ABSTRACT
The conclusion returns to the central questions of this book: what happened to the idea of ‘Christendom’, or ‘Christian Australia’, so long and widely held, and so quickly abandoned? How did evangelical Christian leaders respond to its demise? The answers are three-fold. First, the period between Billy Graham’s first Australian crusade in 1959 and his last in 1979 marked a profound and unexpected shift in the way Australians conceived of their national identity, not least because of the collapse of the idea of civic Protestantism and the lost social imaginary of Greater Britain. The causes were more banal than sensational, and often invoked by Church leaders themselves, seeking to express a more authentic and culturally relevant faith. This shift presented particular challenges for evangelicals, whose message of conversion had largely been directed at a civic Protestant form of nominal Christianity. Second, far from being out of touch, evangelical leaders were deeply aware of this changed environment in Australia and around the world. They sought to respond as best they could to it, albeit in diverse and sometimes contradictory ways. Third, evangelicals’ struggles with the end of Christendom, rather than reflecting an innate incompatibility of evangelicalism with Australian culture, revealed the wider identity void exposed by the collapse of Greater Christian Britain. Christianity in general, and evangelicalism in particular, is an important part of the story of the long 1960s, and deserves further attention in light of continuing debates over religion and public culture in Australia and the former British World.
