Australia: 'Divided' Anglicans dodge conflict

Andrew McGowan
September 30, 2010

Diversity is all-too-familiar in the wider Anglican Communion. The Australian Anglican Church is itself an uneasy alliance of dioceses and provinces formed in the colonial era, with distinctive histories and identities whose compatibility has always been limited.

The fragility of these arrangements is never more in evidence than at its General Synods (assemblies). In the relatively recent past, debates over women's ordination in particular, but also over human sexuality, lay presidency and liturgical texts, have seen a specific division emerge between the distinctive form of conservative evangelicalism associated with the Diocese of Sydney, and a broad but vague 'mainstream'. the rest

...Interviewed at the end of the Synod, Jensen described the event as a lost opportunity, and superficial. He may have been right on both counts, but the superficiality means the avoidance of depths where radically different cultures and theologies hold sway. Their exposure and discussion would underscore the idiosyncratic place of the Diocese of Sydney, within the Australian Church and otherwise...