Hugh Chilton: Invitation to online Book Launch
Members and Colleagues
You are warmly invited to join the online book launch of:
Evangelicals and the End of Christendom: Religion, Australia and the Crises of the 1960s (Routledge, 2020)
by Hugh Chilton
To be launched by Dr Michael Spence AC, Vice-Chancellor and Principal, The University of Sydney
Date: Friday 27 November 2020
Time: 5:30-6:30pm AEDT
RSVP: tiny.cc/chiltonbook
About the book
In the turbulent 1960s, two foundations of the Western world rapidly and unexpectedly collapsed.
‘Christendom’, marked by the dominance of discursive Christianity in public culture, and ‘Greater Britain’, the powerful sentimental and strategic union of Britain and its settler societies, disappeared from the collective mental map with startling speed.
Australians, along with Britons the world over, stopped thinking of themselves as members of a ‘Christian nation’. What did this mean for evangelical Christians, deeply committed to the idea of Christendom? And how did a diverse cast of evangelical leaders – from Fred Nile and the religious right to the counter-culture hippies – respond?
This groundbreaking book charts that response across the two decades between Billy Graham’s triumphant first visit in 1959 and his underwhelming return in 1979. It uncovers the diverse, creative and surprising relationship between evangelical Christianity and Australian culture, and explores what this means for navigating religion in public life today.
Praise for Evangelicals and the End of Christendom
‘a treasure’ (Prof Mark Noll)
‘an innovative vision of the period that made all our lives’ (Prof Mark Hutchinson)
Read more about Evangelicals and the End of Christendom at Routledge here.
Hugh Chilton, PhD (Sydney) is a Conjoint Lecturer in the Faculty of Education and Arts at the University of Newcastle, Australia, Director of Research and Professional Learning at The Scots College, Sydney, and Vice-President of the Evangelical History Association. Email: [email protected]