Meredith Lake

Meredith Lake
Born	1980 Sydney, Australia
Occupation(s)	Writer, scholar of religious history, media presenter
Years active	2008–present
Known for	The Bible in Australia: A Cultural History; presenter of ABC Radio National's Soul Search

Meredith Lake (born 1980) is an Australian writer, scholar of religious history, and media presenter.

Early life and education

Raised in a committed Anglican family in Sydney, Lake earned her doctorate from the University of Sydney. Her 2008 doctoral dissertation, titled "'Such Spiritual Acres': Protestantism, the land and the colonisation of Australia 1788–1850," investigates religious interpretations of land during Australia's colonial era.

Career

Lake holds the position of Honorary Associate within the University of Sydney's Department of History. Her 2011 article, "Provincialising God: Anglicanism, place, and the colonisation of Australian land," which addresses Christianity and colonialism, was awarded the Bruce Mansfield Prize for the best paper published in the Journal of Religious History.

In 2013, she authored Faith in Action: HammondCare, a comprehensive history of one of Australia's leading Christian charitable organizations. This charity was established by Reverend Robert Brodribb Hammond, whose Sydney-based relief center aided prominent individuals such as "Mr Eternity" Arthur Stace and politician John Hatton.

Her 2018 work, The Bible in Australia: A Cultural History, explores the influence of the Bible on Australian society and garnered several accolades. These include the Australian History Prize at the 2019 Prime Minister's Literary Awards, the NSW Premier's History Award, and the Non-Fiction prize at the 2020 Adelaide Festival Award for Literature. Additionally, it received recognition as the 2018 Australian Christian Book of the Year and was named Book of the Year in 2019 by the Council for the Humanities Arts and Social Sciences. The judges of the Prime Minister's Award commended it as a detailed yet accessible study of Christianity's presence in Australia since 1788.

Since January 2019, Lake has been the presenter of ABC Radio National’s program Soul Search, which centers on topics related to spirituality and faith. She has also appeared on ABC TV, various community radio outlets, and served as a guest host on the television show Compass. In April 2021, she delivered the annual May McLeod Lecture at Sydney's United Theological College.

Personal life

A practicing Christian, Lake is married and has children. Her youngest child was born in 2018, coinciding with the completion of her book manuscript.

Books

• Faith in Action: HammondCare (2013), University of New South Wales Press
• The Bible in Australia: A Cultural History (2018), University of New South Wales Press

Articles and chapters

• "Salvation and conciliation: First missionary encounters at Sydney Cove," included in Evangelists of Empire? Missionaries in Colonial History (2008), University of Melbourne
• "Protestant Christianity and the Colonial Environment: Australia as a Wilderness in the 1830s and 1840s," Journal of Australian Colonial History, vol. 11 (2009)
• "Samuel Marsden, work and the limits of evangelical humanitarianism," History Australia, vol. 7, no. 3 (2010)
• "Faith in crisis: Christian university students in peace and war," Australian Journal of Politics & History, vol. 56, no. 3 (2010)
• "Provincialising God: Anglicanism, place, and the colonisation of Australian land," Journal of Religious History, vol. 35, no. 1 (2011)
• "The Bible in Australian history and culture," St Mark's Review, no. 240 (2017)
• "Why our Declining Biblical Literacy Matters," The Conversation (2018)
• "Why we should remember Boorong, Bennelong's third wife, who is buried beside him," The Conversation (2018)