This book traces the history of the Anglican church in Australia, from the colonies till the early 2000s and then makes a few predictions on how the future may look and the place Australian Anglicanism has in the world.
This book seemed to be pushing back from three others written in the early 2000s basically critiquing Sydney Anglicans. Tom's gripe was that those authors failed to put forward a position of what an Australian Anglican was. By what standard can we say that Sydney Anglicans are not behaving within the Anglican communion if there is no definition of what an Australian Anglican is? It is one thing to say what something isn't, but to do that (if you are to be intellectually rigorous) you should also say by what standard it isn't and define what it is you are comparing it to.
While Anglicanism is neither Roman nor Puritan, it seems to be quite hard to define what Anglicanism is. I was hoping by the eighth chapter of the book to have a more codified or easy one-liner about what it means to be an Anglican, but that wasn't the case. It seems to rest more on an ethos or a practice than a strict confession or doctrinal statement. In other books, associated with GAFCON, they sought to define Anglincias by its belief and practice, which isn't a bad thing. This book does mention the Lambeth Quadrilateral (1888) However, it does seem in practice, belief isn't so tightly held to in all areas.
Throughout the book, there was a common theme of suspicion within the church about oversight and governance of who gets to say what is in and out. Even way back in the second Lambeth conference, when Bishops were invited to attend, it was said that they would respect matters of doctrine and "that no authoritative explanation of doctrine ought to be taken in hand." Likewise, for discipline, Lambeth would respect each diocese's court and its own administration of church discipline. Bishops were not to be involved in the affairs of areas not under their jurisdiction without the permission of the bishop in charge.
These original founding ideas of Lambeth perhaps are today forgotten or are wished to be changed so Lambeth gets some teeth. Because of this fragmented or de-centralised set-up of essentially independent dioceses, there seems to be just this sentiment or willingness of collegiality that binds the worldwide Anglican church together. It works when everyone is on the same page, it lacks any enforcement when anything goes wrong.
On a smaller scale, this also is played out in the Australian Anglican Church. There are 23 dioceses, some with very distinct flavours, which goes back to a historical trait of which Bishops were in charge of them, and over time that created a feedback loop of enforcing one position over another. By the 1920's Wangaratter was heading towards an Anglo-Catholic and even before that in Sydney the Anglican Church League was set up to maintain its Evangelical character.
In 1913 there was a committee formed to help with the building of churches in Canberra. In 1923 a site was chosen and in 1926 General Synod agreed to build a national cathedral. It was to be called St Mark's Cathedral. This never happened for it was tied up with who would be charged and for what purpose. Why should there be one Bishop/Primate over the national church? What would be their jurisdiction? Would it be different to the Canberra and Goulburn dioceses and would they still have their own Bishops? And of cause who is going to pay for it? Today it is the place of St Mark's Theological College, and there is probably still land for it. The Australian Anglicans also nerfed the tenure of its Primate so they can only be in that position for up to six-year. This all shows a lack of trust in its leaders and every diocese kind of wanting the space to do their own thing.
A large section of this book operationed under the heading of believing, behaving and belonging. This traced the history and struggle of attendance. This whole section was fleshed out even more in Tom's other book Losing My Religion but was a good overview of attendance pre and post wars and the leading up to the millennium. Under behaving, this in part traced the fallout of the royal commission and the introduction of the Australian-wide (except for Canberra & Goulburn dioceses who had their own) code of conduct in behaviour.
I did enjoy the predictions that Tom made about what might happen to the church in the next 25 years, considering he wrote this book 15 years ago. He knew tension was going to happen but thought there were greater pressing needs for addressing demographic changes (ageing population) and attracting a new generation even with our own perceived "ridged" traditions. Also, the looking after clergy to deal with attraction and retention so their burnout rates decline, and most likely many parishes moving to having a part-time priest. He also thought there would probably be no more than 4 Anglican theological colleges across the country. These were all great missional challenges and probably still relevant today, but of cause, the creation of the Southern Cross Diocese and the tension of all of these sexual ethics is what has been dominating the Anglican issues for the past two years. This almost global issue has probably distracted us from our local missions.
Frame saw the decline of the Liberal arm of the church with the Evganlica arm having the most numbers and influence. On a global level, he thought the whole structure wouldn't be universal with a series of breakaway groups and networks, and his great fear was if this would move to the Australian Church itself. He foresaw that there would strong theological disagreement on some topics people will think key. However, Tom saw the Anglican nature of holding this tension as a strength as the Anglican church was broad enough to have these robust discussions.
The Anglican Church of Australia has inherited much from its established church in England and while initially operating as the pseudo-established church in the colonies, much has changed since then. Even then, its past is still influencing the dynamics today, and perhaps even being pushed to its limits with internal politics. There is a lot of theological and practical room under the Australian Anglican umbrella, and yet the church as a whole is still trying to work out its identity. Due to the federated nature of the church set up there perhaps may never be one Australian Anglican identity, but I do hope that it would look back to its theological roots and hold on to them for dear life, while at the same time check out its historical practices and contextualise it for the next generation, so as to avoid the two extremes of being either Roman or Puritan.
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