Heinrich Friedrich Niemeyer: Foundation leader of the Apostolic Church of Queensland

The doctrine of the Apostolic Church of Queensland (ACQ) was transported from Germany to Australia in the late nineteenth century by an evangelist of the General Christian Apostolic Mission (GCAM), a religious body that claimed a connection to the Catholic Apostolic Church (CAC) which had its genesis in charismatic events in 1830s England. The evangelist was a German railway worker who displayed considerable leadership ability in attracting and retaining a group of mainly Lutheran settlers in rural Queensland despite the best efforts of the Lutheran church to win them back. The ACQ continues to quietly exist as a part of Queensland’s religious landscape. The survival of the ACQ is in large part due to the foundation laid by its formative leader during a tenure spanning almost 40 years. This leader-centric history is likely to be of relevance to historians interested in the reasons for the persistence of smaller churches in an increasingly pluralist Australian society. Little has been written about the ACQ or its foundation leader, Heinrich Friedrich Niemeyer, and this article attempts to partly address this paucity.