ABSTRACT
Chapter 1 provides the first portrait of an evangelical responding to the shocks of the 1960s. Fred Nile (born 1934) was the founding leader of the Christian Democratic Party and, at 2018, still held the seat in the NSW (New South Wales) Legislative Council he won in 1981 and still courted regular attention in public debates about the religious character of the nation. Nile’s crusading expression of ‘Christian citizenship’ provoked a range of responses, from enthusiasm to derision, from fellow Christians as much as secular observers. To understand its origins, this chapter examines Nile’s involvement in the once-flourishing but now almost non-existent international evangelical youth movement Christian Endeavour, which held its quadrennial World’s Convention in Sydney in 1962. Nile’s schooling in the movement, his leadership of it, and his transition from it into parliamentary politics centred on a particular conception of the nation which was radically challenged by moral libertarianism. His muscular response to the ‘permissive society’, ‘standing up to be counted’ for the ‘silent majority’ through leadership of the Australian Festival of Light and the Call to Australia Party into the 1970s and 1980s, evinced a deep sense of responsibility for a nation Nile saw under threat.
