(Livestream Recording) Mr. (Archbishop) Glenn Davies' Inauguration, Australian Anglicans

The Archbishop’s Inauguration

http://acl.asn.au/catch-up-viewing-the-archbishops-inauguration/

Posted on August 23, 2013
Filed under Sydney Diocese



A recording of Archbishop Glenn Davies’ Inauguration service can be seen here on Livestream. The Archbishop’s sermon begins exactly 61 minutes into the recording.

Update: You can hear / download the 18MB audio file of the sermon here. And Russell Powell has the story.

Radio Interview with Archbishop-elect Glenn Davies, Anglican Church of Australia

http://davidould.net/?p=5817&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+davidould+%28David+Ould%29

Radio Interview with Archbishop-elect Glenn Davies

Posted on August 12, 2013 by David Ould          

             

Home» Podcast » Radio Interview with Archbishop-elect Glenn Davies

 

A friendly interview, from Christian radio station Hope 103.2 here in Sydney, that’s really helpful to understand more about the man who is our new archbishop and the challenges ahead of him.

Podcast: Play in new window

Moore College, Sydney, Australia

Moore College in Sydney, Australia, an Anglican institution.

Part 1
http://vimeo.com/38812562

Part 2
http://vimeo.com/38814448

Part 3
http://vimeo.com/38815104

Are Sydney Anglicans Actually Anglicans?

http://www.abc.net.au/religion/articles/2011/09/01/3307437.htm

Are Sydney Anglicans actually Anglicans?

Michael Jensen ABC Religion and Ethics 1 Sep 2011

 

A view of Anglicanism that places Scripture as supreme authority and has a flexible attitude to secondary matters (like vestments) certainly has a good case to be considered as authentically Anglican.

See also

• Related Story: Sydney Anglicans and the threat to world Anglicanism Muriel Porter 29 Aug 2011
• Related Story: Serious flaws in Muriel Porter's misguided polemic Mark Thompson 31 Aug 2011
• Related Story: For and against fundamentalism ABC Religion and Ethics 1 Sep 2011
• Related Story: A cross-shaped life: Giving thanks for John Stott Peter Jensen 9 Aug 2011
• Related Story: The task of the church in the modern state Bruce Kaye 21 Jan 2011
• Related Story: The place of the church: locality and catholicity Stanley Hauerwas 10 Mar 2011
• Related Story: Does Fresh Expressions misrepresent the Gospel? Bruce Kaye 21 Feb 2011

Comments (60)

Are Sydney Anglicans actually Anglicans? If an Anglican from another part of Australia, or from the United Kingdom, walked into an ordinary Sydney Anglican parish on a Sunday morning would they recognise what they saw as being Anglican?

The building may have a shape that echoes the distinctive shape of countless English parish churches. You are, however, unlikely to find a robed or collared clergyman leading the service - unless you come perhaps to the early morning service. While the structure and outline of the prayer book service will be in evidence, it will be used flexibly. The music will most likely be modern in style and the words projected on a large screen. The pipe organ and the pulpit will not be used. The prayers may well be ex tempore.

For Melbourne journalist Muriel Porter, there is no way in which what I have just described could be called "Anglican." Her notion of Anglicanism relates to a particular liturgical style. Without this particular style, in their mind there is no Anglican identity.

For more, see:
http://www.abc.net.au/religion/articles/2011/09/01/3307437.htm

Archbishop Peter Jensen's 2011 Christmas Message

http://acl.asn.au/2011-christmas-message/

Archbishop Peter Jensen’s 2011 Christmas message

Posted on December 24, 2011
Filed under Sydney Diocese



Archbishop Peter Jensen has released his Christmas message for 2011.

“we are celebrating the generosity of Jesus, who left his heavenly home to live amongst us and to die for us on a Roman cross to reconcile us to God.”

Here’s the full text.

Christmas is our big annual reminder of the generous love of God. When Jesus was born, it was God himself entering our story to rescue us from sin.

Some people just can’t stand the fact that he is the most important person in history and our whole dating system revolves around his birth. They even want to change the language to write him out.

It’s sad really. It shows that people are frightened of his influence and will do anything to stop us talking about him.

Sad, because Jesus Christ is the world’s greatest inspiration. We need him in our lives and in our history and in our community.

The signs are that the world is in for a difficult time economically. For some countries it is not just a downturn, they will need to grapple with a breakdown in their economic systems. Already, many people go hungry each day. If times get worse, it will be the poor and disadvantaged who suffer most. We are going to need to be generous, and the greatest inspiration to generosity that the world has ever known is Jesus.

When we celebrate Christmas we are celebrating the generosity of Jesus, who left his heavenly home to live amongst us and to die for us on a Roman cross to reconcile us to God.

When we are reconciled to God, it affects the whole way we think of others. We reach out in care and forgiveness.

It’s a glad and generous season of the year because our God makes us glad with his generosity.

Dr Peter F Jensen,
Archbishop of Sydney,
Christmas, 2011 AD.

Carols at St. Andrews Anglican, Sydney Cathedral

The Anglican Church League reports:  http://acl.asn.au/carols-from-st-andrews-christmas-eve/

ABC Television will broadcast the service of Carols from St. Andrew’s Cathedral in Sydney this Christmas Eve.  Watch it around Australia on ABC1 6:00–7:00pm on Saturday 24th December.

The Sydney Cathedral reports at:

http://www.sydneycathedral.com/events/6pm-8pm-11pm-christmas-celebration

6pm, 8pm, 11pm Christmas Celebration

Day and time:

Saturday, 24 December 2011 - 6:00pm - Sunday, 25 December 2011 - 12:10am

Come and join in the Christmas Celebrations at St Andrew's Cathedral. We'll hear of the two births and one baby in 'The What and Why of Christmas'. We'll take part in joyous singing of carols with our choir and orchestra. Above all, we will rejoice as we remember the coming of Jesus our Lord and Saviour; born into the world, to give us joy and peace.

Sydney Anglicans? "Another Attack upon Sydney Anglicanism" by Dr. Thompson

http://www.virtueonline.org/portal/modules/news/article.php?storyid=14806

Another attack upon Sydney Anglicanism
By Mark Thompson
August 22, 2011

Muriel Porter has been attacking Sydney Anglicans for years. In synods and committees and in print, she has vociferously opposed the position of the Diocese of Sydney on a whole range of issues. Never very far from the surface, though, is her anger at the diocese's attitude towards women priests and bishops. She has campaigned on the other side of this debate with vigour for more than twenty-five years. She takes no prisoners and has been willing to use whatever means might be at her disposal to further her cause and, as even those who agree with her in principle have often recognised, to vilify those who, for whatever reason, disagree with her.

In 2006 she produced a rather more extended attack on Sydney theology and practice entitled The New Puritans: The Rise of Fundamentalism in the Anglican Church (Melbourne University Press). The review of that book in Melbourne's The Age (18/03/06) described it as 'a little breathless and over the top'. Though it presented itself as a serious piece of scholarship (published by a university press, no less) it was really just the latest salvo in a propaganda war. She presented the theological commitments of the diocese as eccentric and extreme, and sought an analogy in the popular parody of Puritanism as joyless, legalistic and a threat to Anglican 'moderation'. Here was a phenomenon that any thinking person would want to resist and denounce in the strongest possible terms.

In 2011 The New Puritans has been revised and brought up to date with a new title: Sydney Anglicans and the Threat to World Anglicanism: The Sydney Experiment. As with the earlier volume, Muriel Porter acknowledges quite openly that she is 'obviously not able to report on Sydney objectively and evenhandedly' (xv). The acknowledgement was unnecessary. Even without it, the highly polemical nature of the book - and a significant degree of distortion that inevitably arises from that - is obvious. The book is littered with unsubstantiated assertions introduced with words such as 'Some have suggested ...' (e.g. pp. 70, 107), 'I suspect the real reason ...' (e.g. p. 71, 75) and 'Perhaps ...' (e.g. p. 159) (The title of the book itself is a giveaway of course, but the final titles of books are sometimes the work of the publishers rather than the author.) Unfortunately, it is also littered with factual error, half-truth and the attribution of false or hidden motives to those with whom she disagrees. Sydney Anglicans might think they are taking a stand on the teaching of Scripture but in reality, she repeatedly asserts, their motivation is much more sinister.

The book is organised around the premise that Sydney's experiment with radical Protestantism, sourced in the theology of a maverick principal of Moore College, Broughton Knox, and given full expression in the episcopate of his student, Peter Jensen, represents a serious threat to faithful Anglicanism in both Australia and throughout the world. In order to support this contention, Porter needs to recast the doctrinal, ethical and ecclesiastical innovations of the past thirty years in global Anglicanism (women's ordination, revised attitudes on divorce, acceptance of homosexuality, the rejection of exclusive claims about Jesus and salvation, and a rejection of the thoroughgoing truthfulness and reliability of the Bible) as faithful discipleship and the decisions of Sydney's synod and archbishops (not to mention the teaching at Moore College) as aberrant, unAnglican and ultimately a misuse of Scripture.

A clear instance of how she does this is found quite early on in the book:

The 'uniqueness of Jesus' is something that Sydney Anglicans - along with other conservative Christians - are passionate about. Jesus' redemptive death on the Cross, they maintain, only redeems those who explicitly and consciously make a faith commitment to him. The classical Christian position is rather more nuanced: Redemption is only through Jesus, yes, but that does not require explicit faith in him, but rather is effective wherever God's love evokes a response. (22)

On what definition of the 'classical Christian position' could this be true? Is it what Thomas Cranmer taught and embodied in the Articles, the Homilies and the Book of Common Prayer? Can it be found anywhere in the church fathers? Is it consistent with the New Testament? However, for Porter, only a radically conservative Christian would raise such questions. When it comes to the Thirty-nine Articles of Religion, in particular, she wonders why anyone would make them a 'yardstick of orthodoxy' (23).
To my mind the Articles are a quaintly-worded, seriously limited summary of Anglican understandings of faith and doctrine, scarcely relevant to modern Australian life. (24)

The book takes aim at a number of targets within Sydney, including Moore College, AFES, and the ACL but it returns again and again to attack Peter Jensen, and, as the source of the distinctive and in her mind aberrant theological stance of the diocese, Broughton Knox. (Porter's chief complaint against Knox is, unsurprisingly, his tenacious opposition to the ordination of women. As the book draws to a conclusion, the Sydney experiment is relabelled 'the Knox experiment, 163.) An interesting array of sources can be found in the footnotes, but it is rather odd that at some points (e.g. pages 41 and 42) summaries of positions are taken from comments and published work by implacable opponents of Sydney: Duncan Reid from Melbourne provides a summary of Peter Jensen's thinking on revelation and he and Peter Carnley (a previous Archbishop of Perth) provide a summary of Broughton Knox's views. More than odd is the rehearsal of Kevin Giles' widely discredited attack on the theology of the diocese and its leadership. Even Peter Carnley's ludicrous suggestion that T. C. Hammond was Arian is given a re-run (116–7) (one would have thought that fabrication had been put to bed by David Wright's courteous yet telling rebuttal in the St Mark's Review several years ago).

It is entirely unsurprising that in her treatment of the relationship between the Diocese of Sydney and the General Synod of the Anglican Church of Australia, Sydney is repeatedly cast in the role of the spoiler, who prevents a united and longsuffering majority in the national church from faithfully exercising the ministry God has entrusted to them. The unilateral action of Dowling and Carnley with regard to the ordination of women is presented as a courageous attempt to bring faithfulness and justice in the face of Sydney's intransigence. The use of the Appellate Tribunal to find a way to consecrate women bishops in the wake of repeated failure to persuade the requisite majority of the General Synod that this should be authorised, is also recast as positive, healthy and necessary. The insistence by Sydney that the machinery of the Anglican Church of Australia, including the Primate, act within the expectations of Constitution is considered unreasonable and that constitution itself is described as 'very limited' (78). Porter is willing to suggest that instead of the constitution as it exists, it may have been 'wiser to create a national church that did not include Sydney' (48).

An Australian church without Sydney, I believe, would have released enormous energy for growth and renewal in the rest of the dioceses, freed from Sydney's relentless negative impact. (48)

No mention is made of the way on successive occasions the Diocese of Sydney has been openly and vehemently attacked on the floor of the General Synod. Unsurprisingly, there is no mention of the move in 2007 to avoid voting on a motion thanking God for his provision of free salvation in Christ by 'moving the previous question'. Many newcomers to General Synod were distressed by this inability to unite around central gospel truths. No mention is made of the way in which, without consultation with the dioceses who finance the General Synod by their assessments, the administration of the General Synod has been enlarged and the role of the Primate expanded.

Porter's characterisation of the role of Sydney in the wider Anglican Communion is equally innovative. Lambeth 1998, and in particular its motion affirming biblical teaching on human sexuality and rejecting homosexuality as 'incompatible with Scripture', was the result of the conference being 'shanghaied by an astonishingly well-organized and vocal anti-gay lobby' (53). Of the alliance forged between 'first-world conservatives' and 'third world conservatives' (53), she asks Is it possible that backroom deals were also done to forge the winning alliance between conservative first-world leaders and their third-world friends? One deal might have been: 'Don't hassle us about polygamy, and we will back you on homosexuality.' (54)

GAFCON 2008 is almost inevitably painted in a similar light, and she is clearly no fan of the Jerusalem Declaration. She is troubled by Peter Jensen's role in the movement (60-63). Nevertheless, in her view, the continuing problem transcends both the Declaration produced at GAFCON and its current leadership.

It is not the Declaration that is the problem for the future of the Anglican Communion. Rather, it is the goals of FCA [the Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans, which sprang out of GAFCON] that are quite confronting. There are two goals - the first is 'missional', the second is a 'consequence', as the online document describes it. The first goal, to preach the biblical gospel, includes defending 'the gospel and the people of God against their spiritual adversaries, notably the revisionist theology which has become so prevalent in the West'. The second is 'to provide aid to those faithful Anglicans who have been forced to disaffiliate from their original spiritual homes by false teaching and practice'. The FCA then is a political movement designed to perpetuate and even foster division across the Anglican Communion. (64)

There is no comment about the way in which faithful men and women have been hounded from their churches for refusing to abandon the historic teaching of the Anglican church. The scandalous use of the legacy of previous generations of Christians to prosecute those who object to the decsions of the hierarchy of The Episcopal Church is passed over in silence. No mention either of the repeated and unheeded warnings sounded by orthodox Christians around the world prior to, during and after the events which have proven to be a catalyst for such decisive action.

Porter acknowledges that Sydney Anglicans would argue that they are following the teaching of Scripture in their opposition to innovations such as the endorsement of homosexual behaviour. However, she does not believe them.

So biblical authority alone seems unlikely to be the reason why homosexuality has become the 'line in the sand' in world Anglicanism. I suspect it is respectable window-dressing for the exercise of blatant power politics. (75)

However, for all the forays into other issues - and the Sydney discussion of lay administration also gets an extended treatment (97-110: its purpose is, according to Porter, 'to lay the symbolic axe finally and decisively to the root of traditional church order' as 'the culmination of Sydney's relentless drive for Puritan purity' (109))- the real issue to which Porter returns in every chapter is the difference she has with the decisions of Sydney with regard to women's ministry. (In addition to dominating every other chapter, the issue is the sole focus of chapter six.)

If the denial of full equality to women in the church is Sydney Diocese's 'great cause' [really?], then the full equality of women in church leadership at every level is my 'great cause', a Gospel imperative that I believe cannot be denied. (134)

She ridicules the complementarian position without, it seems, ever understanding it. She suggests that 'the slogan "equal but different" sounds close to one of the descriptions of the place of women in Islam: not inferior, just different' (125). She cannot see how submission and equality can coexist.

And what about the 'difference' they claim? This seems to be a matter of 'distinctive roles', though that is not spelt out other than the opaque, nonsensical terminology of 'loving, self-denying, humble leadership' for men and 'intelligent willing submission within marriage' for women. It is not apparent just what loving leadership means in this context, let alone intelligent and willing submission. It is a rhetoric that belongs to an earlier age ... (126)

It is often when addressing this issue that the book is most disappointing. She repeats comments by others which even she has to admit were and are inappropriate.

A former Australian Primate, Peter Carnley, speaking in the 1987 General Synod debate on women priests, described opposition to women clergy as as much 'psycho-spiritual' as theological. He said he had a 'funny feeling' it was psycho-spiritual because such deep emotions were obviously stirred by the debate. He suggested that fear of dominance by women may well be involved. The absence of father-figures during World War II may have left many men then in power in the church with a hostility to women, a result of their mothers' strong presence in early childhood. Had too many mothers supervised their sons' baths for too long? he asked. His comments were not well received. But though the point was perhaps not appropriate as a debating tactic, it may well have had some substance. (114)

The inclusion of these inappropriate remarks by a trenchant critic of Sydney is unsurprising in the end. In an earlier chapter Porter herself suggests the early history of the colony, and later the dominance of women in the perfectionist movement, may be in some large measure responsible for the peculiar stance of Sydney on this issue (chapter 3).

Once again Porter questions the appeal to the plain teaching of Scripture in support of the decisions taken by successive Sydney synods on this issue. She repeatedly points to other interpretations of biblical passages cited, interpretations put forward even by some evangelical scholars, as evidence that Sydney's position is untenable (e.g. 65, 71, 73). This completely ignores other interpretations of precisely this phenomenon: there may be other reasons for a plurality of interpretations, and these need not be indicative of ambiguity or obscurity in the biblical text. Just because a variety of interpretations currently circulate in Christian circles does not mean they should. Not all interpretations of Scripture are valid interpretations of Scripture. All interpretations need to be tested by their faithfulness to the text in question in its context and according to its nature as the written word of God (and undoubtedly this goes for the interpretation or reading adopted in Sydney as much as any other).

Muriel Porter believes the Sydney experiment is faltering. The financial crisis and the absence of a recognised successor to Peter Jensen provide, from her perspective, a sliver of hope that Sydney will abandon its radicalism and join the rest of the Anglican Communion in a bright new future. She declares herself 'hopeful that in time the traditional Anglican penchant for moderation will prevail in Sydney' (164). Evangelicals in Sydney and elsewhere hope for something quite different.

There is very little that is new in this book and the narrative Muriel Porter seeks to relate is undoubtedly as one-sided as she acknowledges it to be. She is a determined advocate of her own views and a powerful polemicist. Sadly, what she has not given us in these pages is an accurate picture of the Diocese of Sydney or of World Anglicanism. What she casts as a threat many others around the world would welcome as a beacon of hope.

----The Rev. Dr. Mark Thompson teaches theology at Moore College, Sydney.

Julian Mann: "Anti-Anglican Attack on Sydney Diocese"

We share Rev. Mann's inquiry re: Sydney's adherence to the Protestant, Reformed and Confessional articles and Dr. Porter's recent attack.  However, we are concerned about the reports of non-liturgical and Praise Band worship in the Sydney diocese.  If one wishes to be a broad evangelical without a Prayer Book, be one.  But, don't claim to be Anglican without that good old BCP, those revered Articles, and that old godly and reverent worship.  We here at RA are Prayer Book Calvinists in worship, doctrine, and piety...and for good reasons. 

http://www.virtueonline.org/portal/modules/news/article.php?storyid=14805

ANTI-ANGLICAN ATTACK ON SYDNEY DIOCESE
By Julian Mann
Special to Virtueonline
August 30, 2100

Dr Muriel Porter's attack on Sydney Diocese is fundamentally anti-Anglican. That is manifest from her complaint about the Ministry Training Strategy which the Very Reverend Phillip Jensen, now Dean of St Andrew's Cathedral in Sydney, set up in the late 1970s when he was a parochial incumbent.

In her book about the threat Sydney Diocese allegedly poses to world Anglicanism, an extract from which has just been published by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, Dr Porter complains that 'MTS has been the primary recruiting ground for all Sydney clergy, a pathway strengthened by Phillip Jensen's 2003 appointment as director of Ministry, Training and Development, the diocese's department for the training of clergy'.

In essence, Dr Porter is complaining that God has blessed a ministry training programme within an Anglican diocese that has sought to identify men and women with Bible teaching gifts, to support and nurture those individuals in the grace and knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ, and then to encourage them into full-time Christian service.

To identify, encourage and train biblically faithful servants of Jesus Christ is not a criminal offence. In fact it is thoroughly Anglican. Witness the Bishop's charge to those ordained presbyter in the Ordinal: 'And seeing that you cannot by any other means compass the doing of so weighty a work, pertaining to the salvation of man, but with doctrine and exhortation taken out of the holy Scriptures, and with a life agreeable to the same: consider how studious ye ought to be in reading and learning the Scriptures...'

The other aspect of Dr Porter's analysis that must be challenged is her suggestion that 'authentic' Anglicanism is not Evangelical and Reformed. She tries to paint Sydney Anglicans as theologically deviant, lambasting their diocese 'as an extremely conservative, hard-line monolithic Evangelical centre'.

One wonders what Dr Porter makes of the thorough-going Reformed Evangelical doctrine of the 39 Articles of Religion. They certainly provide no support for theological liberalism or Anglo-Catholicism.

Furthermore, to suggest as Dr Porter does that Sydney Diocese's refusal to ordain women presbyters makes it unAnglican is hugely problematic from the perspective of the historic Anglican formularies. Neither the Book of Common Prayer, nor the Ordinal, nor the 39 Articles stipulate that women presbyters are an essential requirement upon the Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Unfortunately, Dr Porter does land a punch in relation to Sydney's self-publicity. One hopes one can say this humbly, but it is always unwise for Christian ministers to broadcast the significance of their own leadership role. Talking about the extent of one's own influence inevitably draws hostile gun-fire.

But Dr Porter's ungodly whinge about Sydney Anglicans is not merely an attack upon an individual diocese that seeks to uphold the biblical doctrine of the 39 Articles but upon all in the world who aspire to practice confessing Anglicanism.


----Julian Mann is vicar of the Parish Church of the Ascension, Oughtibridge, South Yorkshire, UK. His weblog is Cranmer's Curate.

Sydney as Anglicans? "The Porter Pot and Sydney Kettle"

http://www.virtueonline.org/portal/modules/news/article.php?storyid=14812

The Porter Pot and the Sydney Kettle
by The Revd John P. Richardson
The Ugley Vicar
August 22, 2011

Despite her criticisms of the Diocese of Sydney generally and the Jensen brothers in particular (ABC 'Religion and Ethics', 29 August 2011), Dr Muriel Porter and Archbishop Peter Jensen have one thing in common. Both agree that the Anglican Church must undergo principled, radical change.

It is when they come to the nature of and basis for those changes that they profoundly disagree.

In Dr Porter's latest book, Sydney Anglicans and the Threat to World Anglicanism (which, let the buyer beware, is actually a reworking of an earlier publication), she makes it clear that the changes she is happy to see are in core theology, personal morality and gender-related issues.

On the other hand, she regards the thirty-nine Articles of Religion - the summary statement of Anglican beliefs formulated at the Reformation, which English clergy still have to acknowledge in the 'Declaration of Assent' they make on admission to a new post - as "quaintly worded ... seriously limited ... scarcely relevant to modern Australian life" (p24 ).

Dr Porter's driving concern, which is given considerable space in her book, is that women should be ordained as priests and consecrated as bishops. And of course she can take satisfaction from the widespread acceptance of this practice in the global Anglican Communion.

She is also not fazed by the fact that the early instances of women's ordination (for example in the United States) took place in violation of existing rules. For her, such actions were a bold witness to the truth.

When it comes to the outward forms of Anglicanism, however, Dr Porter is a firm traditionalist. - or rather she is a fan of the Anglican 'style' developed by the end of the nineteenth century. She may have a twenty-first century attitude to women priests, but she is determined that they should wear the robes of an earlier era, take 'proper' services and preferably have a choir and organ accompaniment.

In short, what she longs for, by her own admission, is the Anglicanism of her Sydney childhood - what she thinks would be "a more reasonable, generous, kindly form of Anglicanism" than at present, but one where actual belief is semi-detached from the Anglican heritage of faith.

Given that she lives in Melbourne, however, one is left wondering exactly what is Dr Porter's problem. Clearly, she perceives Sydney as a sinister threat, referring to the "tentacles" of the diocese reaching "around the globe and throughout the Anglican church". From an English perspective, however, the threat of Sydney Anglicanism lies not in any political 'machinations', as Dr Porter alleges (I may be wrong, but her account of the 1998 Lambeth Conference seems decidedly far-fetched). Rather, it lies in the challenge Sydney presents to the prevailing liberal-catholic ethos.

In the words of the late Donald McKinnon, a man who had a great impact on Rowan Williams, theological liberals often combine "a nearly complete scepticism" with "an ecclesiological fundamentalism". In other words, they will cheerfully abandon traditional beliefs, but are fiercely defensive of the outward paraphernalia of church life.

Go into a theologically liberal church and you will typically find not radical contemporary worship (as you might expect) but candles, robes, sacraments, rites and rituals - that, and an almost fanatical devotion to the 'special' nature of the ordained 'priesthood'.

Muriel Porter accuses Sydney Anglicans of being 'fearful' when it comes to women's ordination. But in truth, the opposition to Sydney - at least on these shores in organs like the Church Times - is driven by a desperate fear that it undermines the one thing liberal Anglicanism has left to hold on to.

I recall one famously liberal English bishop (now retired) once saying he often doubted, but "never at the altar". Is it surprising that the fiercest reaction comes from liberals regarding Sydney's 'break with catholic order'?

It is Sydney's own 'principled radicalism' in this regard that is the real 'threat'. And sadly this colours Porter's own views, such that she (like others) takes an unfortunate delight in Sydney's financial difficulties or the limited progress of the diocesan mission - as if a wealthy and effective church would be a bad thing. Surely, though, it is the outward forms of nineteenth century Anglicanism which are "scarcely relevant to modern ... life"?

Meanwhile, Sydney is not the paradise some people here fondly imagine and it is not quite the success for which some hoped. But at least it is faithful to its principles - and that is something Dr Porter ought to admire.

Are Sydney Anglicans actually Anglicans?

We find this article to be more than weak.  If one wishes to be a broad evangelical with wide appeal, be one.  If one is a Prayer Book Churchman and Anglican, be one. 

http://www.virtueonline.org/portal/modules/news/article.php?storyid=14814

Are Sydney Anglicans actually Anglicans?
OPINION

By Michael Jensen
ABC Religion and Ethics

http://www.abc.net.au/religion/articles/2011/09/01/3307437.htm
Sept. 1, 2011

A view of Anglicanism that places Scripture as supreme authority and has a flexible attitude to secondary matters (like vestments) certainly has a good case to be considered as authentically Anglican.

Are Sydney Anglicans actually Anglicans? If an Anglican from another part of Australia, or from the United Kingdom, walked into an ordinary Sydney Anglican parish on a Sunday morning would they recognise what they saw as being Anglican?

The building may have a shape that echoes the distinctive shape of countless English parish churches. You are, however, unlikely to find a robed or collared clergyman leading the service - unless you come perhaps to the early morning service. While the structure and outline of the prayer book service will be in evidence, it will be used flexibly. The music will most likely be modern in style and the words projected on a large screen. The pipe organ and the pulpit will not be used. The prayers may well be ex tempore.

For Melbourne journalist Muriel Porter, there is no way in which what I have just described could be called "Anglican." Her notion of Anglicanism relates to a particular liturgical style. Without this particular style, in their mind there is no Anglican identity.

The assumption of course is that the particular style of liturgy that she has in mind is normative for Anglican worship throughout history and in every place - and that Anglicanism itself permits little or no variation in that form. This point of view reflects the almost complete supremacy in most Western countries of the liberal-Catholic paradigm of Anglicanism, with its emphasis on liturgy over doctrine.

Evangelical Anglicans, however, have a commitment to Anglicanism as a theological entity. That is, they recognise that even if Anglicanism is not as strictly confessional as some other churches, it still has doctrinal parameters.

There is for Anglicans a core of orthodoxy around which all manner of stylistic variations are permitted and even welcomed. The needs of mission and local custom make liturgical flexibility desirable - a practicality that the Anglican formularies of the sixteenth century themselves recognise.

What is consistent as far as evangelical Anglicans are concerned is a common faith. They are Anglicans not merely by convenience but by conviction.

Sydney's Anglicans are the inheritors of an Anglicanism that has a long and deeply established heritage in the Church of England and they share in an expression of Anglicanism that is, in global terms, widespread. Far from being an aberration caused by a quirk of history or a narrow ultra-Protestant sect, they can trace their way of being Anglican in continuous line back to the Reformation and even somewhat before.

Moreover, the classic Anglican description of the supreme authority of Scripture resonates deeply with the evangelicalism that is found in most parishes in Sydney.

So what is an "Anglican"? In one sense, the term itself is anachronistic. The Church of England is primarily an institution, the national church of a particular country. It was only with the growth of the British Empire that the question of "Anglicanism" arose - especially when there was now a political separation between England and the United States of America.

The Episcopal Church of the United States was not governed by the King of England from 1776 - so in what sense could it, and other former Church of England churches, understand their continuity with the church that had given them birth? It was an identity question that was felt with a particular pressure in the nineteenth century and which has decisive significance for the way we consider the question of "Anglicanism" today.

Since the 1980s, revisionist historians such as Christopher Haigh and Eamon Duffy have tried to describe the English Reformation of the 1500s as a top-down and chiefly political movement which had little traction amongst the English people themselves.

There is no doubt that the English Reformation was achieved through the workings of statecraft as much as through the conversion of souls. Henry VIII's "great matter" - the problem of his barren marriage to Catherine of Aragon - was the catalyst not only for an institutional break with the Church of Rome and with the papacy, but for a change in the theological outlook of the English church.

While Haigh and Duffy try to paint this as almost entirely engineered by a coterie of theologians like Archbishop Thomas Cranmer, there is no question but that the faith of Reformation Europe had made some inroads among the English people in the 1520s, however clandestine.

Thomas Cranmer is not a figure for Anglicans equivalent to the way Martin Luther is for Lutherans. Nonetheless, Cranmer's Reformation bequeathed to the English Church as particular theological outlook which cannot be eclipsed in any description of Anglican identity. Though some have tried, Oxford historian Richard Turnbull notes, "it is difficult to deny the formative role of the Reformation on the polity, theology and ministry of the Church of England."

It is certainly appropriate to use terms like "Protestant" and "Reformed" when speaking about Anglicanism.

Cranmer set down three large foundation stones upon which henceforth the English church was built: the Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion, the Book of Common Prayer and the Ordinal. These have not come down to us unaltered from his pen. They were subject to a degree of refinement and alteration.

Even so, the attempt to minimise the importance of these formularies in some parts of the Anglican Communion in recent years only reveals an embarrassment with the unabashed Protestantism of these documents.

In other words, they express a "protest" against the Roman Catholic Church and a theology which was itself moving away from Lutheranism and is mainly learnt from the Reformed churches in Germany and Switzerland. South African Anglican scholar Nicholas Taylor notes that these three documents "became a definitive expression of Anglican doctrine and discipline."

"Unabashed Protestantism" - is that an overstatement? That the liturgy was now to be in the vernacular was in itself recognition of a different - Protestant - understanding of the very nature of Christian faith itself.

The words of the Prayer Book were not meant to be experienced by the people as a mystery evading their understanding. The service of Holy Communion was, in successive editions of the Prayer Book, moving in a more Protestant or "Reformed" direction. Recent work by renowned Oxford historian Diarmaid MacCulloch shows that Cranmer's Eucharistic theology was becoming even less like Luther's understanding of the "real presence" and shifting towards a Reformed understanding.

The Thirty-Nine Articles assert the primacy of the authority of Scripture for Anglican faith and practice. That is not to say that Scripture is the only authority, but it is held to be the supreme authority, even over the great creeds of the church (Article VIII). Article VI reads:

"Holy Scripture containeth all things necessary to salvation: so that whatsoever is not read therein, nor may be proved thereby, is not to be required of any man, that it should be believed as an article of the Faith, or be thought requisite or necessary to salvation."

According to the articles, Scripture is the measure of what Anglicans believe.

Richard Hooker (1554-1600) is often held up as the doyen of Anglican divines - "judicious," rational, careful and moderate in tone. For a long time, the standard reading of Hooker was that he had endorsed "the three-legged stool" of Scripture, Reason and Tradition as equal, mutually-informing authorities in Anglican thinking. It is a myth that still persists. Careful reading of Hooker's Ecclesiastical Polity tells another story. He writes:

"What Scripture doth plainly deliver, to that first place both of credit and obedience is due; the next whereunto is whatsoever any man can necessarily conclude by force of reason; after these the voice of the Church succeedeth. That which the Church by her ecclesiastical authority shall probably think and define to be true or good, must in congruity of reason over-rule all other inferior judgments whatsoever."

Scripture, reason and tradition do not have equal weight for Hooker. Quite clearly, Scripture has precedence, then reason and third, church tradition.

Anglicans often talk of their faith as a via media between Rome and Calvin's Geneva. To read the writings of some of the leading supporters of Elizabeth's religious policy is not to sense a spirit of compromise with Rome, however.

Like the Queen they served, theologians like Hooker were adamant in their Protestantism. What they were arguing about was which variety of Protestantism they would endorse and to what extent. It was more accurately described as a via media between Martin Luther's Wittenberg and John Calvin's Geneva.

What these examples demonstrate is that those who hold that it is thoroughly and authentically Anglican to view Scripture as the supreme authority have a more than reasonable case grounded in the major documents of Anglican history and in the thought of its major theologians.

There are other readings of Anglican history - most notably the reading perpetuated by the Oxford movement in the nineteenth century. Yet even the sketch of Anglicanism I have provided here shows that the Oxford movement's reading of Anglican history could only ever be a selective and polemical one.

A Christian faith which places it emphasis on the supreme authority of Scripture for doctrine and practice and which upholds a reformed view of salvation and the sacraments can with confidence assert its continuous place within the Anglican story. A view of Anglicanism which places Scripture as supreme authority and which has a flexible attitude to secondary matters - such as what garb the clergy wear - certainly has a good case to be considered as authentically Anglican. Such is found in the Sydney diocese.

Sydney Anglicans also identify very strongly with the "Evangelical" movement of the eighteenth century. The first chaplains of the colony were evangelicals and sponsored by the circle of Charles Simeon, one of the leading evangelicals of the Church of England. This was a movement that began within but subsequently exceeded the bounds of the Church of England.

The established church proved too limiting for many and also sought to persecute and expel the proponents of evangelicalism. And yet, there is no doubt that evangelicalism has played and continues to play a major part in the history and ethos of Anglicanism.

Most commonly, the Evangelical movement is thought to have begun in the eighteenth century with the conversion of John Wesley (1703-1791) in 1738. Labelled "enthusiasts" by their sneering opponents in the Church of England, the evangelicals were treated with great hostility and found it difficult to make their livings.

This "enthusiasm," though it seemed crass to some of their co-religionists, was representative of an extraordinary reawakening of ardent faith. It was a direct reaction against the dryness, formalism and rationalism that characterised much of early eighteenth century established Christianity. A Christianity without a heart for God was clearly deficient.

The evangelical movement lead to missionary zeal and social reform on a grand scale; evangelicals formed societies and co-operated trans-denominationally. They wrote hymns that are still sung today. They seemed less interested in ecclesiastical preferment and more concerned with missionary work.

Historic evangelicalism of the type found in Sydney and Anglicanism overlap considerably. Anglicanism is a great denominational home for evangelicalism, but it is not the only one. Likewise, evangelicalism has made and continues to make a considerable contribution to Anglicanism.

According to historian David Bebbington, evangelicals are "conversionist" in that they proclaim the necessity of personal transformation in response to the gospel of grace. They preach to the heart, appealing for repentance of sin and turning to God in dependence. Their gospel is highly individualist in this sense - it is not sufficient for true Christian faith merely to be in possession of membership in a church grouping.

Evangelicals are also activists. They expect the evangelical conversion to result in a transformation of life. This means that the believer is expected to be busy in the process of personal moral renewal. The activism characteristic of evangelicals results in evangelistic mission but also in programmes for social welfare on a large scale - both of which are in evidence among Sydney's Anglicans.

Evangelicals have always been people of the Bible. Like their Reformation forebears, they have taken Scripture as the supreme authority for Christian life and for doctrine. The centrality of preaching for evangelicals is evidence of what this means in practice.

As well as being biblicist, the evangelical is also crucicentric - which means that central place is given to the atoning work of Christ on the cross. Christ is an exemplary figure and a moral teacher, but he is first and foremost the saviour who died for human sins.

In bringing Anglicanism and evangelicalism together, Anglican Evangelicals have mostly but not exclusively subscribed to a form of moderate Calvinism. They appeal for their identity within Anglicanism to the Protestant and Reformed nature of the Anglican settlements of the sixteenth and seventeenth century.

This ethos is perhaps where tension with the institutional framework of Anglicanism most often surfaces. More often than not, evangelicals have felt themselves excluded from the positions of power within the Anglican churches of the West. Their priority has always been the preaching of the gospel and not the maintenance of the institutional church.

If the institution inhibits the preaching of Jesus, then there is no question where compromise has to be made. For other Anglicans with a more hierarchical and less egalitarian view this seems like schismatic behaviour.

The evangelical behaviours which have irritated non-evangelical Anglicans historically are magnified in the case of Sydney. The unusual dominance of evangelicals in the diocesan structure of Sydney diocese means that Sydney does look strange to Anglicans who are accustomed to liberal-Catholic hegemony - and ecclesiology - elsewhere. Liberal-Catholics expect to be in charge of things.

But they would be mistaken in calling evangelicalism "unAnglican," for the moderate Calvinist evangelical outlook of Sydney with its missionary activism and its biblicism and its emphasis on the atoning blood of Jesus Christ as a sacrifice for sins is utterly consistent with the evangelical Anglican tradition that has had an unbroken presence in the Church of England for nearly three centuries.

The evangelical Anglican scholar Alister McGrath has written:

"My concern is simply to insist that evangelicalism is, historically and theologically, a legitimate and respectable option within Anglicanism. At no point is evangelicalism inconsistent with any of the Thirty-Nine Articles, the only document apart from Scripture, the creeds and the Prayer Book, regarded as authoritative for Anglicans."

As those who count themselves heirs of the Protestant Reformation and the evangelical movement, Sydney Anglicans share in a legitimate and honoured heritage within the Anglican Church.


----Michael Jensen is lecturer in theology at Moore Theological College, Sydney. He is the author of Martyrdom and Identity: The Self on Trial (Continuum, 2010).