Ordinary Sunday 12: 20th June, 1999
The Rev'd Dr Colin Holden, Assistant Priest, St Peter's Eastern Hill
How Should we Pray concerning the Election of a new Archbishop for Melbourne?
This morning's apparently short gospel reading (Matthew 10: 26-33) is a subdivision of a slightly larger group of sayings of Jesus concerning discipleship and the relationship between the disciple and Jesus: discipleship involves choices, and situations in which the disciple will be in some way clearly opting for the things of God: speaks for Christ; in sayings that immediately follow, discipleship involves identity through suffering, and lastly, Jesus speaks of those who recognise the disciple's affinity with his or her Lord, those who are able to receive the disciple as though he or she were in some way Jesus Himself.
While I would normally spend the rest of this time addressing the gospel of the day, there are a very few occasions which invite a departure from this pattern, and there is a current issue for Melbourne Anglicans which I consider to justify making such an exception. I refer to the situation in which we await the election of a new archbishop. What you are about to hear may at first seem to be a cross between a potted history lecture and a reflection on ecclesiastical politics. However, I hope that it becomes clear that my real aim is neither history nor politics alone, but to answer a seemingly simple question: how best can we pray, as we are called on to do, in this situation? And to come to an answer, we do have to look at a little history, and refer to some politics.
I want to being by asking a question: what is distinctive and valuable about Melbourne as an Anglican diocese? An answer that many would give is that it is, and has for some time, been a diocese with a reputation for being tolerant of diversity, 'liberal' in one of the best senses of the word. I remember training at Trinity College as a candidate for ordination with others, some of whom came from Perth. They commented on the range of Anglicanism to be found here; there were three candidates from Sydney parishes, whose parishioners would not be considered for training in that diocese - to them, Melbourne certainly seemed tolerant. And our own vicar came here from Adelaide, partly drawn by that same reputation.
This tolerance is not a position that for Melbourne has been set in concrete since the diocese's foundation. There is certainly the figure of the early great intellectual and liberal, Bishop Moorhouse. But between him and us (Moorhouse returned to England in 1886) Melbourne experienced two periods of great divisiveness. The first, a conservative reaction in the 1890s depression period, was a response driven by anxiety over precisely that intellectual liberalism and its results. The other, far more divisive period, occurred towards the end of WW I, partly generated by dissatisfaction with Archbishop Lowther Clarke, an intelligent and determined educationist, who like some contemporary politicians, didn't cope with disagreement or questioning, and often lacked 'people skills'. At the same time, it also reflected sectarian divisions exacerbated by the conscription debate. This time, goals were carefully defined and careful organisation took place, pressure groups and voting tickets on party lines appeared; it all became adversarial and aggressive, in a style that many Melbournians associate with Sydney. Older members of this congregation will be aware of the closure of St John's La Trobe St, ostensibly to fund the Mission of St James and St John in performing work among the poor, equally to take an Anglo-Catholic church off the Melbourne map.
Such infighting left an aftermath of distrust and suspicion. Anglo-Catholics weren't exactly innocent: Father Barclay of St John's, easily turned by fans into a romantic hero figure, sometimes reads to me as being like a naughty schoolboy provocatively teasing someone much bigger, and wondering why someone eventually hit back.
At this point, at the end of World War I, if Melbourne had followed the kind of pattern that is true of Sydney's history, it would have seen the election of a conservative evangelical as archbishop, and a continuation of divisive tactics between those of different kinds of Anglicanism. Instead, something different happened. Clarke, the tactless broad church liberal, was followed by three men, Harrington Clare Lees, Frederick Head and Joseph Booth, none from the Catholic end of Anglicanism, all basically low churchmen. To this extent, they represented the mainstream of Melbourne Anglicanism in their day. But they were marked by an appropriate degree of tolerance. Lees soon won the respect of many Catholic-minded Anglicans, denouncing synod voting tickets; Head quietly encouraged the celebration of a major date in the Catholic Anglican's calendar in 1933, the centenary of Kebles Assize Sermon; Booth would take part in the liturgy here at St Peter's, but would write anxiously to Maynard, fearful lest a photographer be present and the result offend some of the other brethren. The great liberal figure that most of us remember, is Archbishop Woods, who was able to build on this foundation, and in whose time there was a great.
Now, I want to refer briefly to one element in what in every sense of the word is Anglo-Catholic mythology. There is a stream in Anglo-Catholic understanding ( or misunderstanding) of history that sees bishops as the dreary headmasters, the restricting individuals who put obstacles in the way of great Catholic priests and others, who taught and teach the faith in spite of the bishops. In the history of Melbourne, this is quite untrue. Many individual instances demonstrate that the survival and freedom of Catholic Anglicanism has been as a consequence of the bishops, and more often than not, bishops from a different tradition. A decided evangelical, Field Flowers Goe, as much as Lees, Head, Booth and Woods, defended the right for different traditions to coexist, while also stating where the 'edges', the defining limits for tolerance', were.
Our history thus does not tell us that we are best served, by barracking for our own; or that we will be diminished if we do not make this our priority. Others might indeed look at us somewhat critically at this point in time, and feel that the candidate for the office who will most represent the current strength of the diocese would not and must not come from our part of the Anglican patchwork quilt. Earlier this century, the Catholic stream was the source of liturgical scholarship and innovation; then in the 1960s, we became caught up in the renaissance of Biblical scholarship which was impacting on the Roman Catholic world at the time - and to this, we had a real contribution to make. Many of us would recall Dr Barry Marshall, returning to Trinity College from study leave in France, and stimulating a generation of ordination candidates. But more recently the ordination of women has resulted in division between those who regard themselves as liberal Catholics, and others; at the same time a variety of factors have brought about a renewal among our evangelical brothers and sisters. Some of these as a result felt great dissatisfaction at the election of Archbishop Rayner, coming from a Catholic background, to succeed Archbishop Penman. At the same time, there were evangelical Anglicans who supported his election.
As the election of a new archbishop approaches, the electors, and those who pray for them, would do well to steer clear of any model of this kind. Beyond party and churchmanship, there are many other difficult issues before us. I think, among others, of social justice issues, issues connected with the nature of the family, and with gender and sexual identity. These could be handled either in ways that are inclusive, and will encourage the widest possible range of people both card-carrying Anglicans and those beyond the formal worshipping community, to engage positvely with the church, and, ultimately, we hope, with Jesus; or in ways that might cause or intensify division.
How does this direct us to pray concerning this issue? I conclude by returning to a model provided by St Augustine: 'in essentials, unity; in others, liberty; in all things, charity'. This seemingly simple model, desirable for the whole communion, is so easily betrayed: once there is disagreement on essentials, it is easy to descend to argument over secondary matters, magnifying them and wanting to make regulations or prohibitions - the very opposite of liberty. Bearing this in mind, we might well pray that the electors choose a candidate who will seek a vision wider than that of particular streams or parties within the church (unity); who will maintain the tolerance and diversity that we value, within its proper limits (liberty); and who will encourage and create genuine acceptance of those legitimate differences (charity).
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