Menzies on: Religion
Menzies was unequivocal about the social benefits of religion. Here, for the first time, are all his recorded references to the importance of faith and freedom. By David Furse-Roberts.
When Robert Menzies’ father, James, a Scots Presbyterian, settled in Jeparit with wife Kate in 1893, there was no Presbyterian Church. So instead James joined the Methodist fold and became a trustee and lay preacher of the Jeparit Methodist Church. It was into this religious environment that Robert Menzies was born. Regular church-going and Bible reading formed a part of his early upbringing. At University, he maintained his religiosity and served as President of the Melbourne University Students’ Christian Union in 1916. Under the influence of C H Nash, who later became Principal of the Melbourne Bible Institute, Menzies adopted the habit of daily Bible reading. As Menzies embarked on his legal career at the Bar in the 1920s, he occasionally worshipped at Melbourne’s Kew Presbyterian Church with his wife Pattie who shared his Scottish Presbyterian roots.
QUOTES: Scroll down for a complete chronological collection of Menzies’ references to religion.
Throughout his lengthy career in politics, Menzies exhibited signs of the religious faith he had imbibed from childhood and early adulthood. Peppered with phrases and aphorisms from Christian scripture such as ‘my brother’s keeper’ and ‘a house of many mansions’, his speeches espoused what he esteemed as the middle-class Protestant values of personal integrity, thrift, industry, domestic propriety and community service. The most frequent platform on which Menzies discussed moral and religious themes was the routine ‘Pleasant Sunday Afternoon’ address at Melbourne’s Wesley (Methodist) Church. The Superintendent of Wesley Church from 1935-1967, Sir Clarence Irving Benson, became a personal friend of Menzies and shared his political outlook. Along with R G (Lord) Casey, Menzies was regularly invited to appear at Benson’s Pleasant Sunday Afternoons where he would often speak on the moral and spiritual challenges to Western civilisation posed by Cold War communism and materialism. The religious views of Menzies had also surfaced in his keynote Forgotten People broadcast of 1942. His stated philosophy that ‘Human nature is greatest when it combines dependence upon God with independence of man’ revealed much about his understanding of God vis-à-vis humanity. From his Protestant upbringing, he had imbibed the view that human beings were imperfect and needed to rely upon God for moral guidance and redemption. As a liberal, however, he also embraced the Scottish Enlightenment’s belief in human progress which held that men and women possessed the innate potential to independently seek self-improvement through education and the cultivation of civilised habits.
True to his own epithet as a ‘simple Presbyterian’, Menzies’ personal brand of Protestantism was theologically uncomplicated and essentially practical with an emphasis on self-giving service. Like the twentieth-century Anglican writer and apologist, C S Lewis, Menzies would have viewed himself as an exponent of ‘mere Christianity’ which rejected atheism to affirm the Christian basics of a Trinitarian God, a divinely inspired Bible and personal redemption through Christ while downplaying the significance of theological differences between the denominations and branches of Christianity. Viewing the Bible as the common wellspring of faith for Christians of all churches, Menzies observed that it was ‘better to seek the fountainhead than to divide up amongst the little streams’. Menzies believed that it was infinitely more constructive for the Church, as a whole, to focus on preaching a common gospel and seeking to enrich the community through good works than to be inwardly preoccupied with settling finer points of doctrine. He had a particularly high esteem for the practical Christianity of churches such as the Salvation Army and the Central Methodist Missions of Melbourne and Sydney. In his own Presbyterian Church, he identified closely with the Rev Dr J Fred McKay, the successor to Rev John Flynn of the Royal Flying Doctor Service. Regarding McKay as a personal friend and spiritual confidante, he admired the clergyman as a ‘good, practical Christian’.
While proud of his Scottish Presbyterian roots and committed to preserving Australia’s Christian heritage, not least of all its church schools, Menzies recognised the diversity of the nation’s faith communities and therefore preached religious freedom and non-sectarianism as the norm for Australia in the 1950s and 60s. Abhorring sectarian animosity as repugnant to both liberal and Christian principles, Menzies had a long track-record of seeking to heal the Catholic-Protestant rift that had long blighted Australian society. In 1928, he defended his decision to attend the opening of a Catholic school in his electorate of East Yarra amid opposition from some of his constituents. As the Victorian Attorney-General in the early 1930s, he attracted criticism for standing up to Protestant efforts to ban a large Catholic Eucharistic procession through the streets of central Melbourne. As Prime Minister in 1939, he addressed a Melbourne peace rally organised by the Australian National Secretariat for Catholic Action and stressed the shared faith of all present by drawing attention to his presence, as a Presbyterian, on a Catholic platform.
In Menzies’ second period as Prime Minister, his cooperation with Australian Catholics on the contentious state aid issue was recognised when he was invited as guest of honour to the annual Cardinal's Dinner in Sydney 1964, presided over by Cardinal Norman Gilroy. As well as building bridges with Catholics, Menzies enjoyed an excellent rapport with Australia’s Jewish community. He deeply respected the Jewish legacy for its profound contribution to Western civilisation and admired the Jewish people for their cultural traditions of scholarship, civic-mindedness and enduring sense of kinship. Frequently invited to speak at ceremonies organised by the Jewish community, Menzies praised the Jewish people for their contribution to Australia. At the Cardinal’s dinner, he told his audience that citizens of all faiths were part of Australia and had a duty to serve the country to the best of their talents.
With his pronouncements as Prime Minister seldom touching upon the specifics of religious doctrine, Menzies nonetheless affirmed that the Judeo-Christian ethic was fundamental to both the character of civilisation and the survival of human freedom. Like liberal statesmen such as Edmund Burke and Abraham Lincoln, he appreciated the indebtedness of modern democracy to the Judeo-Christian inheritance and the Enlightenment. From his own keen sense of history, he understood that that the disastrous attempts of both the French and Bolshevik Revolutions to crush the religious freedom of the people had led to tyranny and oppression. For Menzies, the twentieth-century represented a depressing catalogue of strife and war in which the triumph of pagan ideologies had served to grievously disfigure human civilisation. As the antidote to the ‘soulless materialism’ propagated by either Marxism or Fascism, Menzies espoused a Christian-inspired liberalism, not dissimilar to that of European-style Christian democracy, which stressed first, the relationship of human beings to ‘their maker’ and the ‘divine and spiritual law’, and second, the relationship of human beings to one another as ‘members of one body’. Given that this political creed was not doctrinally-specific in its enunciation, it could be accepted by citizens of all faiths in a society such as Australia.
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Menzies on: Religion
The quotes below are from the forthcoming anthology of Menzies quotes by MRC Research Fellow David Furse-Roberts, to be published in 2020.
“We must re-assert the truth, that materialism is not enough. Man does not live by bread alone. A slavery to the gods of material well-being is a degrading slavery. We have inherited great spiritual traditions of unselfish service.”
– Freedom in Modern Society, 1935
“Just as the Bible taught the English their own English so it wove into the fabric of the English character that profound realisation of the existence of God, that profound belief in the value of the moral judgment that has made our race the greatest race in the world, and that alone can keep our race a great race.”
– The Oldest Book with the Newest Message, 15 July 1940
“Our judgment has been a judgment founded upon an appreciation of the moral nature of man, and not merely a judgment of expediency founded upon the strength or the weakness of our opponents.”
– The Oldest Book with the Newest Message, 15 July 1940
“All things that our Faith stands for—quiet living and human kindness, the freedom of the soul, justice to our neighbours, the essential brotherhood of man, are today challenged and nothing less than our best can save them from eclipse.”
– Election Speech, 2 September 1940
“Human nature is at its greatest when it combines dependence upon God with independence of man.”
– The Forgotten People Speech, 22 May 1942
“The religious freedom for which the Scottish Covenanters fought was freedom for all, Catholic or Protestant, Jew or Gentile, and that to deny it was to go back to the dark ages of man. Religious persecution was the denial of freedom. Freedom of worship is the victorious enemy of persecution.”
– Freedom of Worship, Broadcast, 3 July 1942
“We are a diversity of creatures, with a diversity of minds and emotions and imaginations and faiths. When we claim freedom of worship we claim room and respect for all.”
– Freedom of Worship, Broadcast, 3 July 1942
“Sectarian strife is the enemy of freedom or worship, not its friend. It is the denial of Christianity not its proof.”
– Freedom of Worship, Broadcast, 3 July 1942
“The Cross which is the symbol of the Christian faith is itself the figure of sacrifice.”
– Christmas Night Broadcast, 25 December 1942
“Christianity…begins its teaching by imposing on every citizen the obligation of unselfishness, of thinking of the interests of his neighbour before his own, and regarding himself as his brother’s keeper.”
– The Christian Citizen in a New Era, St Columba Presbyterian Church, Woollahra, NSW, 27 February 1944
“If ever man has set up a golden calf to worship, it is in the last forty-years or so, when he has been worshipping at the shrine of his own diabolical cleverness, and because he has become so great a worshipper of the material, the world has been rocked into such ruinous disaster.”
– The Christian Citizen in a New Era, St Columba Presbyterian Church, Woollahra, NSW, 27 February 1944
“You see, the greatest problem of the world is not to discover how fast you may travel from one part of the globe to another, but to expand the heart and nature of man, and how you may extend your duties to another man, and how above all, we may understand our duty to our Maker.”
– The Christian Citizen in a New Era, St Columba Presbyterian Church, Woollahra, NSW, 27 February 1944
“I believe that religion gives to people a sensitive understanding of their obligations and that is something which the world sadly needs at the present time.”
– Education, Parliamentary Debates, House of Representatives, 26 July 1945
“The Christian faith is one of love, and rejects hatred of human beings as an instrument of true human progress.”
– Christianity and Communism, Broadcast, 1946
“The whole essence of the Sermon on the Mount is that you must be prepared to do more than the Law commands, and that means that you are not to concern yourself only with the letter but concern yourself with the spirit.”
– Address on Christianity and Law, St Stephen’s Forum, 15 December 1946
“It would be a barren theologian who thought that the religion of Christ was concerned with the letter. It is concerned exclusively with the spirit. It issues its orders not to the mind of man but to the conscience of man, to that immortal part of man which does not depend upon final interpretation but which depends upon its adjustment to the laws of God and its adjustment to the rights, the interests, properly understood, of all other human beings.”
– Address on Christianity and Law, St Stephen’s Forum, 15 December 1946
“If in the course of self-government we are to make our temporal law more and more Christian in its form and application then we will have to get over the idea that the commands that men lay upon men, if performed, are sufficient; we will have to go into this strange, difficult doctrine, this marvellous teaching so almost impossible of human performance that we find in the Sermon on the Mount.”
– Address on Christianity and Law, St Stephen’s Forum, 15 December 1946
“Every man is above all a spirit; man is a spiritual animal.”
– Freedom and the Call to Action, Lecture to Junior Chamber of Commerce, 4 August 1947
“The civilised world saw in the establishment of Israel not only the providing of an independent home for many Jewish people but also a shining symbol of delivery from bondage, and (I believe) of world repentance.”
– On the recognition of the State of Israel, 1949
“I speak of the 70 000 Jews in Australia not only in Australia, but of Australia. For here, you are not, and should not be, a race apart. In this free country, all are free; all are equal before the law; religious or sectional prejudices tend ‘to fade into the light of common day.”
– On the recognition of the State of Israel, 1949
“The great Jewish contribution to Australia is not sectional or sectarian but a community contribution, neither discriminating nor being discriminated against. It is your historic function and destiny to enrich the Australian character by making your special contribution to the whole composite body. Isaacs and Monash - enduring and honoured names. Jews they were; but they are honoured as great Australians.”
– On the recognition of the State of Israel, 1949
“The one man, for he was human as well as divine, whose memory holds no blemish, whose influence has grown for nearly two thousand years, whose birthday is the occasion for rejoicing for hundreds of millions of men and women, was and is Jesus Christ.”
– Man to Man: Australia Today, Broadcast, 23 December 1953
“The most important thing in the world, may I say for myself, is man’s relation to his maker: his relation to the divine and spiritual law. The second most important thing is man’s relation to man, with all that it implies of brotherhood and understanding and fair play and responsibility. The third is man’s scientific and mechanical skill, and the extension of the boundaries of knowledge.”
– Australia Today: Man to Man, Broadcast, 17 March 1954
“We must reassert the truth, that materialism is not enough. Man does not live by bread alone. A slavery to the gods of material well-being is a degrading slavery. We have inherited great spiritual traditions of unselfish service.”
– The First William Queale Memorial Lecture, Adelaide, 22 October 1954
“It is grimly significant that the century which has seen the greatest scientific advancements of recorded history has been, more than perhaps any other, disfigured, not only by wars of a stupendous range and intensity and destruction, but by widespread attacks upon the religion of love by organised hatreds and cruelties of the most barbarous kind.”
– Address to the Tenth Session of the Australasian Medical Congress, Hobart, 5 March 1958
“In my father’s house there are many mansions. Don’t forget it. There is room in every political party for Christian men and women of all schools of Christian thought.”
– Farewell to Dr Rayward, Sydney, 30 March, 1958
“I don’t think we ought to be seeking to express Christianity in party political terms but I am perfectly certain that it’s the duty of all of us to examine our own politics in Christian terms. These are two entirely different ideas.”
– Farewell to Dr Rayward, Sydney, 30 March, 1958
“Politics must still regard itself as pursuing policies, which while they may be economically quite different, while they may give rise to financial controversies, international arguments, must not in themselves be anti-Christian policies or non-Christian policies. Therefore, it’s right, that we should all in a country like this, constantly test our politics, constantly try our political faith by seeing that we express it in Christian terms but that doesn’t mean that we can’t disagree about politics. That doesn’t mean that to be a good Christian you have to be a good Liberal or a good Country Party man, or a good Labor man. I’m saying exactly the opposite. To be a good Liberal, to be a good Labor man, to be a good Country Party man, you will be all the better if you are a Christian.”
– Farewell to Dr Rayward, Sydney, 30 March, 1958
“I know that in the course of history there have been divisions in the Christian Church, and for some reasons that seemed good to somebody or other, we among Protestants, Anglicans or Presbyterians or Methodists or Congregationalists or Baptists. And no doubt we all have some differences among ourselves in terms of government; sometimes in some point of doctrine. But I always like to feel that underneath all this there is one Bible, there is one message; and that the nearer we get to that, the less we will be concerned with dogma of any kind.”
– Speech at Salvation Army Citizens’ Rally, Melbourne, March 22, 1959
“There is a long history in Australia of distinguished service to our country by Jewish citizens. The Jews in Australia are good Australians. Any attempt to create an anti-Jewish feeling in Australia is doomed to failure.”
– Anti-Semitism in Australia, Canberra, 26 January 1960
“The Bible is the most remarkable repository of religious history. Frankly, I don’t think that any man could regard himself as educated unless he had become familiar with the great historic stories of the Bible.”
– Official Opening National Memorial Bible House, Canberra, 13 February 1960
“The Bible is the repository of our faith and of our inspiration. Never out of date, always up to date, always difficult of application and therefore stimulating to thoughtful people. It is the great source of faith, and of course that is why we ought to read it...The story is there, the great history is there, the great gospel is there, the whole spirit of Christianity is there.”
– Official Opening National Memorial Bible House, Canberra, 13 February 1960
“If I were, as I am not, an atheist or an agnostic or some other such unhappy person I would still take the Bible with me to a desert island for two reasons. One, that I would have a noble piece of literature to accompany me and two, because given ample opportunity to study it I might cease to be an atheist or an agnostic.”
– Official Opening National Memorial Bible House, Canberra, 13 February 1960
“Disfigured as the history of Europe is by the treatment of the Jews over centuries, it may I think be safely said that no disfigurement of that kind occurs or will occur in Australia.”
– Opening Speech at Mount Scopus College, Burwood Victoria, 13 September 1960
“I don’t know of any group in the community which preserves its character, its family character, its intimate association, its own prides and its own faith, while at the same time, being so integrally bound up with the community as a whole. Nobody can ever say, and I hope nobody ever will; that the Jewish community is a separatist body, that it lives to itself, that it lets the world go by. That’s not at all true; the fact is that you have made a great contribution to the current life of Australia. And that is a magnificent reconciliation, to reconcile your group pride, faith, fashions, emotions; with the general service of the country.”
– Opening Speech at Mount Scopus College, Burwood Victoria, 13 September 1960
“In the long run we may have clever citizens, ingenious citizens, even brave citizens, but unless they are citizens whose character has been enriched by the background of religious training they will not be the best citizens for Australia.”
– Opening Speech at Mount Corpus College, Burwood Victoria, 13 September 1960
“That just as freedom is not easily beaten out of the heart of man, so is faith not easily beaten out of him. You cannot take thousands, millions, hundreds of millions of people who have a faith of their own, and destroy it, merely by order or command.”
– Second Freedom Rally, Melbourne, 5 November 1960
“When God made man in His own image, He wasn't creating something necessarily that had a physical resemblance to Him. He was creating something that had the God-like elements in the spirit and in the character.”
– Civic Service, Presbyterian Church, Cheltenham [Vic], 4 April 1965
“If we are in His image, it is because we have within us a capacity for rising to great heights of pure virtue, side by side with a capacity for sinking to the lowest level of selfishness and bitterness; but these God-like elements in the human character, sometimes twisted sometimes ignored, I believe survive and blossom and develop as life goes on.”
– Civic Service, Presbyterian Church, Cheltenham [Vic], 4 April 1965
“This capacity for sacrifice, this capacity for preferring other people to oneself, this capacity for saying, I will contribute all if it is for the good of the country, exhibited so frequently in war is a God-like quality. The capacity for sacrifice, the whole idea of sacrifice is at the very root of the Christian faith.”
– Civic Service, Presbyterian Church, Cheltenham [Vic], 4 April 1965