Pacific Studies
Abstract
This study compares the Anglican diocese of Carpentaria in northeastern Australia with its Anglican neighbor the diocese of New Guinea. While New Guinea called for sacrifice on a heroic scale as befitted a mission among pure “pagans,” Carpentaria was intended primarily as a church for Europeans. However, the withdrawal of thousands of settlers from the Gulf of Carpentaria country from 1910 to 1942 in the wake of recurrent cyclones, economic depression, and drought led to wholesale white depopulation. This depopulation, added to the Anglicans’ acceptance of the London Missionary Society’s sphere in the Torres Strait Islands, left Carpentaria overwhelmingly Islander and Aboriginal in character. Papua New Guinea headed for independence in state and church from the 1960s, but Carpentaria remained largely a missionary diocese, part of whose populations it managed for half a century on threadbare mission stations, with the empty-handed encouragement of the Queensland government.
Recommended Citation
Wetherell, David
(1998)
"THE ANGLICANS IN NEW GUINEA AND THE TORRES STRAIT ISLANDS,"
Pacific Studies: Vol. 21:
No.
3, Article 2.
Available at:
https://digitalcollections.byuh.edu/pacific-studies-journal/vol21/iss3/2
Included in
History of the Pacific Islands Commons, Missions and World Christianity Commons, Race, Ethnicity and Post-Colonial Studies Commons, Social and Cultural Anthropology Commons, Sociology Commons