“Questions of life and death”: how religion served the Maitland community throughout the First World War

The First World War was a significant historical event for Australia and Australians. Historians and other scholars have generated a significant and diverse historiography of the war including histories of specific battlefields, the experiences of prisoners of war, the role of women at home, the impacts on Indigenous people, and the manifold issues of repatriation. However, the role of religion in shaping peoples’ experiences of the war has long been overlooked. Those few historians who have grappled with this issue have tended to ignore the interconnectedness of the home front and the battlefront and have mostly focused on the experiences of those in big metropolitan cities, especially Sydney and Melbourne. This thesis focuses on the role and function of religion for the community of Maitland, New South Wales, during the First World War through the lenses of the home front, the battlefront, and the aftermath. It reveals how religion and religious belief was ingrained in the culture of the period, how individuals drew on their religious beliefs to make decisions throughout the war and how religion was a source of comfort and normality for those at the front and those mourning the dead. In doing so, this thesis contributes to a greater understanding of the role of religion in Australian history and the impact of the First World War in rural Australia.