The Politics of the Pew: Faith, Liberty, and Authority in a Sydney Church in 1828

Abstract

This article examines the political implications of the dispute between E. S. Hall and Archdeacon Scott over a pew in St James' Church in the late 1820s. Beyond the legal questions it raised about the established status of the Church of England in New South Wales, Hall's public protest, conducted every Sunday during the largest regular social gathering in Sydney, was a self-conscious performance of his wider critique of colonial authority. This episode reveals the symbolic importance of church spaces and the role of religious ideas about authority and freedom in colonial political debate.