Most of us would hate to be confronted with the words we wrote as a 21-year-old. But in the case of Scott Morrison one imagines he might be pleased with the young religious marketer he would see in his university thesis. As it turns out, Morrison PM has not much changed.
Inq has tracked down Morrison’s thesis, which he wrote for his Bachelor of Science honours degree at the University of NSW in 1989. It is housed at the University of Manchester in a specialist library dedicated to writings on the Christian Brethren Assemblies, also known as the Plymouth Brethren.
We revealed its existence a few weeks ago but were unable to see it for ourselves until Manchester Library came out of lockdown with the rest of the UK.
So, what does the 154-page thesis reveal of the younger Morrison?
Possibly the most telling thing of all is that a 21-year-old might devote months of his life digging deep into a highly conservative religious movement, known primarily for its strict male-dominated hierarchy and its unwillingness to engage openly with the outside world. For example, the Exclusive Brethren have tight rules restricting marriage to other Brethren and limiting the work Brethren women can do. The other variant, the Open Brethren, are less isolationist but they are socially conservative. They also believe in evangelising their religion. As a teenager Morrison had attended the Brethren church before moving to the local Baptist church.
Morrison’s thesis is billed as a “micro approach” to the relationship between religion and society, using an examination of the Christian Brethren Assemblies of Sydney as the example. To this Morrison applies both “parametric (principal components analysis) and non-parametric (Spearman’s correlation and chi-square) statistical procedures”. So far so good in terms of applying a scientific approach to his chosen field of economic geography.
But at a certain point early in the thesis, Morrison’s scientific analysis veers into something much more akin to a marketing manifesto for a church struggling to retain its numbers. The scientific “micro-approach” suddenly takes on the shape of a consultant’s strategic advice.
Morrison, the keen-as-mustard young Christian student, has plenty of ideas about how the church can increase its influence in society and lift its “growth performance”.
The assemblies, he finds, are in a period of transition. They should not be “overconfident” of any gains they might make because they had actually “experienced a net loss to other denominations”.
Morrison’s demographic analysis showed that the brethren assemblies in Sydney had “failed to relate” to large sections of the metropolitan community, particularly “those employed in blue-collar occupations, the unemployed, those without tertiary qualifications and those born overseas”. Here, with numbers charting the demographic ebb and flow, was a political campaign strategist in the making.
What to do? Go for growth
Morrison’s view was that assemblies should “maintain the standard and emphasis placed upon Bible teaching” in their assemblies but that they “must realise” that this alone “will not bring about growth” — “visitation” and “counselling” were also important.
He warned that the impression of the church as “a white-collar institution” would only become further entrenched.
Morrison’s primary prescription was to go for growth by engaging in more “bridge-building” activities into the community.
Morrison as the young evangelist commends the work of influential American Christian Jim Petersen, in particular his book Evangelism For Our Generation, which documented “a style of evangelism which is receiving an increasing amount of attention around the world today”.
(Petersen has had decades working with those he calls “the unchurched”, passing on the secrets of how to develop relationships with “the unreached”, model the Christian message and “present the Bible’s claims in a non-threatening manner”.)
Petersen’s approach included “church planting”, which was already being done in Sydney’s western suburbs and in the suburbs surrounding Brisbane by assembly “church planting” workers.
Critically, though, it also involved church members taking up an active role in the community in activities such as “P&C associations, neighbourhood watch, sporting clubs, local interest groups and other such community-based organisations and activities”.
“The idea of this approach is to restore the interpersonal component to evangelism. It has been described as ‘bringing the church to the people’ whereas past approaches have involved bringing people to the church. It attempts to personalise what has often been seen by the community as an abstract or irrelevant institution,” Morrison concluded.
This would lead to “church growth, particularly through conversion”.
In Morrison’s thesis are the seeds of the politician to come. Science, in the form of demographic data, is used to build a strategy to build support. Politics? Religion? Heck, what’s the difference when it comes to getting the numbers.
But the crucial insight is perhaps to do with a Morrison characteristic on show in his recent address to the Australian Christian Churches National Conference: his belief in meshing church and community. Indeed, more than 30 years on, the conservative Christian Brethren remained an exemplar for Morrison as PM. This is what he told his Pentecostal audience:
“At every church people say to me, ‘what church do you go to?’, I say ‘Horizon Church, used to be known as Shirelive Church’. You know other churches, there are Baptist churches, there are Brethren churches, I’ve always been at a community church. That’s where I want to be, and a church that believes in community and creates community. And the essence of community is each individual understanding that they’re valued, that they’re unique. That they can respect one another. That they can contribute to one another.”
And as Jenny Morrison received the PM’s acknowledgement at the conference for her support role, so it was in 1989. Jenny Warren, Morrison’s soon-to-be wife, is acknowledged for giving her “total support throughout the project” assisting primarily “in the undertaking of surveys”.
And to show how little changes in Morrison’s world of faith and family, he also acknowledged the help of his mother Marion and father John — Marion for typing his thesis and John for providing the computer and software.
Inq was also curious to know what Morrison’s supervisor Professor Ian Burnley made of a bachelor of science honours thesis that ended up with the character of a marketing strategy for a conservative Christian group. Burnley, who has a long list of publications on migration patterns in Australia, has retired. We left messages with his last known academic address at the UNSW’s City Futures Research Centre but we’ve had no response.
What’s clear, however, is Morrison ultimately took his own advice, moving from the Brethren church to the Baptist church and finally landing with the Pentecostal church, run by people very aware of the imperative to “bring the church to the people”.
What I find interesting, is how much of the menial tasks are done by people other than Morrison: typing, computing, surveys, mailing questionnaires, etc. Which probably continues to this day; in that, he’s somebody who loves making announcements, but not so keen on doing the work that’s necessary, to turn those announcements into reality.
I seem to remember doing the grunt work for most of my honours thesis; it was typed up and bound for me, but I did everything else. It was the late 70s.
It’s so much easier nowadays – you just submit a pdf. However, using computers for the whole thing makes grappling with constant distractions a dominant part of thesis writing. It’s sort of easier, I guess. I never did it the old way, but I guess I could have found plenty of inspiration to procrastinate in the analog world too :-s
My partner’s work for his specialty in medicine was also typed and then bound.
It formed part of the basis for his viva, a type of blood sport, whereby a senior fellow of the college chose one of your case studies and questioned you about your decision making at length.
Pass or fail and you only got 2 goes at it, a year apart. He passed.
It seems a VERY strange topic for a BSc thesis.
It all depends in which Faculty the Dept of Economic Geography, or ordinary Geography, sat at that time.
If he was doing theology, that would be about right, but realistically it doesn’t seem to fit anywhere, square peg in a round hole type of situation going on here…
It lacks academic or real research credibility, I did my Bsc in counselling, hated research, but Scotty’s thesis is very should we say basic, lacking in credibility…
What a find! Just shows what a good bit of digging can turn up. Australian uni thesis from 1989 tucked away in Manchester library! – that’s hilarious – I couldn’t figure out the connection between someone with a science degree (with honours, moreover) and Morrison’s particular brand of church stuff. Immediately phoned a friend who did honours thesis in history on Brethen in Tas. They can’t wait to read this Crikey article! And to tell a few others. Thank you David Hardaker.
Actually, on second thoughts, importantly, who were the markers of the thesis? Were they scientists? or were they social/religious studies people? The title of the thesis has nothing to do with science and a science degree. Seeing that an honours degree involves learning to research, no doubt people with real actual science degrees with honours, ie not a religious-social degree, would not be very impressed. A bit like Greg Hunt’s honours degree being a joint effort with a mate, not an individual piece of work, meaning he only did half the work that other people did to get their honours degree.
I thought the same, not only did he not do his own research/surveys he didn’t even type it into the computer his father provided. Plus there’s mention of only one book, unless there are more in the resources and/or ackowledgements apart from his cheering squad.
When you’re a christian, you only need to cite one book! 😀
This is terrible, Voltaire will be rolling in his grave.
Not a science degree? I think that was settled when he chose Geography as his major.
Geographic information science is pretty technical. Using census data to understand the spatial distribution of worshippers is a valid scientific analysis. Surveying worshippers to understand context is also OK. However, for an Honours thesis, one expects the emphasis to be on appropriate methodologies rather than going overboard with interpretation. There is no doubt in my mind there is significant bias in the interpretation. A scientist should try to view things very objectively. I am amazed at how little work he did himself. I worked my butt off to do my honours thesis.
I agree. I have a BSc (hons) and I can’t see how this nonsense could count as science. However, an old mate of mine has a BSc in economics – which seems to me only marginally different from religion
I have a BSc in sociolinguistics. It’s just an arbitrary units/points thing at uni – enrolling in a particular faculty doesn’t necessarily mean you’re exclusively (no pun intended!) focused on the core academic interests of that faculty.
I have a graduate Diploma in Medical Ultrasound from QUT. This is a physics based post graduate course which runs for 18 months.
I sincerely dispute that this drivel served up by scottie from marketing could or should be considered to be from the Science faculty, at all.
Yes, both are intangible and inexact “sciences” relying on hypotheses.
As someone who grew up in the Exclusive Brethren and left because as a woman, I was not permitted to go to University, I find the ideas in this part of his thesis would be much more at home with the Open Brethren. The Exclusives did not want to mix with the ‘world’ and believed they had to be totally separate. Certainly wouldn’t have anything to do with P & Cs, sporting clubs or community groups in the 1960s, although I believe they have moved in to some forms of community service more recently. But any ‘Exclusive brethren’ would have been shocked at his thesis claims.
Working out in SW Qld., friends of ours had been part of the Brethren and I remember them saying that women HAD to wear head covering to meetings and were not able to have input. It all reminds me of the Catholic Church back in the 50s and 60s. In Spain, long sleeves HAD to be worn to Mass, and there was no way you could get changed on the beach, a beach hut had to be used. It didn’t matter what size cozzie you emerged in, so long as you changed off the beach. No women had any part to play at Mass until the late 70s. And I daresay the floodgates may open on that subject!
Right from the time we started school, we were obliged to wear either a headscarf or a ribbon in our hair to show we accepted the ‘headship’ of men. For meetings (which occurred 3 times on Sundays, plus Monday, Wednesday and Thursday nights, plus all day Saturday once/month), girls and women had to cover the whole head with a hat. We were also not allowed to ever wear shorts or jeans or any kind of long pants as such garments were considered to be ‘male attire’. And of course, no picture theatres, radio or TV, and also no churches (seen as places of idolatry in comparison with the plain halls in which the Brethren met). It was good to escape!
To me it indicates that someone so immersed in spreading religious beliefs is infact trying to use his pulpit for exactly this.
Pentecostal Scott is right on the verge of proselytizing from the PM’s office….unfit for secular leadership, he should take up a full time financial position in his church.
Don’t worry, that’s probably already lined up for when he leaves politics – along with well remunerated board seats in the other big corporations he’s done favors for
Haha, and send them to the poor house. What a great idea!