Church Act 1836

The statue of Sir Richard Bourke outside the State Library of New South Wales notes in its inscription that he "established religious equality on a just and firm basis".[1]

The Church Act, also known as the Church Building Act, was a 1836 law in the Colony of New South Wales. It was drafted by John Plunkett and enacted by the Governor, Sir Richard Bourke.[2] It was subtitled "An Act to promote the building of Churches and Chapels and to provide for the maintenance of Ministers of Religion in New South Wales."[3]

The Act established equitable funding for Church of England, Church of Scotland, and Roman Catholic churches. It thus led to the effective disestablishment of the Church of England.[4][5] Bourke later extended the provisions of the Act to Methodist and Baptist churches. However, the law did not extend to Jews and other non-Christian religions, and so actually introduced a form of discrimination, by precluding government assistance for building synagogues and other non-Christian houses of worship. It took until August 1854 to extend government assistance to the Jewish community, an object advocated in the Legislative Council by William Wentworth and George Nichols.[6][7]

References

  1. ↑ "Sir Richard Bourke". Monuments Australia. Retrieved 20 October 2023.
  2. ↑ Suttor, T. L. (1967). "Plunkett, John Hubert (1802–1869)". Australian Dictionary of Biography. Vol. 2. National Centre of Biography, Australian National University. ISBN 978-0-522-84459-7. ISSN 1833-7538. OCLC 70677943. Retrieved 15 September 2020.
  3. ↑ Oliver, Alexander (1879). A Collection of the Statutes of Practical Utility, Colonial and Imperial, in Force in New South Wales. p. 160. Retrieved 20 October 2023.
  4. ↑ "Bourke Church Act". Defining Moments. National Museum of Australia. Retrieved 20 October 2023.
  5. ↑ Ngui, Samantha (2008). "Freedom to worship: frameworks for the realisation of religious minority rights". University of New South Wales. p. 40. Retrieved 20 October 2023.
  6. ↑ Bohleke, Konrad (April 2022). "3.2.1 The Church Act of New South Wales". The New South Wales Council of Christians and Jews 1942-1946: Australia’s First Formal Channel for Interfaith Dialogue (A thesis submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY) (PDF). Department of Hebrew, Biblical and Jewish Studies, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, The University of Sydney. pp. 43–56.
  7. ↑ "The Church Act, 1836". State Library of New South Wales. Retrieved 20 October 2023.

Further reading

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