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Manning Clark’s Repudiation of Anglicanism and the Appeal of ‘Sentimental Humanism’ in his Quest for Grace
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 April 2023
Abstract
Manning Clark is regarded as a pioneer of Australian national history. His output has been unequalled but it has provoked a vigorous division of opinions concerning its accuracy and the all-pervading thesis that Australia, to achieve its true national self-perception, must throw off the British heritage that included the baleful influence of the Anglicanism in which Clark was raised by his priest father. Here the work of three key scholarly critics, namely Dr George Shaw, Professor Brian Fletcher and Professor Alan Atkinson is evaluated, all of whom are Anglican historians of Australia. They have made very different assessments of the evolution of Australian national identity and the permanence of the British heritage. Shaw, as a former student of Clark, has assessed his mentor’s work not as rigorous history but essentially as ‘sentimental humanism’. As well, the opportunity is taken to reflect on the two extensive biographies of Clark, namely by Brian Matthews and Mark McKenna. Both these men were educated as Roman Catholics at a time when Rome was decidedly allergic to the idea of ecumenical outreach. Consequently, it is argued here that an accurate assessment of Manning Clark’s oeuvre is yet to be accomplished.
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- © The Author(s), 2023. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of The Journal of Anglican Studies Trust
References
1 Brian Matthews, Manning Clark: A Life (Crow’s Nest, Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 2010), pp. 80-83, from where the previous biographical details have been taken as well.
2 Matthews, Manning Clark, p. 86.
3 Cf. Manning Clark, The Quest for Grace (Ringwood, Vic.: Viking Penguin Books, 1990), p. 193. Clark’s memoirs are peppered with sometimes virulent criticisms of the Church of England and its bourgeois members, for example. They were ‘pharisaical’ (p. 32); ‘could not satisfy the “femina” in me’ (p. 47); and they were ‘life-deniers’ (p. 95).
4 Most notably Clark’s work was severely criticized posthumously by his former student, friend and publisher, Peter Ryan (1923–2015) in a cause célèbre unleashed by an article in the September 1993 Quadrant. See Ryan’s personal summing up in his Lines of Fire: Manning Clark and Other Writings (Clarion: Binnalong, 1997). Here, between pp. 179 and 234, Ryan engaged in a clinical dismantling of Clark’s work, which he had edited for publication, saying that ‘the technical faults were his eccentricities of style, his readiness to replace reasonable explanations with gnomic pronouncements, his tendency to let the narrative lift itself onto a level exalted beyond the requirement of common sense, and above all his unreliability with mere facts’ (p. 195). See also Doug Munro, History Wars: The Peter Ryan–Manning Clark Controversy (Canberra: ANU Press, 2021).
5 Clark, Quest, pp. 92-93.
6 I owe this term to my German mentor Professor Walter-Peter Fuchs at the University of Erlangen in 1963–65. Fuchs was at pains to show how Prussia-Germany had been ideologically influenced by its nationalist historians during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries when they shaped the anti-liberal and anti-democratic mentality of generations of students by extolling the virtues of authoritarianism and militarism as characteristically German. Thereby they had laid the foundations of a nation destined to expand by force of arms.
7 Clark’s lecture, ‘The Quest for an Australian Identity’ was published subsequently by the University of Queensland Press, St Lucia in 1980.
8 See T.P. Boland, James Duhig (St Lucia: University of Queensland Press, 1986), p. 367.
9 See n. 3 above.
10 Remarkably, this attitude did not prevent Clark from accepting an honour from the Queen during her state visit of 1975. See Mark McKenna, An Eye for Eternity: The Life of Manning Clark (Carlton, Vic.: Melbourne University Press, 2011), p. 611.
11 Of Lebanese-Christian and Scottish-Episcopalian extraction.
12 Published as a pamphlet by the University of Queensland Press, St Lucia, 1980.
13 Nicholas Shehadie (1926–2018) was born in Coogee, Sydney, the son of the Sydney-based Syrian Orthodox priest, and husband of Dr Marie Bashir (born 1931) also of Lebanese extraction. His state funeral was held at Sydney’s ancient colonial built Anglo-Catholic church of St James’, King Steet on 21 February 2018, presided over by the then Archbishop of Sydney Glenn Davies.
14 Illustrative of the nostalgia of the first British settlers are such names derived from the British Isles. The river, which is the border line between the then colonies of New South Wales and Queensland, is named ‘The Tweed’.
15 Patrick O’Farrell, ‘Obituary for Manning Clark’, Australian Book Review 132 (July 1991). O’Farrell was a contemporary of Clark’s, teaching at the University of New South Wales, Sydney and a doughty champion of Irish history and the Roman Catholic church in Australia. See also Ross McKibbin, ‘Cursing and Breast-Beating’, London Review of Books 54.4 (23 February 2012). This is a review of McKenna’s biography of Clark, An Eye for Eternity.
16 Clark had concluded after conversations with prominent conservative Roman Catholic personalities such as the poet James McAuley that there were only two versions of Christianity that preserved the true image of Christ, namely Romanism and Eastern Orthodoxy. So much for the Anglo-Catholic ‘Three branch theory’ of Catholicism. See McKenna, An Eye for Eternity, p. 412. To illustrate this aspect of Clark’s literary style, the following examples are taken from his Brisbane lecture ‘The Quest for an Australian Identity’: ‘majesty, dominion power’ (p. 9), ‘take down the mighty from their seat and sending the rich empty away’(p. 15), ‘an outward and visible sign…’ (p. 16) and ‘inward, spiritual grace’ (p. 19). Suffice it to say such allusions abound in all of Clark’s prose.
17 Personal communication from the late Bishop Bruce Wilson (1942–2021) when he was Director of St Mark’s National Theological Centre in Canberra, 1984–89.
18 Eugene Kamenka, ‘Australia Made Me … But which Australia Is Mine?’, The John Curtin Memorial Lecture, held at the Australian National University, 16 July 1993, p. 13.
19 Brian Fletcher, An English Church on Australian Soil: Anglicanism, Australian Society and the English Connection since 1788 (Canberra: Barton Books, 2015). See also his previous articles: ‘Anglicanism and Nationalism in Australia 1901–1962’, Journal of Religious History 23 (1999), pp. 215-33; ‘Anglicanism and National Identity in Australia since 1962’, Journal of Religious History 25, (2001), pp. 324-45. Professor Fletcher’s research negates essentially everything that Clark’s work has asserted about the Church of England in Australia. Neither does Fletcher’s work merit a place in the index to Mark McKenna’s monumental biography of Clark.
20 Attention is drawn to the ‘Prayer for all Conditions of men…’, No. 31 of ‘Occasional Prayers’ in the Book of Common Prayer.
21 Obviously not all Australians everywhere show toleration towards immigrants. The studies on all aspects of this subject are legion, but see Abe W. Ata, Cultural Pluralism: Ethnocentricity and Interethnic Relationships (Fitzroy: Catholic-Italian Research Centre, 1986).
22 Shaw’s contributions are: ‘A Counter Revolution in Australian Historiography?’ in John A. Moses (ed.), Historical Disciplines and Culture in Australasia: An Assessment (St Lucia: University of Queensland Press, 1979), pp. 101-18; ‘Australian Sentimental Humanism: A Reading of Manning Clark’s Autobiography’, Colloquium 24.2 (1992), pp. 82-93; ‘A Sentimental Humanist’, in Carl Bridge (ed.), Manning Clark: Essays on his Place in History (Carlton, Vic.: Melbourne University Press, 1994), pp. 30-44. These path-breaking essays were all missed by McKenna in his assessment of Clark.
23 Shaw had written as Clark’s doctoral student a benchmark biography of Australia’s first and only Bishop of Australia namely William Grant Broughton entitled, Patriot and Prophet: William Grant Broughton 1788–1853: Colonial Statesman and Ecclesiastic (Carlton, Vic.: Melbourne University Press, 1978).
24 Shaw, ‘A Sentimental Humanist?’
25 McKenna, An Eye for Eternity, p. 648.
26 Nowhere is Clark’s ‘fog’ better illustrated than in McKenna’s report that Clark asked his friend and former student and now Roman Catholic priest to celebrate masses for him and give him communion. According to Sheehan, Clark always brought his Book of Common Prayer with him. He was accompanied by Dymphna, but she abstained from receiving the sacrament. And Clark confided to Sheehan that Anglicanism could never be enough for him. Interestingly, Fr Sheehan himself became a ‘Canterbury pilgrim’, having married and continued his priesthood in the Anglican Church. See, McKenna, An Eye for Eternity, pp. 659-61, passim.
27 Clark, Quest, p. 135.
28 Cf. Shaw, ‘Australian Sentimental Humanism’, p. 83. Note that already on the first page of his autobiography Clark confessed that since his childhood he existed in a ‘dense fog’. Indeed, like many great personages of history, who penned their ‘confessions’, Clark also endured the agony of the enveloping fog: ‘While in the fog I said many foolish things, hurt many people and hurt myself. This book [Quest for Grace] is the story of how I found my way out of the fog. It is the story of my search for wisdom and understanding.’ See Quest, p. 1.
29 Shaw, ‘Australian Sentimental Humanism’, p. 83.
30 Clark, Quest, p. 1.
31 See George P. Shaw (ed.), 1988 and All That (St Lucia: University of Queensland Press, 1988).
32 Clark, Quest, p. 199.
33 See n. 20 above.
34 Among the flagbearers of this discipline, one may name the outstanding works of John Polkinghorne (1930–2021). See Thomas Jay Oord (ed.), The Polkinghorne Reader: Science, Faith and the Search for Meaning (London: SPCK, 2010). Some leading Anglican theologians whom Clark could have consulted but chose not to in his day were John Macquarrie, Principles of Christian Theology (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1966); E.L. Mascall, Christian Theology and Natural Science (London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1956); Alec Vidler, A Plain Man’s Guide to Christianity: Essays on Liberal Catholicism (1936). Neither did Clark seem ever to have registered the pioneering works of the champion of Christian Socialism, the Reverend F.D. Maurice. All the above named were scholars of prodigious productivity.
35 See Emmanuel Amand de Mandieta, Rome and Canterbury: A Biblical and Free Catholicism (London: Herbert Jenkins, 1962). My personal experience of ‘Canterbury pilgrims’ is quite extensive, having met many, both priests and laity at such prominent Anglo-Catholic centres as Christ Church St Laurence, Railway Square, Sydney; St James’, King Street, Sydney; All Saints Church, Wickham Terrace, Brisbane and St Peter’s Eastern Hill, Melbourne. I owe the phrase ‘broad and pneumatic bosom of the C of E’ to my English lecturer at the University of Queensland, Mr Cecil Hadgraft. He used it referring to the quirkish English poet and painter, William Blake in classes during 1957.
36 The literature on intra-church collaboration is extensive. One can point, for example, to the work of the International Bonhoeffer Society that unites Christians of all denominations, to the ongoing work of the Anglican-Roman Catholic International Commission, and many other ecumenical organizations. For the theological implications see, especially, Hans Küng, Theology for the Third Millennium: An Ecumenical View (trans. Peter Heinegg; New York: Doubleday, 1988); Hans Küng et al., Christentum und Weltreligionen (Munich: Piper Verlag, 1984); Hans Küng, Theologie im Aufbruch - Eine ökumenische Grundlegung (Munich: Piper, 1987). Note: Although these texts by Küng were written some decades ago, they are still benchmarks in the ongoing reconciliatory collaboration among the divided churches.
37 Clark, Quest, p. 221.
38 Shaw, ‘Australian Sentimental Humanism’, p. 92.
39 Shaw, ‘Australian Sentimental Humanism’, p. 92.
40 John Moses, ‘The Fallacy of Presentism in Australian History: A Cautionary Tale’, Honest History (28 August 2016), pp. 1-13.
41 One of the less endearing characteristics of the Australian intelligentsia is to claim the right to criticize anything one may personally dislike. In short, they will trumpet their opinions no matter how unqualified they are to do so. In our egalitarian democracy everyone feels entitled to ‘have a go’ at anything of which they for some reason disapprove, no matter how trivial that perceived flaw may be. Rigorous thinking and painstakingly won scholarship are scant commodities in broad sections of the Australian academic landscape, an observation made after half a century as a continuously productive academic historian.
42 Atkinson’s magnum opus is a work in three volumes, The Europeans in Australia (Sydney: UNSW Press, 2014). He, too, has subjected Clark to some gentle criticism deftly avoiding any suggestion of polemic, though reading between the lines reveals a penetrating and rigorous taking-to-task. See his chapter, ‘A Great Historian?’ in Bridge, Manning Clark, pp. 123-35. On p. 122 by way of introduction, Atkinson writes: ‘I have no doubt that he [Clark] was a great historian, but it is not so easy to work out the elements of his greatness, taking into account especially of the serious charges which are often laid against his scholarship.’ One may comment that that is a fine example of Anglican moderation in all things.
43 It may not be forgotten that the Roman Archdiocese of Sydney sponsored a Sacred Heart priest named Fr Leslie Rumble to broadcast a weekly Sunday evening program on their radio station 2SM called Dr Rumble’s Radio Replies. In it Rumble fielded questions about Roman Catholicism from mostly irate Protestant enquirers. Rumble was cited for many years as a renowned ‘Catholic Apologist’, even in the USA where his project was sponsored in pamphlet form by Archbishop Fulton Sheen of New York. Rumble’s program lasted from 1928 until 1968 and achieved considerable resonance throughout the country. See the entry in the Australian Dictionary of Biography.
44 Cf. Brian Douglas, The Anglican Eucharist in Australia (Leiden: Brill, 2021). Note, too, that the late Bishop Stephen Sykes, criticized ‘Anglican intellectual laziness’ in The Integrity of Anglicanism (London: Mowbray, 1978).
45 McKenna, An Eye for Eternity, pp. 192-93.
46 Luther’s injunction ‘to sin boldly’ comes from a letter he wrote on 1 August 1521 to Philipp Melanchthon while hiding at the Wartburg disguised as Junker Jörg. Pecca fortiter sin boldly but believe more boldly in Christ. The full text is: ‘Wenn du ein echter Prediger der Gnade bist, so verkündge keine fingierte, sondern die echte Gnade. Gott macht nur echte Sünder selig. Sei immerhin ein Sünder und sündige, aber glaube noch tapfere, auch wenn du ein ganz tapferer Sünder bist’ [English: ‘If you want to be a genuine preacher of grace proclaim no feigned but rather genuine grace. God only saves the genuine sinner. So be a sinner and sin but believe more boldly even if you are a very bold sinner.’] Cited after Walter von Löwenich, Martin Luther: Der Mann und das Werk (Munich: List Verlag, 1982), p. 193.
47 Rome has in the meantime revised its views on Luther as the joint statement made at Augsburg on 23 February 1980 illustrates. See All under One Christ: Roman Catholic/Lutheran Joint Commission Statement on the Augsburg Confession. Source: Lutheran World Information 12/80.
48 Shaw, ‘A Counter Revolution in Australian Historiography’, p. 107.
49 From Heine’s famous poem cycle Dichterliebe (‘Poet’s Life and Love’) set to music by Robert Schumann. The English translation of the fifteenth song in the cycle is entitled ‘The Fairy Tales of Childhood’ in the German original, Aus alten Märchen from which is taken the quote, zerfliesst wie eitel Schaum, the concluding line. Clark could have been familiar with it since he was both a pianist and knew some German.
50 Just as Lutheranism had moulded the German national character.
51 Treitschke (1834–96) notoriously wrote Prusso-German history by imposing on it a template fashioned from his political ambitions, namely to promote the expansion of a Prussianized (read: militarized) Germany over Europe and especially the British Empire. In short, he wrote with the very opposite objective of Leopold von Ranke (1795–1886) whose declared aim was simply to show how it actually was (wie es eigentlich gewesen) as objectively as possible. Treitschke was out to use history as a political weapon employed to promote his wish dream. To that extent Manning Clark could be said to have attained a similar historiographic-pedagogic importance for Australians as Treitschke in his day had for Germany.