William Woolls RUTLEDGE

RUTLEDGE, WILLIAM WOOLLS (b. Parramatta, NSW, 31 Oct 1849 d. Lindfield NSW, 19 May 1921). Methodist minister in NSW.

William Rutledge was the fourth of six children of Lucy Ann (née Field) and James Rutledge, an Ulster immigrant of 1840, local preacher and teacher at the Parramatta school. Rutledge was educated at this school and named after its principal, Rev William Woolls. Under his father's influence, William read widely in history, poetry, philosophy and theology. He was educated in the Methodist Sunday school and class meeting. After conversion he became a class leader and local preacher.

Rutledge first worked as a Sydney journalist, including time on the radical, Protestant Empire, before editing the Newcastle Chronicle. He was accepted into the Methodist ministry in 1875. After fifteen years service, mostly in country circuits, he moved to a succession of influential city circuits until 1916. His return to Sydney in 1892 began 24 years of energetic service to Methodism as an organiser and administrator, conference debater and public activist.

During 1896-97 Rutledge became superintendent of the debt-burdened Central Methodist Mission. He reduced its debt, began work for inebriates and introduced the Pleasant Sunday Afternoon forums. In 1901 he pioneered a Central Methodist Mission in Newcastle. Rutledge successfully led the NSW wing of the movement for Methodist union from 1890. In 1902 he was decisively elected as the inaugural president of the now United Methodist Church of Australasia. Rutledge was Methodist chaplain for gaols (1890-92), hospitals (1904-06) and the forces (1902-14), founding conductor of the ministerial choir (1894-1908), treasurer of the Methodist building fund (1907-09), acting editor of the Methodist, and a member of most Methodist Conference committees in NSW. His most arduous task in a full life was as organising secretary of the Methodist Centenary Fund (1910-15) which raised £40 000, sufficient to establish Wesley College at Sydney University (of which he was first principal in 1915), and Leigh College for theological training. After three years of constant speech-making and travelling, his health failed. He lay near death, but after rest and the prayers of his church, he completed the task before retiring in 1916.

Rutledge was a strong evangelical. His preaching, delivered by his beautiful baritone voice and tall blue-eyed frame, filled the churches of his early pastorate and won conversions. In 1902 he led the successful tent mission which celebrated the advent of Methodist union. In his sixties his delivery was described as fresh, effective and unpretentious. Rutledge was a president of the Evangelical Council of NSW and of Christian Endeavour.

His evangelicalism was tempered by a humanitarian liberal strand. In 1897 he spoke in support of the striking Lucknow miners and stronger factories and shops legislation. His retiring presidential address in February 1903 called for the Christian church to support reformism and to improve the social condition of the people. The present social unrest, he argued, was 'not a mark of social decadence but of social vitality'. Rutledge gave the most liberal clerical view to the 1904 NSW royal commission into the decline of the birth-rate. This father of seven argued, contrary to the commission's findings, that sex in marriage was for the 'promotion of mutual enjoyment and companionship' as well as the propagation of the race.

Rutledge's anti-Catholicism and temperance views were more akin to conservative evangelicalism. He was a vice-president and publicist for the NSW Temperance Alliance, arguing in his Public Control of the Public House (1902) against state ownership of the liquor-licenses surrendered during redevelopment of the Rocks area. He advised the Carruthers government on the Liquor Amendment Act (1905) which toughened licensing provisions and initiated local option voting within state electorates. Rutledge was a founding vice-president of the Australian Protestant Defence Association (1901) and one of Rev W M Dill Macky's (q.v.) most able lieutenants in the sectarian uproar of 1900-04. He was especially outspoken about alleged Catholic influence in the public service, although a 1905 parliamentary select committee on a specific allegation of his, found it to be groundless.

William Rutledge participated in his last Methodist Conference in early 1921 before his death from cerebral-vascular disease in May. As the Rookwood earth embraced his body, his wife Clara (the daughter of Rev William Moore, a missionary to Fiji) and scores of others, sang 'Rock of Ages' and 'Jesu Lover of My Soul'.

R Broome, Treasure in Earthen Vessels Protestant Christianity in New South Wales Society, 1900-1914 (Brisbane, 1980); J E Carruthers, Memories of an Australian Ministry 1868 to 1921(London, 1922); F H McGowan, 'The Rev W Woolls Rutledge', JAMHS, 6,3 (1938), 287-97; Sydney Morning Herald, 20 May 1921

RICHARD BROOME