Australian Religious Thought

Australian Religious Thought is the first major study of this field. Wayne Hudson argues that religious thought can be found in many intellectuals in Australia, both in the religiously inclined and in those who were not conventionally religious. Drawing together existing and new research, he opens up new perspectives and re-thematises this area of enquiry in six exploratory studies. The concept of sacral secularity is used to complicate and contest discussions of 'the secular' in Australia. Religious liberalism is interpreted as transnational and as often a source of social reform. Interactions between religious thought and philosophy are discussed in some detail, as is the development of theology, which has received relatively little attention from historians. Account is also taken of what might be called postsecular consciousness in many intellectuals.

Taking religious thought more seriously suggests possible revisions to the way the national story has been told. There has been more serious intellectual life in Australia than historians have generally acknowledged, and a considerable part of it was in a broad sense 'religious'.