Rev. Richard Johnson (1755-1827) was Australia's first chaplain. He arrived in 1788 and remained in Sydney until October, 1800.

The British invasion and colonisation of Aboriginal Australia were brutal processes that caused immense suffering. But how should otherwise good people who contributed to such events be remembered? With this question in mind, The Remarkable Mr and Mrs Johnson, explores the lives of colonial New South Wales’ pioneer chaplain, the Reverend Richard Johnson, and his wife Mary. Drawing heavily on eighteenth and nineteenth-century sources, the book traces early influences that led the Johnsons to join the First Fleet, then describes their pioneering work in the colony, founding the first schools, building the first church, and pioneering British charity. Amid the suffering caused by the British invasion, the Johnsons also built a remarkable friendship with a young Aboriginal girl named Boorong, who became an influential intermediary during the early years of colonisation. Their lives have something to teach us about adaptation, survival, and humility.

This book examines the history, theology and liturgy of the Eucharist in the Anglican Church of Australia from its earliest foundation after the arrival of British settlers in 1788 to the present.

New Zealanders know Samuel Marsden as the founder of the CMS missions that brought Christianity (and perhaps sheep) to New Zealand. Australians know him as &‘the flogging parson' who established large landholdings and was dismissed from his position as magistrate for exceeding his jurisdiction. English readers know of Marsden for his key role in the history of missions and empire. In this major biography spanning research, and the subject's life, across England, New South Wales and New Zealand, Andrew Sharp tells the story of Marsden's life from the inside. Sharp focuses on revealing to modern readers the powerful evangelical lens through which Marsden understood the world. By diving deeply into key moments &– the voyage out, the disputes with Macquarie, the founding of missions &– Sharp gets us to reimagine the world as Marsden saw it: always under threat from the Prince of Darkness, in need of &‘a bold reprover of vice', a world written in the words of the King James Bible. Andrew Sharp takes us back into the nineteenth-century world, and an evangelical mind, to reveal the past as truly a foreign country.

This landmark work is the first academic study of a figure who played a defining role in the Australian evangelical movement of the late twentieth century—the inimitable preacher, evangelist, and churchman John C. Chapman. The study situates Chapman’s career within the secularizing Western cultures of the post-1960s—a period bringing momentous changes to the social and religious fabric of Western society. At the same time, global Evangelicalism was reviving, bringing vitality to large swathes in the Global South and a re-balancing in Western societies as conservative religious movements experienced growth and even renewal amidst wider secularizing trends. Against this backdrop the study explores the way in which, across a wide array of domestic and international fora, Chapman contended for the soteriological priority of the gospel in Christian life, mission, and thought. Accomplished via an absorbing blend of personal wit, impassioned oratory, innovative missiological strategy, and striking theological perception, the result was a stimulating history of public advocacy that sought a revival of confidence in Evangelicalism’s message, and a constantly reforming vision of Evangelicalism’s method. Such a legacy marks Chapman as a central figure within the generation of postwar leaders whose work has given Australian Evangelicalism its contemporary shape and dynamism.

Utilising a range of source material and a variety of theoretical and methodological approaches, this ground-breaking collection offers the reader new ways of assessing the uneven paths of mission endeavours, and examines the ways in which Indigenous peoples responded to -- and took ownership of -- aspects of Christian and Western culture and spirituality.