The Brisbane Spiritual Church
A Brisbane centre for Spiritualist practice and religious worship remains active today, after more than a century of continuity, change, and compromise.
By Nicholas Desjardins
This is a 20 minute read, published December 2024.
The dynamism and fluidity of the Spiritualist tradition has always presented a challenge to institutionalisation. Its rejection of dogma and openness to new ideas has often proved an obstacle to building stable, long-lived, Spiritualist organisations. Spiritualism has no core text or central authority, and so each church is sustained by the passions and efforts of its members and shaped by their unique interests and ideals. As a result, most churches remain short-lived, disappearing when a key member passes or moves away, leaving their congregations to disperse and seek other communities of spiritual seekers. Churches dedicated to the Spiritualist tradition can thus be found throughout Queensland’s towns and cities — hosting a diverse community of spirit mediums, healers, and investigators — but most are small and informal, congregating in the minister’s living room or in rented community halls, relying on the efforts of a single hard-working organiser or talented medium.
The Brisbane Spiritual Church stands in contrast to these trends. For over a century, it has remained a stable centre for Spiritualism in Queensland. Having grown to prominence in the aftermath of the First World War, it has weathered major changes in public opinion around Spiritualism, key shifts in its demographics, and major internal disputes around the identity of the tradition. While many other Spiritualist churches have syncretised with other traditions to create their own unique blends of spirituality, the Brisbane Spiritual Church has been able to carefully adapt to the changing religious landscape, while remaining faithful to the kind of Spiritualism espoused by its founders. For over a century, it has served as a key source for propagating Spiritualism throughout Queensland. Since its early days, it has placed an emphasis on training mediums and, as a result, many of the founders and ministers of other churches throughout the state can be traced back to their tutelage at the Brisbane Spiritual Church.
Wandering into the church on a quiet Sunday afternoon, a visitor would find a small congregation of friendly regulars and curious first-timers. The church draws a diverse crowd. Some would consider themselves devout Christians, but others would denounce Christianity altogether, seeing the Christian tradition as dogmatic and outdated. Some would identify with the label of ‘Spiritualist’ as a core religious identity, whereas others would identify with Spiritualism as just one belief among many; they might be Spiritualist just as much as they are Christian, or Buddhist, or shamanist, or a wide range of other variously spiritual and religious identities. Still others would reject the label of ‘religion’ altogether, and would simply state that Spiritualism is a particular stance on a scientific phenomenon. To be a Spiritualist, in this view, is simply to believe in the truth of life after death.
This core belief unites all the various strains and tendencies of Spiritualism. Whether they regard it as Christian or otherwise, as a religion, a spirituality, or a scientific stance, all Spiritualists agree on one idea: that one’s spirit survives after the death of the body, and can be contacted through the skills of clairvoyants or mediums — that is, living people who have the ability to communicate with the departed.
Origins of Spiritualism
Spiritualism first emerged in the United States, in upstate New York, in 1841. Two young girls, Catherine and Margaretta Fox, skyrocketed to local, then regional, then national fame for having established contact with a ‘departed spirit’ inhabiting their house, which would communicate with them via rapping on walls and tables

Figure 1: The celebrated Fox sisters of Rochester, New York: Margaretta, Catherine, and Leah (Public Domain).
As word spread of their discovery, new mediums began to appear across the United States, devising ever more innovative ways of communicating with the dead. Mysterious table-knocking was joined by a long list of more radical spirit-phenomena — disembodied voices, levitating objects, spectral figures, ghostly floating hands, and the miraculous healing of ailments. Long philosophical essays magically appearing on blank paper began to flood newspaper headlines as the movement gained steam (Bogdan, 2016: 4–5; Deveney, 2005: 1074–81).
Infused with the Unitarian and Christian Universalist currents which were popular at the time, Spiritualism developed its own complex philosophy and cosmology, in which this life was said to be but one step in a long series of afterlives through which a human individual progresses in their spiritual journey, each more enlightened than the last. At the same time, the wide variety of spirit-phenomena occurring in séances attracted the attention of scholars as the claims of Spiritualism become a hotly debated topic, gaining the support of many highly esteemed scientists and academics. By the 1870s Spiritualism had become a prominent movement throughout the Western world, holding advocates among the most marginalised members of society to the highest circles of politics, academia, and science.
Having arrived in Australia during the gold rushes of the 1850s, and stoked by bombastic travelling performers like the Davenport brothers, Spiritualism was beginning to take root across the young colonies, as Australians flocked to the séance table to test these spirit phenomena for themselves. Visiting Australia in the 1870s, the eminent Spiritualist historian and philosopher Emma Hardinge Britten wrote that ‘the illumination of supernal fires blazed forth — unlit by mortal hands, from every prominent centre’ (Hardinge Britten, 1884: 230).

Figure 2: Ira and William Davenport, with associates, c. 1870 (Public Domain).
Early Spiritualism in Queensland
This early period of Spiritualism, often considered its ‘golden age’, saw the movement treated primarily as a fringe scientific theory. In Queensland, this was most apparent with the crystallisation in 1881 of the first local Spiritualist organisation: the Psychological Society of Brisbane, founded by a number of eminent local politicians, journalists, and intellectuals, for the purposes of investigating psychic, clairvoyant, and otherwise Spiritualistic phenomena.
By the early 1900s, however, the character of Spiritualism had begun to shift. With major scientific institutions becoming more established, and the study of science becoming the pursuit of expert professionals rather than lay enthusiasts, the study of spirit phenomena no longer commanded the academic influence that it had in earlier decades. At the same time, philosophically-inclined mediums like Emma Hardinge Britten had contributed to what was becoming an extensive body of Spiritualist theological literature. As a result, throughout the early 1900s, the Spiritualist organisations of Queensland began to take on a more religious character. Their meetings began to be described as services, and lectures on scientific phenomena were slowly replaced by sermons on the moral implications of the afterlife. Performances of spiritual healing became a mainstay of Spiritualist gatherings, which contributed to a change in demographics from a small group of intellectually curious men to a wider community of believers seeking healing, salvation, and reconciliation with loved ones.

Figure 3: Spirit messages 'received through the mediumship of Fred Evans', Psychological Society of Brisbane, October 24, 1888 (SLQ).
In 1902, members of Brisbane’s Psychological Society (which by then had dissolved) went on to found the Brisbane Psychical Research Society, and began to include prayer and hymns in regular gatherings. Soon, the Society shed any pretence of disinterested investigation by renaming itself the ‘Brisbane Association of Spiritualists’ in 1904. Whereas Brisbane in the 1870s had few local mediums, by the early 1900s there were dozens of clairvoyants, psychics, and mediums throughout the area. The resident medium of the Association was Alfred Buckley, who gained local renown for channelling the spirits of famous historical figures to deliver lectures on topics of religion and theology at the meetings of the Association.
The increasingly religious nature of Spiritualism could be seen, too, in Ipswich, where an Ipswich Spiritual Society was founded in 1909, and renamed in 1910 as the Ipswich Spiritual Church. Here, services were run in a manner similar to the various local Christian churches, with the major exception that performances of mediumship took centre-stage, with locals gathering eagerly to hear messages from departed loved ones, ancestors, and historical figures, relayed through the growing array of local mediums.
A further difference from mainstream strands of Christianity was the role of women. From the origins of the movement in the United States, women were uniquely influential within Spiritualism. While men still tended to occupy positions of institutional authority (particularly as presidents or organisers of Spiritualist associations), mediumship was seen as a role uniquely suited to women.
Patriarchal Victorian worldviews associated women with passivity, piety, and naivety, which usually disqualified them from having religious authority (Braude, 2001: 84–87). Yet for Spiritualists, these values made women not quietly obedient listeners, but powerful mediums. Passivity allows one to be open and accessible to spiritual contact in a way that a person with a powerful, domineering personality could not be. Piety lends itself to engaging with the spiritual dimension of life. Naivety and innocence were not necessarily virtues, but were often associated with famous mediums (particularly in this early period) because they made mediumship appear more genuine and less likely to be fraudulent (Braude, 2001: 84–87).
Thus, as mediums began to proliferate in Queensland women increasingly came to the forefront of Spiritualist communities. During the colonial period, when few home-grown mediums could be found, Spiritualist communities were dominated by educated men, whose activities consisted largely of discussing and debating Spiritualism as a distant scientific phenomenon. By the twentieth century, the movement had become much more practical, with a variety of charismatic mediums leading Spiritualist sermon, séances, and demonstrations.

Figure 4: 'Brisbane Medium Practices Ancient Art of Consulting Spirits', Sunday Mail, December 1934 (Public Domain).
The Brisbane Association of Spiritualists was particularly influenced by its star medium, Ms. Marie Henrietta Winterburn Seccombe, who had come from a Spiritualist community in the southern United States. She gave trance lectures across Brisbane in which humanity’s technological, moral, and spiritual progress were tied into a grand Spiritualist narrative. A similar line was echoed by the charismatic Madame Alrene, the key medium of the Ipswich Spiritual Church. Advertising herself as an ‘occult scientist’, Alrene performed clairvoyant readings, spirit communications, and palmistry, and was popular for her complex lectures on scientific Spiritualism. The Ipswich Spiritual Church was also host, on occasion, to Elfriede (‘Effie’) Reinhold, a Brisbane-based medium and spiritual healer. Alongside delivering trance lectures and acts of healing, she was also described as performing trance songs, music sung under spiritual trance.
Spiritualism and the Great War
On 30 July 1913, letters patent were issued under the Religious, Educational, and Charitable Institutions Act 1861 (Qld), granting official permission for the establishment of a Brisbane Spiritual Church. While this did not grant the new organisation the legal status of a church, it established it as a recognised entity, able to invest and inherit, and to hold an estate. This, then, was no informal circle. The women and men who had gathered on January 13 that year in temporary rooms in Brisbane to found the fledgling church were long-sighted in their vision, which is illustrated by the fact that the Brisbane Spiritual Church is the only Spiritualist organisation of this era which still remains, over a century later. This would prove to be the ideal time to start such a church, as with the onset of the grief and devastation of the First World War an international surge in interest in Spiritualism was about to begin.
Within a few months of the war’s outbreak, a widespread desire for Spiritualist mediums was increasingly evident. Reports began to flow into Queensland of prominent cases in the United Kingdom where grieving widows and parents had reunited with husbands and sons killed on the battlefield through clairvoyance, while newspapers abounded with advertisements from Queensland’s enterprising mediums, including Madame Alrene alongside a host of various ‘Madames’ and ‘Professors’. The central question of Spiritualism gained an urgent relevance, and large audiences flocked to sermons at the Brisbane Spiritual Church under titles which asked, ‘Where are our Dead?’ and ‘Can the Dead Return?’ Notable is one such sermon entitled ‘Development, or How to Come in Touch with the Departed’, which formed part of a lecture series aiming to teach new Spiritualists how to develop their own abilities of mediumship. The Brisbane Spiritual Church was not just harnessing the powers of existing mediums, but was hard at work training new members in the arts of clairvoyance and mediumship, an effort that likely contributed to its longevity.
Throughout the Great War and its aftermath, the church became the hub of Spiritualism in Queensland, with members traveling long distances to attend its services. The mediums J. Stepherson and Madame Alrene from the Ipswich Spiritual Church would visit their co-religionists in Brisbane to run services from time to time, and vice versa. Effie Reinhold, the locally-renowned young trance medium who had performed at Ipswich years earlier, was in fact the daughter of Theodor Reinhold, the founder of the Brisbane Spiritual Church. Indeed, the connections ran further still: Reinhold was married to Mary Jane Kerlin, whose brother W.J. Kerlin was the first president of the Ipswich Spiritual Church.
The central question of Spiritualism gained an urgent relevance, and large audiences flocked to sermons at the Brisbane Spiritual Church under titles which asked, ‘Where are our Dead?’ and ‘Can the Dead Return?’
Theodor Reinhold, whose portrait still hangs front-and-centre in the church today, was an educated English-born cartographer for the Lands Department, known as a talented mathematician and linguist, as well as a pious and devout Christian. He, too, suffered grievous loss during the Great War — his son Theo was killed in action in November 1917, which his daughter Effie was said to have sensed through her clairvoyance before it was reported (Deakin et al., 2013: 43). The effects of the war were no distant concern to the founder of the Church; the loss of loved ones, and the possibility of reconciling with them through mediumship, were matters of personal importance.
From the beginning, too, the Brisbane Spiritual Church was a family community. The Psychological Society had focused almost entirely on the business of investigation, while the Brisbane Association of Spiritualists had found time for dancing and conviviality, and the Ipswich Spiritual Church had added a children’s lyceum, a centre for recreational activities with whole families becoming involved. This trend continued with the Brisbane Spiritual Church. Their first decade saw a heavy focus on community-building, with church families attending picnics, dances, harvest festivals, literary discussion groups, and Christmas trips.
At the same time, the church ran a busy calendar of specifically Spiritualist events, with healing classes and spiritual development circles, afternoon and evening services on Sundays, as well as an array of psychic readings. At the same time, the church spent a significant portion of their income on advertising, and worked persistently in these early years to raise money for a permanent church building. The pioneers of this young church were systematic and long-sighted in their vision, building upon the work of earlier thinkers and local spiritual pioneers to build a lasting beacon for Spiritualism in Queensland.

Figure 5: Sir Arthur Conan Doyle laying the foundation stone, Brisbane Spiritual Church, 1921 (Brisbane Spiritual Church).
A celebrity visit: Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
By early 1921, the hard work had paid off, and the necessary funds had been raised to begin work on a permanent church building on Boundary Street, Spring Hill, near Fortitude Valley. The excitement was made ever greater by the arrival at this time of the international celebrity and Spiritualist preacher Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. The eminent author had been dabbling in Spiritualism since 1916, but after losing his son and brother during the Great War, he had become more outspoken in his views, especially in regards to the religious implications of spirit communication. In 1920 he set out with his wife to conduct a missionary tour abroad. Having first toured through Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide, and New Zealand, Doyle had been warned that the Spiritualist community of Queensland was small and irrelevant. Yet upon arrival, he remarked on how he found the local Spiritualists to be the warmest and most welcoming he had yet encountered:
At Toowoomba, and other stations on the way, small deputations of Spiritualists had met the train, but at Brisbane the platform was crowded. My wife was covered with flowers, and we were soon made to realise that we had been misinformed in the south, when we were told that the movement was confined to a small circle (Doyle, 1921: 223).
He toured and lectured throughout Brisbane to large crowds, attended dinner with the Premier (to whom he presented a series of spirit-photographs), and met with local Spiritualists, noting several stories he was told of young men returning as spirits from the war.
Most important, however, was his laying of the foundation stone of the Brisbane Spiritual Church at the Boundary Street site. He noted the potential troubles this might bring, as having a church of their own might present Spiritualism as a ‘separate sect’ rather than a movement which sought to unify all religions under one goal (Doyle, 1921: 241). Yet he commended the Brisbane Spiritualists as being ‘greatly daring’, and expressed his admiration for Reinhold and the others who ‘were determined to have a temple of their own.’
On 11 January 1921, perspiring in the Queensland summer sun, Doyle formally inaugurated the permanent home of the Brisbane Spiritual Church. It would take eight years for the building to be completed. By 1929, the red brick hub of Queensland Spiritualism stood proudly at 228 Boundary Street.

Figure 6: Sir Arthur and Lady Doyle, Brisbane 1921 (Brisbane Spiritual Church).
Pioneers of the early years
From its beginnings, the Brisbane Spiritual Church was a community of families. Married couples made up the majority of the committee, with their children taking up their mantle in later decades. Thanks perhaps to its focus on spiritual development, the church had a number of influential mediums in its early years, such as the renown touring lecturer P. S. Mills-Tanner, as well as Mr Humphrey and Mr Elkin, both of whom would later serve as presidents of the church (from 1928–35 and 1935–37 respectively).
From 1917, the resident medium Rev. Loe Elmore drew large crowds to the church with her lectures on the afterlife, and was popular for her psychometric readings. Indeed, Elmore’s popularity demonstrates the important role played by women in the early years of the church, who were far from content to let their husbands take the spotlight.
The work of the women was largely channelled through the Ladies Auxiliary, a section of the committee that organised activities from fundraising to catering and the distribution of promotional information. It was largely through their work that the church was able to be built at all. They organised fetes, concerts, dances, and fancy-dress parties to raise money, alongside running services and spiritual development circles, and committing themselves to a variety of charitable endeavours including running a small boarding house next door.

Figure 7: Foundation stone visible beneath emblem, Brisbane Spiritual Church, 2024 (QAR).
The land on which the church itself was built was purchased from Mr and Mrs Elkin, two influential figures of the early decades, and in later recounting their work, Mrs Elkin would fondly proclaim that their church ‘was built on threepences and sixpences’ (Deakin et al., 2013: 43).
This was a grassroots endeavour — the result of a handful of dedicated, hard-working pioneers without any of the external support afforded to churches of more established religious traditions.
Many of the earliest advocates of Spiritualism in the US had been progressives, feminists, and abolitionists, seeing women’s liberation and racial equality as integral to the spiritual progress of humanity. While the Brisbane Spiritual Church did not emphasise any outward political leanings, its founders nonetheless echoed the egalitarian strand that tended to be built into the Spiritualist movement. Committee minutes from 1927 record how Mrs Elkin noted the predominance of men appearing as mediums and moved for women to be given equal time on the platform.
Around this time, the Ladies Auxiliary pushed for a greater role for women and, henceforth, most committee roles were divided in two, requiring, for example, both a man and a woman as vice-president. By 1938, Mrs Elkin had taken up this role, with Mrs Ada Shaw as her president. This was the first time a woman had been president of the church, but not the last. Shaw would serve as president until 1941, then again in 1954–56, and again from 1957–58 alongside serving in a variety of committee roles. At a time when many other religious institutions were firmly patriarchal, the women of the Brisbane Spiritual Church were not only achieving an equal role to the men but were consciously considering the unique potential and spiritual implications afforded to them as women.

Figure 8: Interior, Brisbane Spiritual Church, July 2024 (QAR).
Spiritualism, Christianity, and science
While both Theodor Reinhold and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle were staunch Christians, it seems that the question of the Brisbane Spiritual Church’s religious affiliation was never truly settled. Indeed, any rigidity on the matter would likely have been seen as antithetical to the spirit of Spiritualism, which, since its origins, has taken pride in being an open, diverse, and undogmatic tradition. Nevertheless, the church in its early decades consciously modelled itself as a Christian institution, adopting the same basic structure, layout, hymns, and services that could be found throughout any local Christian church. Whereas Brisbane’s Spiritualists of the 1870s and 1880s had congregated in rented rooms in the city centre on weekday nights to socialise, hear lectures, and debate philosophy, their twentieth century counterparts at the Brisbane Spiritual Church were gathering for Sunday services, sitting in pews oriented towards a central speaker in front of a stained-glass window, who would deliver a sermon, read Bible verses, and lead familiar Christian hymns.
The particular flavour of Spiritualism found in the early church is well captured in a letter sent to the newspapers by Ada Shaw, the serving president at the time, calling for unity of prayer in the travails of the Second World War. Partnering with a variety of local Christian leaders, in Brisbane’s The Telegraph (May 22, 1940) Shaw urged her readers to:
… make a great united prayer to God. May I be permitted to add that those few who do not believe in prayer at all unite with us next Sunday in building up strong, positive, constructive thoughts for peace, and they will be doing their share in creating a strong vibration of love for those who are suffering as a result of this terrible war.
This example illustrates the fusion of traditional Christianity with the ideas of earlier Spiritualism. Prayer and God are central, and yet are augmented by the psychic channelling of loving energy, which is understood as a form of vibrational energy. Such examples demonstrate why Spiritualism is considered by some of its practitioners to be a form of science, rather than a religion as such. However, prayer, mediumship, clairvoyance, meditation, and other forms of spiritual activity can be understood in Spiritualist practice as sacred, enlightening activities, oriented towards a transcendent divinity, and yet are often also seen as mechanistic, empirical, quantifiable processes.
The early Brisbane Spiritual Church functioned generally along the lines of a conventional Christian church. Its congregation listened to sermons on the Bible under vaulted ceilings, overlooked by a portrait of Christ. The church’s early committees consciously sought to present their church and its services in this way to broaden their appeal and legitimacy. To this end, plans were advanced by the committee in the 1950s to build an elaborate new wing along Boundary Street, with an impressive gothic façade, within which services could be conducted with more grandeur. Though these plans were later abandoned due to costs and complications in construction, they encapsulate the ecclesiastical ambitions of the church at this time.
!['A Message to Humanity' received by mediumship and recorded in an exercise book, n.d. [c. 1933], Brisbane Spiritual Church archives (QAR).](https://qareligion.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/9.-spirit-messages-recorded-c.-1933-scaled.jpg)
Figure 9: 'A Message to Humanity' received by mediumship and recorded in an exercise book, n.d. [c. 1933], Brisbane Spiritual Church archives (QAR).
While Sunday services largely followed a Christian model, they were made unique by their most notable feature: a weekly live demonstration of mediumship. In a manner that remains unchanged today, each service culminated with a guest medium taking the platform and communing with the spirits of the departed friends and loved ones of the congregation.
Resident mediums would tend to rotate between the various local Spiritualist organisations each week, while visiting international mediums (typically from Britain and the US) appeared more frequently as overseas travel became more widespread.
Each medium would perform differently, but typically called on a member of the audience before describing the details of a friend or loved one who has ‘passed into spirit,’ painting a picture of the appearance, personality, memories, and manner of death of the departed.
Though part of an otherwise apparently religious service, these demonstrations of mediumship are described in terms of scientific evidence. They are often called ‘evidence work’ or ‘proof-of-life demonstrations’ by local Spiritualists, as although they are often comforting and healing to members of the congregation with whom spiritual contact is made, their primary purpose is seen as providing clear, empirical evidence of spiritual phenomena. A sufficiently accurate performance of mediumship serves as dramatic evidence of Spiritualist phenomena — a sceptical observer may be quickly convinced by a medium correctly describing their departed grandfather as a tall, bearded, generous, quick-tempered man who passed away due to an illness related to his lungs. Former Brisbane Spiritual Church president Wendy Deakin (2013: 9) put this succinctly: ‘Why should people accept the teachings we offer? Because unlike other religions we back our beliefs with evidence, through proof of survival demonstrations given by our mediums.’
This traces back to the formative works of Spiritualist philosophy in the nineteenth century, which positioned Spiritualism as a scientific development, and highlighted its validity on empirical grounds. Hardinge Britten (1884: 8) contends that the early discoveries of Spiritualism uplifted medieval supernaturalism into modern ‘spiritual science’. Her writing, which remains foundational for local Spiritualism, argues that it is only through rigorously verified demonstrations by professional mediums that Spiritualism is differentiated from ‘the unsustained assertions of theology’, thus placing ‘religion upon the assured foundation of knowledge’ (Hardinge Britten 1884: 2-3).
For Hardinge Britten, and many Spiritualists today, Spiritualism sits at the crossroads of ‘religion’ and ‘science’. The question of precisely how this position might be defined continues to attract considerable debate and discussion among the local Spiritualist community.
Second World War to the ‘New Age’
Globally, the Second World War marked the end of the Spiritualist revival that had begun with the war of 1914–18. Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, as public interest in Spiritualism waned, the Brisbane Spiritual Church carried on quietly, concerning itself largely with upkeep of the church building and the spiritual development of its members. Without the great crowds of spiritual seekers that had appeared in the interwar era, the community settled into a regular pattern of weekly services, readings, and spiritual development circles, alongside twice-weekly healing circles. They steadily expanded their library, collecting an eclectic range of books on spiritual healing, psychic phenomena, theology, meditation, Theosophy, Eastern philosophy, ancient civilisations, and a wide range of spiritual and esoteric topics.
Throughout these decades, Spiritualism absorbed a wide variety of ideas and practices from these traditions and, in turn, many of its basic ideas began to filter into popular culture and spirituality. This intensified in the 1970s with the emergence of the ‘New Age’ movement, which drew heavily on the Spiritualist tradition (Partridge, 2004: 4). The movement popularised Spiritualist ideas such as spiritual vibrations (or ‘vibes’), channelling, psychic powers, spiritual healing, and the manipulation of spiritual energy (Hammer, 2005: 855). As a result, Spiritualist churches began to be patronised by a new generation of spiritual seekers, steeped in the eclectic cultural milieu of the New Age.

Figure 10. Healing Room, Brisbane Spiritual Church, July 2024 (QAR).
Religious tensions in the ‘Smith Saga’
In 1973 the Right Reverend Reg Levi was elected president of the Brisbane Spiritual Church, becoming the first in that role to have been ordained. Conducting sermons in Christian priestly vestments, complete with a stole emblazoned with the cross, Levi reinforced the Christian identity of the Church with an emphasis that irked some fellow members. These tensions became apparent in a committee meeting in April 1974.
The character of this small gathering is illustrated by its first order of business: a discussion regarding the supply of biscuits normally provided alongside a cup of tea after weekly services. Committee members Mrs Sheen and Mrs Milne moved that afternoon tea should consist of two biscuits, but that no tea or biscuits should be provided following evening services. The motion was defeated. Subsequently, Mrs Commins moved that tea and biscuits should be provided for both afternoon and evening services, a resolution that passed with only with a slim majority. As noted by Paul Gillen in his fieldwork among the Spiritualists of Sydney a few years later, the post-service gatherings for tea and biscuits, ‘despite their informality, are an important aspect of Spiritualist practice’ (Gillen 1981: 7–8). While church services allow for spiritual healing and demonstrations of spiritual phenomena, it is the serving of tea and biscuits amid friendly conversation that allows a sense of community to be built.
The debate over tea and biscuits in 1974 was a sign of a deeper rift in the community at that time. The issue at hand was an ornate crucifix that had recently been donated to the Church by two of its members. At the meeting, the former president Mr J. O. Milne (the husband of one of the two women whose biscuit policy had just been denied) demanded the crucifix not be accepted. When the committee voted by a slim margin in favour of accepting the cross, Milne stormed out of the building, followed by several other members.
The core members of the church at this point seem to have formed two opposed factions. The pro-Christian camp, led by Levi, identified thoroughly as Christians and desired to maintain the principles encouraged by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, with Christ and the Bible being central to Spiritualist practice. The anti-Christian camp, championed by the former president Mr Milne, was opposed to this framework. They aligned themselves with the scientific, free-thinking tradition of Spiritualism, and were suspicious of organised religion, an opinion common within Spiritualism both in the nineteenth century and today.
In December 1974, a strongly worded letter was received by the church from two of its members, Mr and Mrs Smith. Aligned with Mr Milne, they levelled a furious criticism at the changes in church policy since Levi’s election, holding him personally responsible, and demanding his resignation. The committee rallied in support of Levi and resolved not to allow the Smiths to renew their memberships. The Smiths responded in 1975 by beginning legal proceedings against the church on the grounds that they were wrongfully removed, and threatening to air the issue in the local press. Not wishing to perpetuate the long history of press condemnation which Spiritualism has suffered, Levi stood down as president, but was subsequently re-elected the following year.
Recent decades: a careful compromise
Levi would go on to maintain the presidency until 1984, followed by Rev. Frank Bruce, who had supported him during the Smith turmoil. During his long tenure as president, Bruce contributed powerfully to Spiritualism in Brisbane and throughout Queensland. He organised several renovations and upgrades to the Brisbane Spiritual Church and was remembered for undertaking long journeys to assist community members and other Spiritualist communities around Queensland. In 1990, he ordained Rev. Marilyn O’Sullivan, the founder of the Redlands Christian Spiritual Centre, which continues the Christian Spiritualist tradition today along lines similar to those espoused by Bruce, Levi, and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.
Today, the Brisbane Spiritual Church favours an open, non-sectarian approach to Spiritualism, maintaining elements of its Christian heritage without favouring any particular religious tradition beyond that of Spiritualism itself. Overt Christian iconography no longer features in Church services, and hymns are drawn from popular songs rather than Christian tradition. Bible readings still feature in services, but as often as not are replaced with excerpts from the esoteric Spiritualist teachings of Silver Birch or White Eagle. Part of this shift has been driven by a new generation of Spiritualists — young people who are drawn towards Eastern spiritual traditions and the eclectic range of beliefs and practices of the ‘New Age’. Alongside traditional Spiritualist practices like mediumship and spiritual healing, church members today are often interested in meditation, chakras, reincarnation, healing crystals, breathwork, and a wide range of other beliefs and practices. As a result of this openness, the Brisbane Spiritual Church attracts a diverse array of spiritual seekers, with a diverse array of ideas and interpretations of spirituality.

Figure 11: Board displaying 'Seven Principles of Spiritualism' and screened area for visiting mediums, Brisbane Spiritual Church, July 2024 (QAR).
Yet despite shifts in the religious landscape around it, the Brisbane Spiritual Church has remained fundamentally committed to the core ideas of Spiritualism. Though diverse in their beliefs, its members are united by a desire to witness evidence of the afterlife, as demonstrated through performances of mediumship. Members of the congregation are spiritually healed by the laying on of hands, in a manner practically unaltered from its roots in the nineteenth century. The Seven Principles penned by Emma Hardinge Britten remain unchanged and on prominent display. Honouring the open, non-sectarian tradition of Spiritualism, the Brisbane Spiritual Church has built a careful compromise that welcomes spiritual seekers from all walks of life into its community.
Sources and further reading
Archives of the Brisbane Spiritual Church, 228 Boundary Street, Brisbane. Minute books, financial accounts, photographs, and memorabilia.
Bogdan, Henrik. 2016. ‘Western Esotericism and New Religious Movements.’ In J. R. Lewis and I. Tøllefsen (eds), The Oxford Handbook of New Religious Movements. Vol. 2. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1–11.
Braude, Ann. 2001. Radical Spirits: Spiritualism and Women’s Rights in Nineteenth-Century America. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Deakin, Wendy, Glenys Fallon, Sue Millar, and Helen Rees. 2013. The Spiritual Church Brisbane: 100 Years of Spiritualism, 1913–2013. Edited by Lynda Flower. Brisbane: The Spiritual Church Brisbane.
Deveney, John Patrick. 2005. ‘Spiritualism.’ In W. J. Hanegraaff (ed.), Dictionary of Gnosis and Western Esotericism. Leiden: Brill, 1074–82.
Doyle, Arthur Conan. 1921. The Wanderings of a Spiritualist. London: Hodder and Stoughton.
Gillen, Paul. 1981. ‘The Spiritualists: Gnosis and Ideology.’ BA thesis, Macquarie University.
Hammer, Olav. 2005. ‘New Age Movement.’ In W.J. Hanegraaff (ed.), Dictionary of Gnosis and Western Esotericism. Leiden: Brill, 855–65.
Hardinge Britten, Emma. 1884. Nineteenth Century Miracles; or, Spirits and Their Work in Every Country of the Earth. Manchester: William Britten.
Partridge, Christopher. 2004. The Re-Enchantment of the West. Vol. 1. London and New York: T&T Clark International.
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