DO YOU WANT RELIGION WITH THAT? WELFARE HISTORY IN A SECULAR AGE

Most welfare agencies in Australia have their origins in faith-based organisations, yet academic historians have struggled to find an analytical framework for dealing with issues of belief. Internally-commissioned histories all too often descend into hagiography. Yet the founders and early workers within these organiz-ations had no difficulty in reconciling word and deed. Believing themselves to be on a mission from a god who actively intervened in individual lives, they saw no need to interrogate the nature or meaning of belief. Drawing on a range of Australian institutional histories this article examines some of the theoretical im-plications of trying to encompass the metaphysical in a secular historiography. This article has been peer-reviewed. Selina Sutherland, Victoria’s most prominent child rescuer, always argued that she had been called by God to undertake the work. Ill and unemployed, after falling out with her previous employers at the Wellington hospital, she embarked on a sea voyage to recover her spirits. However the ship was wrecked on the Victorian coast and, ‘cast as a waif upon our shores’, she made her way to Melbourne, where, while walking on Princes Bridge, she encountered some ragged street children who appealed to her for help. Also strolling on the bridge on the same day was Mrs Maria Armour, a widow with the means to fund the work that Miss Sutherland wa