Marion Maddox (passed 16 September 2025) was a Professor in the Discipline of Politics and International Relations at Macquarie University where she taught Australian politics and religious studies until her retirement in 2021. Prior to her tenure at Macquarie University, she held positions at Victoria University Wellington for seven years, the University of Adelaide, and the University of South Australia. In November 2017 she was elected fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities (AAH).
Maddox was a regular commentator on issues of religion and politics in the Australian media and was a member of the Uniting Church. She authored the book God Under Howard: The rise of the religious right in Australian politics which compared the Howard Government with the religious right in the United States and criticised the decline of mainstream Christianity in Australia.
Her other landmark works include For God and Country: Religious Dynamics in Australian Federal Politics (Canberra: Parliament of Australia 2001), Taking God to School: The End of Australia’s Egalitarian Education (Sydney: Allen & Unwin 2014) and Charles Strong’s Australian Church: Christian Social Activism 1885-1917 (edited and wrote: Melbourne: Melbourne University Press 2021).
As the obituary of the APSA stated: Marion “was a truly inter-disciplinary scholar with an Honours degree in Anthropology (USyd); two PhDs – one in Theology (Flinders) and one in Political Philosophy (UNSW); and her later career working in political science departments. Her research spoke to the intersection of religion and politics in different countries (notably Australia, New Zealand, France and the United States) and different points in time (debates and movements at the turn of the last century to contemporary concerns)”.
Maddox has worked at Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand, the Universities of Adelaide and South Australia. In 2002 the Australian Association for the Study of Religion (AASR) Women’s Caucus invited Maddox to give the annual Penny Magee Memorial Lecture. The title of her lecture was “All in the Family: Women, Religion and the Australian Right”.
Personally, Marion was a mentor and editor in the Charles Strong Project, and thus for this dedicated memory of Marion, it is appropriate for me to finish with a written quote from Marion.
The Australian Church, which flourished in Melbourne in the decades either side of Federation, is most remembered today for its contributions to policy and legislation in such areas as labour laws, poverty relief, penal reform, woman suffrage and many others. But its radical vision was also expressed at the level of political culture, and specifically what Stephen Welch calls the ‘discursive dimension’ of political culture. …the Australian Church strategically intervened in the nascent discursive political culture to envisage a future Australian nation democratic, anti-imperial, internationalist, and committed to peace. … one such intervention: its liturgical and civic use of parodic ‘national anthems’ which both implicitly criticised alternative images of the nation, and encapsulated its members’ radical hopes.
Marion Maddox, Anthem for a New Nation: The Australian Church’s Songs of Hope and Freedom, see YouTube video below.
Sources:
Vale Professor Marion Maddox, Australian Political Studies Association: https://auspsa.org.au/job-alert/vale-professor-marion-maddox/
The Australian Academy of the Humanities:
Marion Maddox, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marion_Maddox
Featured Image: Dr Marion Maddox at the Launch of the Charles Strong Book, 17 September 2022, Effective Living Centre, Adelaide.
Neville Buch
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