on the Leviathan hulk because she was apparently not launched until four years later.)
10Bull to Newton, December 1786, quoted by Macintosh, Richard Johnson, p 38.
11Josiah Bull, John Newton, An Autobiography and Narrative, London, 1868, p 287. These verses were penned by John Newton in 1787. Quoted in Iain H Murray, Australian Christian Life from 1788 – An Introduction and an Anthology, Edinburgh, 1988, p 2.
12G Mackaness, ed, Some Letters of Rev Richard Johnson, First Chaplain of New South Wales, Sydney, 1954, vol 1, p 13. Johnson to Fricker, 30 May 1787.