The Anglican Church of Australia draws on the rich social and religious heritage of Britain. It seems probable that Christianity was transported to the Roman colony of Britain by soldiers and traders who shared their faith with the local inhabitants. While its specific origins are unclear, there was a Church in Britain by the year 208AD. The first recorded English martyr was Alban who died in 303. When the Roman armies withdrew from Britain and the country was subsequently overrun by the Picts, Scots and Saxons, the British people fled to the south and west of the island, taking the Church and it’s teaching with them. In 563, Columba left Ireland with twelve companions to establish a monastery on the remote island of Iona from which they conducted a successful mission to the tribes of the mainland. With the Church divided for several centuries by political instability and tribal warfare, the unifying figure was St Augustine who was sent by Pope Gregory the Great to centralise and reorganise the English Church under the jurisdiction of Rome in 597. The Latin customs differed in many respects from those of the Celts, and it was not until the Council of Whitby in 664 that the northern Christians decided to adopt Roman customs. From that date there may be said to have existed a ‘Church of England’.

Middle Ages

The English Church continued to grow through the Middle Ages (AD600-1300) and showed great independence while acknowledging the authority of the Papacy. In the later Middle Ages, a succession of corrupt and worldly popes used their position to gain wealth and power. The Church, the most important institution in Western Europe, gradually accumulated great wealth while the clergy became involved with civil affairs and political intrigue. To the English, the Pope ceased to resemble the Chief Shepherd of Christ’s Flock. Rather, he appeared to be a greedy and oppressive foreign monarch. From around 1400 onwards, people began calling for reform. They wanted the Bible available in a language they could understand and senior clergy made more accountable for their actions. King Henry VIII was hostile to reform until personal circumstances led him to exploit calls for religious reform to achieve political ends. The relationship between the Papacy and the English Church was finally ruptured in the first half of the sixteenth century.

Reformation

The effect of reform movements led by Martin Luther and John Calvin in Europe when coupled with the desire of King Henry VIII to secure a divorce from his Queen, Catherine of Aragon, led to a major re-think of doctrines and customs. These pressures altered, among other things, the social and political standing of the Church. The reformers demanded that the Church be purged of heretical teachings and unbiblical practices gradually introduced during the previous millennium. They asserted that these additions obscured Christ’s teaching and deformed his Church. The ‘Reformation’ of the English Church was based on two key principles.

First, the reformers held that each national church was independent and subject to civil law. The English monarch became ‘Supreme Head of the Church’ and papal power was rejected. The English church claimed the right to order its own life. This included the forms and patterns of corporate worship with liturgies written in words ordinary people could understand. The Archbishop of Canterbury, the senior Anglican cleric, was to preside as the ‘first among equals’ in the official or ‘Established’ Church. As his formal authority was limited to his own diocese, his position and role was nothing like that of the Pope. The English believed, like the Orthodox Eastern Church, that it was possible to be Catholics without the Pope. [The title ‘bishop’ comes from the Greek episcope word meaning ‘overseer’ or ‘superintendent’. The term ‘diocese’ is another Greek word and refers to administrative area. It defines the geographic limits of a bishop’s authority].

Second, the Church could be reformed and still claim historical continuity. The reformed Church retained the Canonical Scriptures [those books of the Bible acknowledged as divinely-inspired and authoritative in the experience of the Church], the historic Creeds, a three-fold order of ministry with bishops, priests and deacons together with a corporate life centred around the sacraments of baptism and holy communion. [The sacraments are visible symbols affirming Christian understanding of God’s invisible but very real activity in the world]. Only those things which were contrary to Scripture were abandoned by the English Church. The ancient Church in England became the reformed Church of England and still claimed to be Apostolic, Catholic, Reformed and Protestant.

Part 2: The Anglican Church in Australia

Arrival

When the First Fleet sailed from Portsmouth for New South Wales in 1787, the Rev’d Richard Johnson was licensed as chaplain to the Fleet and the settlement. He was responsible initially for 1,100 convicts, soldiers and settlers. Johnson was a gentle and sensitive man who disliked conflict but stood firm on principle. Although temperamentally ill-suited to the task, Johnson was faithful and determined. For six years he ministered alone in trying conditions, even financing the cost of the first church building which was not completed until 1793. In 1794, he was joined by the Rev’d Samuel Marsden who would serve in the colony for the next forty years. Marsden was to be a controversial but diligent leader. Depicted by historians as a shrewd entrepreneur and harsh magistrate, he was a faithful servant of the Church and a pioneer missionary to New Zealand and the South Pacific. From 1800, the number of Anglican clergy steadily increased although work in the colony was neither attractive nor well paid. However, clergy were never far behind when the pioneers and explorers penetrated the hinterland and charted the coastline.

The Church’s contact with the Aboriginal people was initially based on ignorance and fear. Leading churchmen, like Marsden, neither appreciated nor understood aboriginal culture. When European settlers displaced aborigines from their ancestral tribal lands, the Church could not imagine the damage this inflicted on aboriginal culture and self-esteem. Rather, Marsden proposed that Christian missionaries should live with aboriginal tribes to quell unrest and avoid open conflict with the advancing Europeans. No volunteers were forthcoming. A mission to the aborigines of Wellington Valley in NSW established by the Church Missionary Society in 1832 ended in failure. Later attempts were no more successful. Aborigines were disinclined to accept the religious faith of a people who had thoroughly disrupted their community and destroyed their world. There was nothing surprising, then, in their unwillingness to become farmers or artisans like the Europeans settlers. For its part, the Church was helpless in dealing with racism and oppression when economic self-interest and survival were involved. Only in the twentieth century were clergy successful in prompting legal action against those who mistreated aborigines. In its contact with Australia’s indigenous people, Anglicans were no better but no worse than Christians of other denominations. This remains the least praise-worthy element of Australian Anglican history.

Development

In 1825, the Rev’d Thomas Scott was appointed Archdeacon of Australia under the jurisdiction of the Bishop of Calcutta. He was succeeded four years later by the Rev’d William Grant Broughton. The new archdeacon was a reserved and scholarly man who hoped the Australian Church would be modelled closely on the Established Church of England. However, he gradually accepted that other denominations were a permanent feature in the colony and that Anglicans would not receive special privileges. But Broughton realised the enormous potential for growth and lobbied the British Government to create separate dioceses as a means of extending the Church’s mission. Broughton was consecrated the first (and only) Bishop of Australia in 1836. He was a man of great dedication who did not spare himself in striving to see that the Church evolved on sound organisational structures. To maintain oversight across the entire continent was impossible. Gradually, new dioceses were formed and the episcopal work shared. The Diocese of Tasmania was created in 1842. Five years later, the Diocese of Australia was sub-divided into the separate Dioceses of Adelaide, Newcastle and Melbourne.

Over the next eighty years, the number of dioceses would increase to twenty-five. Each sought ways to influence the communities in which they were placed. Many dioceses founded their own newspapers, established schools, created social welfare agencies and organised community action groups before political parties and trade unions even existed. In addition to moulding the actions and attitudes of those who attended worship, the Church was determined to influence political life and popular culture, particularly in the period 1880-1920. Although the Commonwealth Constitution proclaimed in 1901 provided for a secular Australian state where no one denomination could be favoured by government over another, Anglicans nonetheless believed Australia was already a ‘Christian nation’ shaped directly by the teaching of Jesus. The Church was active in campaigning for a variety of diverse social and economic causes ranging from support for the prohibition on alcohol to the need for low-cost housing for the poor. Although the Church’s lay (non-ordained) leadership was drawn heavily from the affluent and literate classes, there was a concerted effort in the period before World War II (1939-45) to broaden the Church’s outlook and widen its membership. There was an undeniable need to include and involve those previously marginalised by a lack of education or social standing.

When war ended in 1945, the Church of England remained the largest denomination in Australia. [It held this position until the 1986 national census when overtaken by the Roman Catholic Church]. However, the number of people attending regular worship began to decline in 1959. Figures for occasional services (baptisms, confirmations, weddings and funerals) started to fall after 1966. Although the body of people calling themselves Anglican and attending services as a percentage of the total Australian population has fallen since the very high levels of the late 1950s, the Church’s ministry and mission continues to felt across Australia in the form of Sunday and weekday worship, occasional services, education, social welfare, counselling and workplace chaplaincy. While most ministry is undertaken by individual parishes, larger tasks are undertaken by the parishes acting through diocesan agencies. The motivation behind the Church’s work remains the teaching of Jesus and his command to love God and one’s neighbour. This has prompted Anglican dioceses to remain attentive to the world’s insights and its problems while demanding that individual congregations be open to the Spirit of God and the cry of the neglected. An Archbishop of Canterbury once told Anglicans that their Church existed for those outside it!

Constitution and Canons

A perennial concern for the Australian church has been the legal status of its relationship with the parent Church of England. Bishop Broughton believed the Australian Church lacked autonomy and, in the event of certain legal proceedings, could find itself in embarrassing situations with some difficult problems to resolve. However, the matter remained unresolved until after World War 1 (1914-1918). By this time, there were a number of different ‘parties’ within the Australian church, each reflecting a distinct tradition within Anglican belief. The two major groups were known as the ‘Evangelicals’ and the ‘Anglo-Catholics’. They are sometimes referred to, rather inaccurately, as ‘Low’ and ‘High’ Church. With entire dioceses standing for distinct doctrinal positions which directly influenced their understanding of the Church’s charter and mission, agreement was not readily achieved.
After nearly forty years of dialogue and debate, a constitution for the Church of England in Australia came into effect on 1 January 1962. This important document detailed the basic character of Anglican belief and practise, the way its corporate life would be governed, and the way its disputes would be resolved. The Constitution declared that the 1662 Book of Common Prayer (BCP) should remain the authority in matters of doctrine and discipline to highlight the importance of historical and doctrinal continuity with the Church of England. To highlight its autonomy and commitment to being consciously Australia, the title ‘Anglican Church of Australia’ was formally adopted for use in 1981.

Liturgy

While the best from its English traditions was preserved, the Australian Church recognised the need to develop new liturgies to reflect the realities of modern life and the demand for a specifically Australian prayer accounting for uniquely local conditions. [Liturgy is a Greek word meaning ‘a community’s characteristic activity’. It has come to be understood primarily as the form of public worship and ritual]. A range of new services written in modern language with a selection of prayers and alternative words for special occasions and particular needs were trialed over more than a decade. The production of An Australian Prayer Book (AAPB) in 1978 was the culmination of a prolonged revision of liturgy. Another revised liturgy was published as A Prayer Book for Australia (APBA) in 1995. Although these newer books are used throughout the Australian Church, the BCP remains the standard for what Anglicans believe and an inspiration for what they do together.

Relations With Other Churches

The Anglican Church is ‘ecumenical’ in nature. It sees itself as part of the ‘whole household’ of God within each local community as well as throughout the world. It does not claim to be the only Church nor does it recognise any other church’s exclusive claim. The Anglican Church is committed to ecumenical dialogue and overcoming impediments to fellowship with Christians of other traditions. In discussions with all denominations, Anglicans generally believe four things need to be agreed before reunion can take place. These conditions were explained in the ‘Lambeth Quadrilateral’ a statement adopted by the Anglican bishops when they met at Lambeth, England in 1888. Reunion must involve:

1. The Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments, ‘as containing all things necessary to salvation’, and as being the rule and ultimate standard of faith.

2. The Apostles Creed, the Baptismal Symbol; and the Nicene Creed, as the sufficient statement of the Christian faith.

3. The two Sacraments ordained by Christ himself - Baptism and the Supper of the Lord - ministered with the unfailing use of Christ’s words of institution, and of the elements ordained by him.

4. The historic Episcopate, locally adapted in the methods of its administration to the varying needs of the nations and peoples called of God into the unity of his Church.

These four components - Scripture, Creed, Sacrament and Episcopate - reflect the fundamentals of Anglicanism and the signposts for a re-integration of the presently divided Christian Church.

The Church Today

As it enters the new millennium, Australian Anglicans remain committed to embracing the surrounding world with the love of Jesus Christ. Anglican social welfare and counselling organisations are among the biggest in the country. The Church provides chaplains to the defence forces, hospitals, schools, industry and prisons. It also makes a valuable contribution to Australia’s regional neighbours through the Anglican Board of Missions and the Church Missionary Society.

The Australian Church shares with all Anglican dioceses a commitment to a five-fold statement of mission agreed by the Anglican Consultative Council in 1992:

1. proclaim the good news of the Kingdom of God

2. teach, baptise and nurture new believers

3. respond to human need by loving service

4. seek to transform unjust structures in society

5. strive to safeguard the integrity of creation, and sustain and renew the life of the earth.

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