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'.
Wayne Hudson works across the fields of philosophy, history, politics and religion. He is an authority on the German Jewish philosopher Ernst Bloch and a leading historian of English deism. He has published eighteen books and is an Adjunct Professor at Charles Sturt University and the University of Tasmania.
"Wayne Hudsons Australian Religious Thought brings together much of this scholarship, further challenging the default national imaginary in an engaging and learned study. It is a work of both synthesis and original argument which showcases the richness and diversity of religious thought in Australia and its far from insignificant role in shaping institutions and civic life." - Ian Tregenza, Australian Journal of Politics and History: Vol. 62, Number 3, 2016.
Learned and precise, this book shows what's wrong with the old boundary between secular and sacred in Australia. The implications for rethinking our past, present and future are enormous. -- Alan Atkinson
Here, for the first time, the history of Australian religious thought receives the kind of sophisticated treatment that it richly deserves, in the hands of an author of phenomenal learning and intellectual range. It will be much harder in the future for anyone blithely to call Australia a secular society and leave it at that. Wayne Hudson is steeped in the history and philosophy of the world's religions and with assurance and zest, he tells the story of a previously underestimated religious dimension of Australian cultural and intellectual history. -- Frank Bongiorno
[Stuart] MacIntyre challenged Hudson 'to make better sense of how the patterns in Australia compared with those in other settler societies'. As a first step, Hudson has 'brought together a substantial body of research and interpreted some of it in innovative ways'. For this, we contributors to Australian religious thought are in his debt, whether or not we count ourselves as religious. -- Frank Brennan -- Eureka Street
Hudson's book is a welcome and learned contribution on an important topic for the future of Australia. -- Paul Oslington -- Australian Pentacostal Studies
