Australian Religious Thought

By Wayne Hudson

 ‘[Stuart] McIntyre challenged Hudson 'to make better sense of how the patterns in Australia compared with those in other settler societies'. As a first step, Hudson has 'brought together a substantial body of research and interpreted some of it in innovative ways'. For this, we contributors to Australian religious thought are in his debt, whether or not we count ourselves as religious.’ — Frank Brennan, Eureka Street

'Learned and precise, this book shows what’s wrong with the old boundary between secular and sacred in Australia. The implications for rethinking our past, present and future are enormous.' — Alan Atkinson

'Here, for the first time, the history of Australian religious thought receives the kind of sophisticated treatment that it richly deserves, in the hands of an author of phenomenal learning and intellectual range. It will be much harder in the future for anyone blithely to call Australia a secular society and leave it at that. Wayne Hudson is steeped in the history and philosophy of the world's religions and with assurance and zest, he tells the story of a previously underestimated religious dimension of Australian cultural and intellectual history.' — Frank Bongiorno

‘Hudson’s book is a welcome and learned contribution on an important topic for the future of Australia.’ — Paul Oslington, Australian Pentacostal Studies

‘This is not a big book in terms of pages; but in other terms, this is a huge book ... It doesn’t just touch on fields as various as philosophy, history, cultural criticism, theology, art and literature; it offers an incisive and integrated treatment of them all … I know of nothing remotely like it.’ — Mark Coleridge, Archbishop of Brisbane, Australasian Catholic Record

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