ABSTRACT
The effect of fundamentalism was to give to the Bible the same sort of authority, based on infallibility, which the Roman Catholic Church had declared for the Pope in 1870. One reason why biblical fundamentalism flourished in Sydney was that a form of it had been planted here from the beginning. The best-known product of biblical fundamentalism, still very much current as a matter of legal, educational and sociological concern, is the doctrine of creationism, which is opposed to the theory of evolution as an account of the way species came into existence. Both fundamentalism and sexism are distortions; it is for our own generation of reformers to point this out. The excesses of sexual experimentation of the sixties led to increasing interest in and concentration on abnormalities, and the public media were the places where the interest was expressed.
