Sydney University Evangelical Union

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The Sydney University Evangelical Union (abbreviated to SUEU or simply the EU) is a student led Christian group that has operated on campus since 1930. It is affiliated with the Australian Fellowship of Evangelical Students (AFES) and the International Fellowship of Evangelical Students.The EU has throughout its history maintained a vibrant relationship with St Barnabas Anglican Church in Broadway whilst retaining a strong non-denominational base. The EU is also quite unique amongst its contemporary AFES affiliates in having a student-staff partnership, in contrast to other groups (such as Campus Bible Study at the University of New South Wales) which has maintained a staff-run model. The EU has retained a high reputation throughout its history for epistemic humility, classic theology, a partnership model of ministry, and a critical indwelling of tradition[1]. The EU has been known for its on-campus missions which have attracted many students, though which have been deemed controversial in the past. In 2002 the publication by the Union of a statement during their on-campus mission, "absoluteGod", encouraging students to investigate Christianity, was signed by 22 senior academics at the university and worried many for allegedly damaging the religious and racial tolerance at the university.[2]

Many influential figures in the Australian Church and other well-known Australians have been members of the EU, including Peter Jensen, Philip Jensen, Donald Robinson, Sir Marcus Loane, Paul White, Dudley Foord, Gordon Preece, Catherine Hamlin, Barbara Thiering, Walter Newmarch, and Robert Forsyth, Tanya Costello (wife of former Treasurer Peter Costello[3]), former New South Wales and Federal politician Bruce Baird, and former Deputy Prime Minister John Anderson.

Contents

[edit] What is the EU

The EU are a group of around 600 Christian students at Sydney University. The Sydney University Evangelical Union is a registered student society of the University of Sydney. It is led by an elected student executive consisting of President, male and female vice-presidents, secretary and treasurer. They are elected annually at the September AGM. Recently, it has become common practice for Presidents to serve a two year term.

The executive meet weekly with two senior staff members from the EU Graduates Fund (the body responsible for employing staff to work in partnership with the EU). This meeting of students and staff is called the SMEAS - Special Meeting of Executive And Staff - and is, according to the standing orders of the EU:

to assess the state of the SUEU and to create and implement strategies to achieve the Objects with the approval of the General Council and with the assistance of Faculty Groups and Specialist Committees.

The EU is divided into faculty groups which each elect a male and female faculty leader at the faculty AGM. Faculty leaders and the executive meet regularly as the EU's General Council (GC). The GC is responsible for overall policy and finances of the EU as well as for key support for and cross-pollination between EU faculties. Staff-Student teams (Specialist Committees) are set up by the GC to oversee particular aspects of the EU's work, and the senior students from these teams attend GC meetings.

There are two documents that guide the EU's activities. Theologically, the EU is guided by it's Doctrinal Basis, which is a part of the constitution:

1. The divine inspiration and infallibility of Holy Scripture as originally given, and its supreme authority in all matters of faith and conduct. 2. The unity of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit in the Godhead. 3. The universal guilt and sinfulness of man since the Fall rendering man subject to God's wrath and condemnation. 4. Redemption from the guilt, penalty and power of sin, only through the sacrificial death, as our Representative and Substitute, of Jesus Christ, the Incarnate Son of God. 5. The conception of Jesus Christ by the Holy Spirit and His birth by the Virgin Mary. 6. The bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. 7. The necessity of the work of the Holy Spirit to make the death of Jesus Christ effective to individual sinners, granting each one repentance towards God and faith in Jesus Christ. 8. The indwelling and work of the Holy Spirit in the believer. 9. The expectation of the personal return of the Lord Jesus Christ.

In terms of goals and activities, the EU is guided by the Three Objects:

1. To present students with the Christian Gospel and to lead them to a personal faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. 2. To strengthen Christians in their faith and witness and to encourage them to continually submit every aspect of their life to the Lordship of Jesus Christ. 3. To ensure that Christians in the University are made aware of the nature, needs and challenge of Christian service at home and abroad.

There are many activities that the EU does. These include the "Big 4" events: a. Public Meetings - weekly bible talks held during semester on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays.
b. Small Groups - faculty based bible studies held each week of semester.
c. AnCon - an annual, five day, residential conference held in the July holidays studying a major doctrine.
d. eQuip - weekly papers and training courses held during semester on Monday afternoons.

Other events include: e. Prayer Meetings - held twice a week during semester, these are an opportunity for the whole EU to come together in prayer.
f. Campus Missions - held every two or three years, these are time of intensified evangelistic activity for the EU.
g. euFOCUS - an international student ministry.
h. O Day - an orientation day hosted by the EU for new first years a fortnight before the start of first semester.
g. Runway/O Week - a three day training conference followed by activity at the university O Week.
h. eQuipCon - a ministry development conference held in semester two.
i. Faculty weekends away.
j. God's World courses and dialogue dinners - evangelistic events.
k. Changeover - a leadership conference in late semester two for the new executive, faculty leaders and senior students.
l. Club Veg - a conference held the week after final exams that covers topical issues.
m. NTE - a conference hosted by AFES in December.
n. O3T - a short term mission trip run in the spirit of the EU's third object.

[edit] History

The Beginning Properly told, the story of the Sydney University Evangelical Union (SUEU) goes back to the Protestant Reformation in Europe in the 16th century, and indeed to the apostles of the early church and the Lord Jesus Christ himself. However, the SUEU is particularly a product of the great evangelical awakenings in Europe and North America in the 18th and 19th centuries, lead by such men as George Whitefield, the Wesley brothers and Jonathan Edwards, out of which were formed the first recognisably evangelical student societies. The Cambridge Inter-Collegiate Christian Union (CICCU) was the largest and most important of these. Formed in 1877 out an informal student movement which began almost a century earlier under the work of Charles Simeon, the CICCU was instrumental in the formation of the British Intervarsity Fellowship (IVF). And it was this group which made the decisive move in 1930 when it sent to Australia an impressive and faithful young medical graduate called Howard Guinness (below).

Striking in appearance, forceful in personality, tireless in energy and adventurous in spirit, Guinness is rightly remembered as the catalyst behind the formation of the SUEU. Having landed in Sydney early in January, as the Travelling Secretary of the British IVF, he went directly to the Katoomba Convention, where he met forty or so members of the ‘Sydney University Bible League’, envisioning them with reports of work amongst students in Great Britain and Canada, from where he had just come. This new ‘vision’ led to a 3 day retreat for prayer and addresses immediately prior to Lent term, out of which was born - on the 31th March, 1930 - the SUEU, the first group of its kind on Australian soil.

Howard Guinness spoke at the first Public Meeting of the new SUEU on April 7th. His topic was ‘Men, Women and God’, and the meeting was to function as a means of recruiting for the houseparty to be held the following weekend. The write up in the University magazine, The Sydney University Reader, summarised the message: “that the sex instinct provides temptations of no ordinary magnitude is a known fact, but powerful as are the temptations of the world and the flesh, there is yet a mightier power, that of the indwelling Christ”. What is most remarkable about this meeting, apart from the fact that it shows the issues for students never change, is that it attracted an audience of 300 men, more than 10 times the membership of the group at the time.

1930-1939 The first decade for the SUEU was a turbulent period, attended with both deflating failures and remarkable successes, reflecting the instability of an organisation as yet without a tradition or culture, as well as the creativity and flexibility that goes along with such a situation. The challenge for the group was to settle down without freezing up; to gain in maturity without losing the vitality of youth.

The first move in this direction was the Annual General Meeting held at the end of 1930, with 25 present, where a constitution for the group was passed which set out both its objects and tone. As well as endorsing the Executive and General Committee structure, the stated purpose of the union was “to stimulate personal faith and to further evangelistic work amongst students by upholding the fundamental truths of Christianity, including …”, after which followed a 9 point doctrinal statement, which the SUEU borrowed almost directly from the British IVF.

Evangelism and edification were thus the driving forces of the SUEU, and probably the former more so than the latter. Public Meetings were held each week, as well as occasional special meetings taken by prominent evangelical speakers, which sometimes became full scale missions. There were a number of these held in the early 30’s, however, it is the last mission for this decade, held in 1935, which was most dramatic, and formative, for the SUEU.

The SUEU decided to invite Rev. W. P. Nicholson, a fiery Irish evangelist, to speak at the University in 1935. Two hundred and fifty students, friends and supporters attended a prayer meeting for the mission held on the weekend prior to it, where “a vote of no confidence in the flesh was carried unanimously”. During the mission week itself, which was the first time the Union Hall had been booked every day for a week, Nicholson spoke on the Monday and Tuesday to “noisy but orderly” audiences. However, on Tuesday night, the mission report records, “Ian Holt, the President, was given a message from God to speak at the meeting the next day”, and in fact on Wednesday, Nicholson was taken ill. “God directed us not to call in another Missioner, but to carry on ourselves”, and so Holt and Harry Doran, a former President, spoke on Wednesday, Lindsay Grant, the recently resigned Travelling Secretary for the Evangelical Unions and Crusader Unions of Australia and Tasmania, spoke on Thursday, and Marcus Loane spoke at the final meeting. The Wednesday meeting was “very rowdy”, reported Honi Soit. Throwdown firecrackers, sneezing powder, and organised coughing and stamping rendered the young speakers practically inaudible. As he was closing in prayer, the runner-carpet was pulled from under Ian Holt, at which point a Methodist clergyman in the audience dealt vigorously with some of the agitators. Such an impression did the whole ruckus make that it was written up at length in the University paper, and even made it to the Sydney Morning Herald, under the heading 'Evangelical Disturbances'. When two of the disturbers were fined by University authorities, the SUEU showed their good faith by paying the fines, a gesture which was publicly reported and appreciated. Throughout, daily audiences of 450 heard the gospel preached, then about 20% of the entire day student population.

The defining moment for the SUEU came at the end of the decade, with the defeat of the sinless perfectionists. With this, the Union was established independently of particular personalities, and had laid its foundations deeply in both evangelical theology and experiential religion, but not one to the exclusion of the other. This was an extremely painful battle, during which friendships were broken, and enemies made as a radical group within the SUEU insisted upon a heretical reading of some key biblical texts and the belief that true Christians would live sinlessly after a special blessing of the Holy Spirit. Although it had been brewing for some years, it was in the SUEU Annual General Meeting elections on 25th September, 1940 that it came to a head. Eighty-six members were present, all but a few of the SUEU’s membership, and two opposing tickets were run: one representing the perfectionists and the other the conservatives. For each position the voting was the same - about 65 for the conservatives, and 20 for the perfectionists - with the result that John Hercus was elected President and Donald Robinson, Secretary. The perfectionists, led by Lindsay Grant, who in 1936 became the first General Secretary of the newly formed Inter Varsity Christian Fellowship (IVCF) , were defeated. Having survived its most serious challenge, the SUEU was set for the long haul.

This battle highlights the relationship of the SUEU with its evangelical cousins in the wider scene. The SUEU has always needed friends, and has needed to choose them carefully. Throughout the decade the same names recur as the speakers of first, and often last resort - Principle Morling, Marcus Loane, Howard Guinness, the Reverends Babbage, Begbie and Delbridge, Paul White, and especially after he was appointed Principal of Moore College in 1935, T.C. Hammond. ‘TC’, as he was known, took particular responsibility for the theological health of the SUEU throughout these years, and would have ‘squashes’ in the Principal’s house each month, at which he would answer any questions put to him, including one in 1939 addressing the topic of sinless perfectionism. In this way, relatively unformed and vulnerable students were anchored theologically, and were enabled to hold fast in the face of opposition.

[edit] EU Executive Members, 1930-1939

Year President Secretary Vice President Women's Secretary Prayer and Mission Secretary Additional Officer Additional Officer
1930 Mack Hercus N/A Neville Langford-Smith N/A Paul White N/A N/A
1931 Henry Doran Paul White N/A Jean Porter Alice Smih N/A N/A
1932 Paul White N/A Leslie Baibour Jean Porter J. Hercus Florence Leeder Faith Plain
1933 A. Alderdice;

Lindsay Grant

 B. Eglitsky Paul White Gwen Wilkinson B. Eglitsky;

Allan Bryson

 N/A N/A
1934 Lindsay Grant N/A Ian Holt Joyce Pickering Gwen Wilkinson Dorrie Finckh Isabel Sawkin
1935 Ian Holt J. Isbisters P.W. Gill N/A Elsie Taubman Doris Roy M. Roberts
1936 Allan Bryson Alan Podger Elsie Taubman France McLean R. Macbeth Lindsay Grant A. Traversi
1937 R. Duncan Macbeth A. Reddell Lindsay Grant Elsie Taubman M. Mackenzie J. Gardiner F. Trevitt
1938 A. Reddell E.L. Sommerlad R. Macbeth A Adams B. Boden K. Raymond D. Christie
1939 Harvey Turk Alwyn Prescott E.L. Sommerlad A. Adams J. Ellis J. Crust Noel Stephenson

[edit] References

  1. ^ Byron Smith, 2001 SUEU Presidential Speech, cited in Proclaiming Jesus Christ as Lord, Meredith Lake, 2005.
  2. ^ Contractor, Aban, Noonan, Gerard, & Burke, Kelly, God's Quad, Sydney Morning Herald, 16 November 2002. Accessed 14 January 2008.
  3. ^ Loane, Sally, "In Her Own Right", Sydney Morning Herald, 23 October 1998. Accessed 14 January 2008.

[edit] Further reading

  • Lake, Meredith (2005), Proclaiming Jesus Christ as Lord. The EU Graduates Fund: Sydney. ISBN 0646452789
  • Prince, John and Moyra (1987), Out of the Tower. ANZEA: Sydney. ISBN 0858923092