(1) 1953-1989

William John (’Bill’) Muehlenberg has been a leading figure in the Australian Christian Right for the past 15 years. He has held a number of official positions with organisations such as the Australian Family Association, Australian Christian Lobby, Focus on the Family Australia and Salt Shakers. He currently runs his own CultureWatch website. He also played a key role in the National Marriage Coalition, which in 2004 successfully pressured the Howard Federal Government to pass legislation banning same-sex marriages. I’ll begin this series with a brief biographical sketch.

Muehlenberg was born in 1953 and evidently grew up in Sheboygan, Wisconsin, USA.

He rarely refers to episodes from his childhood or early adolescence and although I have read scores of his articles, letters and other publications, I have yet to discover any information about his parents, siblings (if any), schools, friendships etc. For a writer who trumpets the virtues of ‘the family’, this is most unusual.

During the 1960s, young Bill apparently became involved with what he now likes to call ‘radical politics’ or ‘the New Left’:

Like many others, my personal journey reflected in microcosm the changes going on in macrocosm during [the 1960s]. I eventually abandoned my agnosticism for Christianity, my radicalism for conservatism. I therefore replaced my books on the occult, eastern religions, New Left politics and Marxist revolution with books on religion of the more traditional sort, and politics of the more conservative variety. - Muehlenberg (1990) Modern Conservative Thought: an Annotated Bibliography (Institute of Public Affairs), (ix).

Recently, Muehlenberg has begun to make a point of drawing attention to what he claims as his spectacular past:

The cultural revolution of the 60s unleashed a lot of madness and mischief on to the world. I should know, because I was a part of it. - ‘ Feminist Follies, or Why Men and Women are Different‘

However, it’s doubtful that Bill played a very significant role in the New Left as he was just nudging 17 when the sixties ended. Shortly after this time he changed course entirely:

In 1971 (the year I left my radical past and became a Christian) … - Why Fight the Culture Wars.

I cannot find a single direct reference to Muehlenberg’s activities during the 1970s although he may possibly have been working as a librarian, but he re-emerges as a missionary in Holland at some time in the 1980s. He met and married his wife Averil, an Australian, during this time. - ‘A word about the editor’, Focus on the Family Australia Family Forum Sept, 1996, 3

Muehlenberg’s sojourn in Holland raises certain questions. He claims to have been a ‘missionary’ (see above) but also to have had ‘ extensive experience in research and library work in the Netherlands and US’. These occupations are not mutually exclusive but the absence of detail is rather intriguing. A Summit Ministries Australia speakers’ list (link broken) says that Bill and Averil Muehlenberg ’spent five years in Holland working as missionaries with Youth With A Mission [YWAM].’ According to Sara Diamond (1989):

One of the largest single sending agencies, … YWAM, which had 1,741 missionaries in the field as of 1985, is closely allied with the US Christian Right … YWAM founder Loren Cunningham … as of 1988 began studying the Reconstructionist writings of Gary North, with the intent of incorporating ‘dominion’ or ‘kingdom’ theology into the ideological training given to YWAM missionaries. (Spiritual Warfare, 206)

Muehlenberg himself displays strong dominionist tendencies i.e. he wants to see a close replica of the ‘kingdom of God’ established on earth prior to (and possibly as a means of hastening) Christ’s Second Coming. For a time in the later 1990s (see later blog) he served on the National Alliance of Christian Leaders National Executive. This body is strongly influenced by dominionist and (even more extreme) Reconstructionist thinking as well as having close ties with YWAM. (See Australia’s Theocratic Right).

I think that Muehlenberg must have come to Australia directly following his five years in Holland i.e. that he spent the years 1984 or 1985-1989 in Holland and then came directly to Australia. However, he says that he received his ‘Chicago’ degree in 1985, which is obviously compatible with the above timeline, but did not receive his ‘Boston’ degree until 1987. It is possible that he undertook the latter degree by some form of distance education, but I don’t know.

As you can see from the Monash University link, Muehlenberg’s degrees are listed in the first line as ‘BA(Hons) Chicago, MA(Hons) Boston’, with this later expansion:

He completed his BA in Chicago in 1985 and MA in Boston in 1987.

This points to the fact that his degrees were not granted by Chicago University and Boston University respectively, but does not really make clear that the qualifications were in fact obtained from two evangelical schools, often termed ‘Bible colleges’, Wheaton College in Chicago and Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary in Boston.

The standard practice is to identify one’s degrees or diplomas by institution rather than by location, although for some reason Bill often departs from this convention e.g.:

My … qualifications include a BA in philosophy (Chicago) [and] an MA in theology and ethics (Boston) … - ‘A word about the editor’, ibid., 3

The Muehlenbergs arrived in Australia in 1989 where Bill had the good fortune to be quickly employed by a think-tank called the Institute of Public Affairs.

Bill Muehlenberg currently holds dual citizenship (presumably US-Australian).

[To be continued. Any further information about Muehlenberg's background, particularly during the 1960s -1980s, would be gratefully received.]

Filed in: Christian Right, People