The Development of Caodai Studies in Australia: Its Tone and Characteristics, Biases and Outcomes. Christopher Hartney Department of Studies in Religion University of Sydney In this assessment of the antipodean study of the new religion of Caodaism, the role of Australian scholars and believers (occasionally working with scholars) have made a significant and unique contribution to knowledge on this emerging global faith system. 1 In this article, I explain the nature and extent of this contribution and how it fits into trends developing within international research on this religion. I seek here to identify the tone and characteristics of this national contribution. To do this, I will begin with a brief examination of knowledge production from the religion itself and offer a summary of international scholarship. This will enable me to explain in more detail the range of contributions made by Australian scholars to the study of Caodaism and how this has advanced our understanding of this complex and dynamic faith system, presently Vietnam’s third largest. Stages of Knowledge Production in Caodaism Within the religion, I posit four stages of knowledge production and text dissemination. 2 The first begins during 1925 and becomes increasingly fecund from the mid-point of this year onwards. It is a stage that starts with friends drinking and sharing Vietnamese-language poetry in Saigon. The significant common points of this group are their training at the eminent French high school in Saigon, Collège Chasseloup-Laubat (presently lycée Lê Quý Đôn) and their subsequent employment in the administration of the French colonial systems of Indochina – working solely in the French language. Most prominent in this group is the nationalist Phạm Công Tắc [1890-1959] who is, in 1925, 35 years old and working as an employee of the colonial customs office. The bilingualism of this group and their dependence on, yet wariness of, their colonial master will have an ongoing impact on the rise of the new faith. At first, table- tipping in the Western séance tradition begins their experiments in contacting the otherworld. Then a Kardecian writing basket (corbeille à bec) is more efficiently used to receive messages 1 Here I do not provide an overview of Caodaism per se. For more detailed discussion of the faith please see: Sergei Blagov, Caodaism: Vietnamese Traditionalism and Its Leap into Modernity (Huntington, N.Y: Nova Science Publishers, 2001); Jérémy Jammes, Les Oracles Du Cao Dài: Étude d’un Mouvement Religieux Vietnamien et Ses Réseaux (Paris: Les Indes savantes, 2014); Christopher Hartney, ‘Traditions Anciennes, Foi Nouvelle: Le Caodaïsme et La Vie Religieuse Du Monde’, in La Naissance Des Nouvelles Religions, ed. Jean-François Meyer and Reender Kranenborg (Geneva: Georg Editeur, 2004); Christopher Hartney, ‘Spiritism and Charisma: Caodaism from Its Infancy’, Australian Religious Studies Review 20, no. 3 (2007): 334–56; Christopher Hartney, ‘Caodaism’, in The Sage Encyclopedia of the Sociology of Religion, ed. Adam Possamai and Anthony J. Blasi (California: SAGE Publications, Inc., 2020). 2 Christopher Hartney, How Heaven Operates: The Confucian/Daoist/Buddhist Afterworld of Caodaism as Envisioned by Phạm Công Tắc. Being the Original Text, English Translation and Commentary on the Book Con Đường Thiêng-Liêng Hằng-Sống or The Divine Path to Eternal Life – a Celestial Journey and Esoteric Mapping of Heaven Delivered in 35 Sermons during the Years 1948 and 1949. (In press, 2023).