Duncan Harrison
An important figure in the formation of the Uniting Church of Queensland and its Moderator in 1980, Duncan Harrison reflects on aspects of the Basis of Union.
By John Harrison
This is a 3 minute read and 9 minute video, published in June 2024.
Duncan Harrison was deeply involved in the formative years of the Uniting Church in Queensland in the 1970s and 1980s. Born in Rockhampton in 1928, he studied at The University of Queensland and the Presbyterian Theological College within Emmanuel College. He was ordained as a Presbyterian minister in 1954, and served as a parish minister in Chinchilla, Mount Morgan, Yeerongpilly, and then Bundaberg.
In the 1960s and the 1970s he had a reputation as an ‘evangelical’ in the Presbyterian Church. He was involved in the Billy Graham crusades in the late 1960s and was approached to head up the Scripture Union movement in Queensland in the 1960s, an organisation which discredited itself in the later 1970s when taken over by Creationist fundamentalists.
In 1972 Duncan Harrison was appointed as director of evangelism and Assembly Evangelist for the Presbyterian Church of Queensland, where he remained until just after church union in 1977.
Oral history interview: Duncan Harrison
The foundation document of the Uniting Church is known as the Basis of Union. It is 18 paragraphs and about 4000 words long. It purports to be a restatement of the historic, orthodox yet Reformed tradition of the Church catholic, rather than a merger agreement between the Methodist, Presbyterian, and Congregationalist churches.
Figure 1: St Andrew's Presbyterian Church, Chinchilla, Queensland, date unknown (State Library Queensland).
In 1978, within six months of church union, he accepted the position of full-time chair of the Presbytery of Central Queensland, one of four regional presbyteries in Queensland. Eventually all presbyteries in Queensland had full time stipendiary agents. But in the formative years of 1978–1982, his approach to ecclesiastical governance in Central Queensland came to be regarded by several successors in that role and thoughtful observers as essentially a bishop-in-presbytery as envisaged in the 1963 Basis of Union.
In 1980 he served a one-year term as Moderator of the Queensland Synod. From 1983 to 1988 he was the General Secretary of the Queensland Synod, a not for profit organisation having over 40,000 members, and including hospitals such as Wesley and St Andrews, schools such as BBC, Somerville House, and Clayfield College, health and welfare organisations such as Lifeline, Blue Nursing (later BlueCare), and Wesley Mission, and six Aboriginal and Islander Christian congregations, four In the Gulf of Carpentaria, one in Townsville, and one in Brisbane. In the early 1980s he assisted the creation of the autonomous Aboriginal and Islander arm of the church, the Aboriginal and Islander Christian Congress.
Figure 2: Duncan Harrison, 1948 (Harrison family).
Related articles
