Phenomenal Sydney

Anglicans in a Time of Change, 1945–2013

Cameron

• Publisher: Wipf and Stock
• Year: 2016
• eBook ISBN: 9781498289320
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: World History
• Index: History

The Diocese of Sydney is admired, hated, loved, and feared. While often criticized as no longer Anglican, it has at its heart an adherence to classic Anglicanism. While to some it is a beacon in the darkness, to others it is like a threatening bushfire. It is very large, very wealthy, and very influential in other places. Its opposition to ordaining women priests, and, in many parishes, to women preaching, mystifies and angers many Anglicans within and outside its boundaries.What makes this diocese such a phenomenon? The answer lies in its history: in the men and women who shaped it, in a particular view of the authority of the Bible, and in the influence wielded by some powerful institutions that have prospered. Its energy comes from the Scriptural mandate for mission: to bring the outsider into the community of Christian people, but not to leave it there. To educate them in the knowledge of Christ in a variety of creative and imaginative ways.This book also looks at what Sydney has done badly. It may help readers to learn from its past achievements and its mistakes.

Chapter 1

A Unique Brand of Anglicanism

There is a phenomenon in Australia. It is a phenomenon of growth, of good news, of hope, of adherence to Reformation theology, and most of all, to a belief in the authority of the Bible. The phenomenon is the evangelical Diocese of Sydney, which is growing whereas some other dioceses are wondering how long they may survive; it is indigenizing Anglicanism in Australia, and in the process, forging a new identity for Australian Anglicanism.

The Diocese of Sydney is hated, loved, admired, and feared. It has more in common with evangelicals in whatever denomination than with many contemporary expressions of Anglicanism. It is often criticized as no longer Anglican, but at its heart is an adherence to classic Anglicanism, namely the principles enshrined in Cranmer’s Book of Common Prayer and the Thirty-nine Articles of Religion. This diocese has continued to stand out from the other non-evangelical dioceses in Australia as a light on a hill, a beacon in the darkness. Its steady growth under God’s hand, and its search for a contemporary identity in taking the gospel of Christ to Australians, and nurturing them to maturity, is the story of this book.

The Anglican Diocese of Sydney is regarded as a phenomenon, both within Australia and in the entire Anglican Communion.1 For example, Peter Carnley, a former Primate of the Anglican Church of Australia and no friend to Sydney, queried whether the Diocese was Anglican at all, and wrote “sometimes one has the sense that the Sydney website is regularly consulted by those who imagine they are logging on to the most extreme and idiosyncratic Anglican position” [my italics]. Kevin Ward, in History of Global Anglicanism, makes a number of statements about the unique position of Sydney within the Anglican Communion. He states that Sydney is “probably unique in the Anglican Communion in the dogmatic clarity with which it holds its clear and narrowly-defined version of Reformed Anglicanism.” Tom Frame refers simply to “Sydney’s unique brand of Evangelicalism” and Sydney historian Brian Fletcher has written, “Not only was the Bible the sole repository of revealed truth, but . . . Sydney alone possessed the key to that truth.”2

In addition, the Diocese is the subject of much contemporary criticism, aired by a number of books published in recent years. These include Muriel Porter’s The New Puritans: The Rise of Fundamentalism in the Anglican Church, and, more recently, Sydney Anglicans and the Threat to World Anglicanism—the latter book’s title leaving no room for ambiguity. Muriel Porter is a Melbourne Anglican, whereas Chris McGillion, author of The Chosen Ones: The Politics of Salvation in the Anglican Church, is a Sydney journalist fascinated by the Diocese, but certainly not an Anglican. While his book purports to be about the wider Anglican Church, in reality it focuses on the Diocese of Sydney in the 1990s and affirms the view that Sydney is very unusual in its brand of Anglicanism. He states that Sydney “represents one of the extremes of the great diversity of the Anglican Church worldwide.”3

The criticisms levelled at the Diocese have been oft repeated in publications and in interviews conducted for this book. They are held with a high degree of strong emotion. For example, Muriel Porter acknowledged unashamedly that her approach is not objective but polemical.4

Criticisms include Sydney’s resistance to the ordination of women to the priesthood, promotion of Lay Presidency (a lay person celebrating Holy Communion), lack of emphasis on the sacraments, a blurring of the line between laity and clergy, almost total abandonment of prayer book use5 by many rectors of parishes who claim to live by the principles of the Book of Common Prayer (BCP) and the Thirty-Nine Articles, lack of emphasis on ceremonial dress and architecture, “church planting” in other rectors’ parishes and in other dioceses, and the stand taken against practicing homosexuality. Underneath all the charges lie the facts that the Diocese is very wealthy (even after its $160,000,000 loss in 2008), and that, against a backdrop of general decline in the number of Anglicans in Australia, Sydney Anglicans are growing in numbers. This provokes envy, resentment, and fear.6

Sydney is also said to be arrogant. Its wealth, its size, and its claim to be biblically orthodox seem to be the chief causes. An anecdote from a Baptist illustrates this perfectly.

I also came to learn very slowly, and much later, about the “Sydney Anglican” thing. I had come to many of my own conclusions about it all long before I heard other people pontificate about it, and I have to say that everyone at that first Team meeting apart from me were Sydney Anglicans—St Barnabas, St Matthias, students or teachers at Moore College—and I am so glad I got to know them as people and formed my own ideas long before I knew there was a label, or a style etc. I always felt a bit different, but never excluded.

One of the best lines I remember from a discussion one night was about some ecumenical event that was being speculated about. We were all laughing loud about how the charismatics would be over there, speaking in tongues and raising their hands, and the Uniting Church types would be in another corner, signing people up to Amnesty International and fighting for the poor, and the Catholics would be somewhere else running Bingo but also reaching people we were scared of, and the Baptists (my denomination) would be singing daggy 1970s choruses and dressing terribly. Someone in the group said: “What will we (the Sydney Anglicans) be doing?” Quickly someone quipped back: “Sitting round in a group being right.”7

I am writing this history as one formed by and grateful to the people of the Diocese of Sydney. But, as any child appraising her parents, I am not uncritical. In this book I am setting out to examine the history of this unusual Diocese, and will focus on the period since World War II to seek to explain us to ourselves, and to explain us to those outside who watch in admiration or fear or even hate. How did the Diocese of Sydney acquire its present identity? And how has it changed over the years? One characteristic of Sydney Diocese is that, despite a widespread perception, it is far from monochrome.

Why is Sydney Diocese the way it is, and what drives it? Taken as a whole, the following characteristics describe Sydney but each characteristic is not necessarily unique to Sydney.

First and foremost is a very serious commitment to the centrality of God’s Word, the Bible. It is pre-eminently authoritative for the individual Christian and for the Christian congregations which meet as God’s ...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Foreword
• Acknowledgments
• Abbreviations
• Prologue
• Chapter 1: A Unique Brand of Anglicanism
• Chapter 2: Laborers of the Right Kind 1788–1945
• Chapter 3: The Greatest Gift to Evangelical Anglicanism 1945–1950
• Chapter 4: Loyal Sons of the Reformation 1950–1958
• Chapter 5: The Last of the Englishmen: the Gough Years 1959–1966
• Chapter 6: One of our Own at Last: Marcus L. Loane 1966–1982
• Chapter 7: Sound and Fury 1982–1992
• Chapter 8: The Cost of Relationship 1993–2001
• Chapter 9: The Jensen Ascendancy 2001–2013
• Phenomenon
• Interviews, Emails and Letters Listed
• Appendix
• Bibliography