The Bible in Australia: A cultural history

(Paperback, updated edition)

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WINNER of the Nonfiction Award 2020 Adelaide Festival Awards for Literature

WINNER of the 2019 NSW Premier's History Award: Australian History Prize

WINNER of the 2019 Prime Minister's Australian History Prize

WINNER of the 2019 CHASS Australia Book Prize

Australian Christian Book of the Year in 2018

Koby Abberton emerges like a shark on to the sand at Maroubra Beach. Tattooed from shoulder to shoulder, his body bares letters like teeth: 'My brothers keeper'.

In this multi-award-winning history of the Bible in Australia, historian Meredith Lake gets under the skin of a text that's been wrestled with, preached and tattooed, and believed to be everything from a resented imposition to the very Word of God.

A must-read for non-believers and believers alike, The Bible in Australia, now with a new preface, explores how in the hands of Bible-bashers, immigrants, suffragists, evangelists, unionists, writers, artists and Indigenous Australians, the Good Book has played a defining and contested role in this country.

'From the opening words about Bra Boy tattoos,this book had me gripped. It breathes colour, poetry and life into our understanding of the Bible in Australia. A vital, much-needed addition to our understanding of faith in our country.' Julia Baird

'A book of remarkable originality. Formidably researched yet carrying its scholarship with an enviable lightness of touch, this is a ground-breaking cultural and social history.' Winner of the 2019 NSW Premier's History Award: Australian History Prize

'Vivid story-telling and impossible to put down' Mark McKenna

'An endlessly fascinating bookLake brings a generosity of both mind and spirit to this vast story.' Michael McGirr,Sydney Morning Herald

Author Bio

Meredith Lake is a historian, broadcaster and award-winning writer, with a PhD from the University of Sydney. She is the host of Soul Search on ABC Radio National and her other books include The Bible Down Under and Faith in Action: Hammond Care. She is an Honorary Associate of the Department of History, Sydney University.