Rev. Victor Montgomery Keeling James (19 March 1897 – 1984) was a Unitarian minister in Melbourne, Victoria from 1947 to 1969. He was the target of right-wing hostility in the 1950s and 1960s due to his activities in the peace movement and links to Communist China.

The Melbourne Unitarian Church was founded in 1852 as the Unitarian Christian Church, a conventional anti-Trinitarian church with the Bible as its foundation.

William Bottomley (1882–1966) was born in Wharfedale, Yorkshire, son of a Wesleyan lay preacher who died when Bottomley was 16 years old. He, also, was a preacher before becoming a Unitarian and paid propagandist for the Independent Labour Party. He came to Melbourne from Somerset in April 1926, succeeding Rev. J. T. Hustow as minister of the Melbourne church on Grey Street, Eastern Hill. An adjacent manse was completed for the minister's family the following August. He was soon involved in social reform causes, working for reform of the divorce laws. He was known as a pacifist, a cause which was gaining ground following the jingoism of the First World War, in which he served. He briefly entered politics as a candidate against Harold Holt for the Federal seat of Fawkner in 1937 and opposed participation in WWII. He was a popular and energetic minister, attracting a large following to the church, including university students to its Young People's Society. He participated at the opening of the new Sydney Unitarian Church in 1940, taking the pulpit on its first Sunday. He was involved with the Workers' Educational Association and the University Extension Board. He gave thoughtful and entertaining talks on ABC radio. He conducted a popular program, "The Unitarian Half-hour" weekly on radio 3XY, which ran from 1943 or earlier. He published a monthly magazine, The Beacon from the mid-40s, which would survive to 1956. He attracted guest speakers ranging from the conservative Wilfrid Kent Hughes to Maurice Blackburn. Zelman Cowan was a regular before he became a national figure and O. R. Snowball used the pulpit in his push for divorce reform. Bernard O'Dowd and Marie Pitt were active members. The vibrant intellectual atmosphere and freedom of the church also attracted a number of "free spirits" and "oddball" individualists.

Victor James was born in Pontypool, Wales, son of a dentist, druggist and Calvinist Methodist lay preacher, but strongly influenced by his neighbour, a shoemaker and student of Darwinian evolution, who encouraged him to question Biblical authority. Following demobilisation in 1918 he trained as a dentist, with a practice in Ilminster, Somerset, and by 1922 was married and living in Taunton, where he heard Bottomley preaching and so became a regular attendee and occasional lay preacher of Taunton Unitarian Chapel on Mary Street. He began preaching at nearby Yeovil, which had lost its regular minister and was in danger of closing. He abandoned dentistry to study externally for the Unitarian ministry, a four-year course at Manchester College, Oxford; he then returned to South Wales, where he became minister of the Unitarian churches of Aberdare and Mountain Ash nearby.

Bottomley came out of his service in the First World War disillusioned but not an absolute pacifist. He was not enamored of the anti-religious and undemocratic nature of Communism. He championed workers' rights but not absolutely — he spoke against the miners' strike of 1949.

James had not only served in that conflict but, due to his longstanding antipathy to Fascism, served also in WWII as instructor with rank of company commander in the Welsh Regiment, followed by an RAF regiment (5358 Airfield Company) as squadron leader in China. He then served as Provost Marshal at Kowloon, accompanied by his wife, in the years 1945–1946. He was not as religious as Bottomley, being more humanist, perhaps agnostic.

James was invited by Bottomley to take the position of assistant minister of the Melbourne church. He arrived by the Orion with his wife and four children on 3 July 1947. He became publicly involved in freedom of speech and anti-war movements (see below), generally perceived as Communist-inspired. Though he was at pains to point out that his participation was from personal conviction and not on behalf of his congregation, it drew unwelcome attention to the church, which in 1949 split along political lines.

James conducted "The Unitarian Half-hour" from 1947 or earlier to 1964. In 1952 James invited Stephen Fritchman, pacifist and minister of the First Unitarian Church of Los Angeles to address the congregation on the occasion of its 100th anniversary service. He was also to have toured other States, sponsored by the Australian churches, but his application for a passport was refused by the US State Department.