Australian Dictionary of Biography

Bernard George Judd (1918–1999), Anglican clergyman and radio broadcaster, was born on 28 April 1918 at Bondi, Sydney, elder child of Sydney-born Charles Bernard Judd, musician, and his Brisbane-born wife Ivy May, née Bryans. After attending Blackfriars Public and Sydney Boys’ High schools, Bernard enrolled to study law at the University of Sydney. Unable to complete his education after his father took ill and was unable to work, he became a clerk at Mutual Life and Citizens’ Assurance Co. Ltd. His ‘real desire,’ however, ‘lay in the service of Christ’ (Christie 1975), and he commenced training at Moore Theological College (ThL, 1941), proceeding to a diploma the next year. He was made deacon in 1942 and ordained priest in 1943. On 5 April 1943 at St Andrew’s Church of England, Wahroonga, he married Ida Alice Southwood, who had been secretary to the Reverend R. B. S. Hammond. As a catechist at St Barnabas’s, Broadway, he had come under the influence of Hammond, who ‘primarily … was a preacher of the Gospel’ (Judd 1951, xii), and who had a significant ministry to the destitute and underprivileged in Sydney. A second significant influence was the principal of Moore College, T. C. Hammond, a robust apologist for Protestantism and gospel ministry.

After serving as curate at St Clement’s, Marrickville (1942–43), Judd was curate-in-charge in the provisional district of Flemington with Homebush (1943–45) and then the parochial district of Abbotsford and Russel Lea (1945–47). In 1947 he began his long ministry as rector of St Peter’s, East Sydney, where he would remain until his retirement in 1986. There he enacted his ‘two oars’ (Judd 2023) philosophy of ministry, by which he meant that the gospel and Christian service together empower Christian life and ministry. While a member of the conservative Anglican Church League, his emphasis on Christians’ social witness made him something of an outsider. From 1942 he took an active interest in Hammond’s Pioneer Homes Ltd (Hammondville), a charity founded during the Depression by R. B. S. Hammond to provide housing for families in poverty; Judd became honorary managing director in 1946. He later published a biography of Hammond, He That Doeth (1951). Stephen Judd, Bernard’s son, would become chief executive officer of HammondCare, as it had become known, in 1995, and would develop the charity into a major Christian ministry.

Appointed secretary of the New South Wales Council of Churches (NSWCC) in 1957, Judd held the position for almost twenty years. He was an activist, whose advocacy included large public meetings, lectures, and political engagement. During this time he was also president of the New South Wales Temperance Alliance. Decrying the ‘uncontrolled aggression’ of the liquor industry, he argued for the need to give ordinary people a ‘grass roots’ (Judd n.d.) opportunity to defend themselves. His social concerns were wide-ranging, including gambling and casinos, abortion, euthanasia, sexuality, race relations, poverty, ecology and pollution, and inflation.

From 1942 Judd had been actively involved in the radio station 2CH, in which the NSWCC had a minority interest. In the early years his broadcasts were devotional and panel discussions. Sunday 2CH focused on church news and Christian programs, and he was a regular contributor. During his early years on radio, he supported a popular Protestant versus Catholic polemic between 2CH and Catholic programming on the radio station 2SM. He is best known for his social commentaries, which, beginning in 1967, aired three times on Sunday after news bulletins. They were hard hitting and provocative on moral issues. In 1973 Amalgamated Wireless (Australasia) Ltd changed 2CH to an ‘easy listening’ station, which met with some church opposition. Public meetings were held to explain the change, and Judd played an active supporting role. During 1994 AWA sold its shares in Radio 2CH Pty Ltd to Radio Superhighway Pty Ltd. For NSWCC, this was a hostile commercial transaction, which was amicably settled by it trading its minority shareholding (26 per cent) for legally guaranteed airtime. Judd had an important role in these negotiations. At his 2CH retirement function, Christopher Joscelyn, the managing director, ascribed a large part of 2CH’s success to him.

Judd was appointed MBE in 1973 and OAM in 1993. Predeceased by his wife, he died on 12 January 1999 at Strathfield, survived by their four children, Eleanor, Margaret, Marilyn, and Stephen. He was buried in Northern Suburbs cemetery, North Ryde. At his funeral Bishop Donald Robinson described him as ‘a Christian man of quite remarkable stickability in those causes and convictions to which he had committed himself,’ adding that ‘his convictions were strong, but he was no bigot,’ being ‘independent in mind and judgement’ (Thornton 2015, 77). The Bernard Judd lecture series (2005–09) was initiated in his honour.