Anglican Church of Australia

The Anglican Church of Australia is part of the worldwide Anglican Communion, or group of Christian churches that are in agreement with each other and with the Church of England (also known as the Anglican Church) in beliefs, doctrine, and worship.

The church was founded when British convicts and marines were first sent to the continent in 1788. This group of about 1,000 people included eleven ships of more than 720 convicts, about 250 military personnel sent to guard the convicts, the crew, and their families, and Richard Johnson, a thirty-one-year-old Anglican priest. Johnson was sent to provide spiritual leadership and guidance to the new penal colony near what became modern Sydney, Australia. While the first church service was held within days of arriving in Australia, it would be nearly five years before an actual church was built.

The Anglican Church of Australia expanded to include some 4 million Anglicans worshiping in more than 1,400 churches in twenty-three dioceses across the continent by the mid-1990s. Though it never became the official church of the country like the Church of England did, the Anglican Church of Australia was the largest denomination until the end of World War II brought an influx of people of different faiths that changed the ethnic and faith mix of the country. During this time, membership declined in the Anglican Church of Australia, as in many denominations. Into the twenty-first century, the Anglican Church of Australia had an estimated three million self-identified adherents.

History

In its earliest days, the Anglican Church of Australia was known as the Church of England in Australia. Johnson and the early church leaders were military chaplains operating with the authority of both the homeland church and government.

The original plans for the church included converting the more than three hundred thousand Aboriginal people in Australia. However, these people showed little interest in Christianity. Over more than 150 years, those representing the Church of England attempted to Europeanize the Aboriginal people, but these efforts were largely unsuccessful. As a result, the Anglican Church of Australia was largely made up of descendants of the original settlers and others who settled in Australia after them. The attempts to Anglicize the Indigenous people of Australia were an extension of the way the church saw itself as a civilizing and moralizing authority. Other efforts to bring Europeanized ways to the country, such as the development of schools, were more successful.

In 1872, church members held their first synod, or official meeting. During this meeting, they agreed on the church's constitution and its governance, which included leadership by the Archbishop of Canterbury. The constitution remained in place for the next ninety years. In 1962, the church legally separated from the Church of England and began operating as a separate entity with its own elected primate, or head bishop. In 1981, the Church of England in Australia officially changed its name to the Anglican Church of Australia.

As in the Anglican Communion more broadly, the Anglican Church of Australia experienced a division of opinion in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries over the ordination of women and gay priests and over same-sex marriage. Kay Goldsworthy became the first female bishop ordained by the Anglican Church of Australia in 2008 and its first female archbishop in 2017. Also in 2017, Jo Inkpin became the first Australian priest to openly disclose that she is transgender.

In 2017, the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sex Abuse reported that between 1980 and 2015, 1,082 individuals had lodged complaints of child sex abuse against more than seven hundred Anglican clergy and laypeople across twenty-two of the twenty-three dioceses. The General Synod issued a formal apology for the church's mishandling of complaints, and the church paid millions in reparations. The churches in the Anglican Communion remained deeply divided over Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transsexual, Queer, Intersex, and Asexual (LGBTQIA+) issues, and the Anglican Church of Australia was no different.

Beliefs

The Anglican Church of Australia, like all members of the Anglican Communion, hold the Apostles' Creed and the Nicene Creed as the basic statements of faith. Anglicans believe in one God embodied by three—God the Father, his Son, and Holy Spirit—and accept the Chalcedonian Definition about Jesus Christ. This includes belief in the divine nature of Christ, his virgin birth, and his rising from the dead.

The Thirty-Nine Articles, a sixteenth-century document, includes beliefs held by many Anglicans. The updated version, known as the Chicago-Lambeth Quadrilateral, focuses on the historical episcopacy—or leadership by bishops—of the church, the acceptance of the Nicene Creed, the practice of two sacraments—baptism and communion—and the recognition of the Bible as the inspired word of God. Baptism is performed at all ages, and other services such as confirmation, marriage, and ordination are performed.

Anglicans accept the sixty-six books of the Old Testament and New Testament as their authoritative texts and also use the books of the Apocrypha. Most worship is conducted with The Book of Common Prayer and An Australia Prayer Book, which was published in 1978 and updated to A Prayer Book for Australia in 1995.

Organization

Anglican churches are episcopal, meaning they are led by bishops. The word episcopal is from a Greek work meaning bishop. The first bishop of the Anglican Church of Australia was consecrated in 1836. The hierarchy in the church includes the primate, archbishops, bishops, and archdeacons.

The Anglican Church of Australia has twenty-three dioceses, each representing the parishes in a particular geographic region. A bishop heads each diocese, and larger dioceses typically have an archbishop assisted by several other bishops. Bishops are responsible for ordaining and licensing priests and deacons in their diocese.

Each parish has a vestry, or an elected lay leadership, along with a priest. The priest may be a rector (chosen by the congregation and approved by the bishop) or a vicar (appointed by the bishop). The vestry and clergy work together to decide on matters relative to the individual church, such as budget, building maintenance, outreach and ministry, and pastoral care.

A bishop governs the parish clergy. Each year, the clergy from each parish along with elected lay leaders from each parish organize a synod to discuss and vote on matters of importance to the diocese, such as budget concerns and ministry and outreach efforts.

Every three years, bishops from all dioceses around the country along with representatives of clergy and laity chosen by their respective districts meet for a general synod, where matters of doctrine and church canons, or rules, are discussed. Individual dioceses must approve these matters before they are adopted.

The primate of the Anglican Church of Australia also participates in regular primates meetings, where the heads of all members of the Anglican Communion discuss issues related to doctrine and pastoral and moral concerns.

Bibliography

"About Us: Anglican Church of Australia." Anglican Church of Australia, anglican.org.au/about-us/anglican-church-of-australia/. Accessed 22 Jan. 2025.

"The Anglican Church of Australia." Anglican Communion, www.anglicancommunion.org/structures/member-churches/member-church.aspx?church=australia. Accessed 22 Jan. 2025.

Barker, Renae. “Behind the Split of the Anglican Church in Australia over Gay Marriage.” The Conversation, 18 Aug. 2022, theconversation.com/behind-the-split-of-the-anglican-church-in-australia-over-gay-marriage-188893. Accessed 22 Jan. 2025.

Knaus, Christopher. "Royal Commission Reveals Scale of Child Sexual Abuse in Anglican Church." The Guardian, 16 Mar. 2017, www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2017/mar/17/royal-commission-reveals-scale-of-child-sexual-abuse-in-anglican-church. Accessed 22 Jan. 2025.

MacCulloch, Diarmaid. Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years. Viking, 2011.