Constitutional Anglicanism and the Synodal Governance
Journey
The Seventh Sharwood Lecture in Church Law
13 May 2026, St James’ Church, King Street, Sydney
20 May 2026, The Craig Auditorium, Trinity College, Melbourne
1. It is a great pleasure to be with you this evening and to have the opportunity to speak about a matter that would have been of interest to Robin Sharwood. Robin’s scholarship, as seen in his 2004 Sydney Smith Lecture, emphasised the impact that an individual could have on things that mattered in the life of the Church and the wider society. His lecture, entitled ‘To strive, To seek, To Find and not to Yield, The Making of the (Victoria) Church of England Act 1854’ takes the reader through a narrative journey of Bishop Charles Perry’s aspirations for the Church in his newly adopted colony, in all of its spiritual, relational and emotional dimensions.
2. The 1854 Church of England Act was a statute that enabled the self-governance of the Church in the Colony of Victoria. Robin Sharwood said, ‘The Act was revolutionary. What had been accomplished was momentous. The Church Assembly which Perry convened in October 1856 under the provisions of the new Act was the first indisputably valid Synod of the modern Church of England. While so-called “synods” had been held earlier in New Zealand and in South Australia, their legal standing was uncertain, Victoria’s Synod (or “Church Assembly”, as was called until 1904) was the real thing and it quickly fostered the spread of synodical government throughout the whole Colonial Church.’
3. The capacity to own property and to establish the principles that would apply to the office holders and members of the Church were all enabled by the 1854 Act. As the synodical government movement spread through the Australian and
New Zealand colonies various Church legislative schemes were set in place by Canons or Acts, however described, of these colonial synods or assemblies. The settling of constitutions was embraced as both appropriate for the arrangements of the day and also as a gift to the future.
4. James Moorhouse, Perry’s successor in Melbourne, took up the challenge to advance nationally, and for a new generation, what the constitutional pioneers like Perry had achieved. "We had to settle the conditions of the Primacy," he wrote, "and conciliate the interests of the Dioceses, and to steer clear of the disquieting question of Letters Patent." Ever the optimist, Moorhouse could see that the past impediments and disagreements must be overcome, "I believe we settled our Constitution on primitive lines, and in such a way that no deadlock can arise in the future. Letters Patent and all State Churchisms we cast to the moles and the bats. And we have proved that the Church has power, on the lines laid down by the Ante-Nicene Fathers and Councils, to deal with her difficulties in her own way."
5. The 1944 ‘Red Book Case’, brought against the Bishop of Bathurst challenged this principle by bringing a disputed matter of ecclesiastical order and discipline into the secular courts. This case gave its own impetus to those who saw the adoption of a national constitution as a necessary condition for Moorhouse’s principle to be given real effect. It is relevant to our reflections this evening to observe the resonance between Moorhouse’s thinking and the 2024, ‘Bishop of Rome’ study document produced by the Vatican’s Dicastery for Promoting Christian Unity. In its announcement of the publication of ‘The Bishop of Rome’ the Vatican News commented, ‘The objective is to seek a form of the exercise of the primacy that is shared by the Churches that lived in full communion in the first centuries.’ I think that Moorhouse would have been delighted to think that this reaching back to the time of apostolic unity and koinonia would be proposed as a means of promoting contemporary church unity.
6. Moorhouse was also instrumental in the convening of the first Australian Church Congress held in Melbourne in 1882 from where he gave the opening Presidential
address at the Congress on 14 November. 1 The issues they faced were not surprising. Would Bishop William Broughton’s founding role in the Australian Church be honoured in his see being the permanent seat of the Primate, effectively making Sydney Australia’s Canterbury, or should the national leadership be chosen for the missional and national priorities of the time?
7. It was not an easy journey. Robert Withycombe’s book, Montgomery of Tasmania2 is a good place to start in understanding the aspirations for a national church in the 1890’s and how the role that the Primacy, who exercised it, where they lived and how they were selected, were contested matters amongst the colonial bishops. His chapters on the Primacy and an Australian Anglican Identity and Mission tell the story of these aspirations as seen through the eyes and hopes of Bishop Henry Montgomery, Bishop of Tasmania from 1889-1901. Montgomery’s perspectives are both informative and prescient in our contemporary circumstances. Montgomery argued for a missionally focused and nationally coherent Anglican identity. The role of the General Synod and the governance of worldwide Anglicanism were all live topics for the colonial bishops and their synods.
8. Montgomery summed up his views in a speech to the 1891 General Synod, on the topic of the Primacy and how it should best operate:
My brethren of General Synod, I dare to say that the office of Primate has yet to be created. No human being could fulfil it adequately as at present constituted. Whether the Church is ripe for it I know not, but meanwhile, if she is not ripe for it, I see opportunities she may now grasp for God’s sake passing away, which may never return to us again. Are there no large and comprehensive movements which are ready for those who have the heart and the leisure to grasp them? Too long have we been content with that lowest unit in our
1 See, A Short History of the Church of England in Victoria 1847-1947, by H. W. Nunn, Issued by the Editorial Committee of the Centenary Celebrations, Melbourne Diocese, 1947.
2 Robert Withycombe, Montgomery of Tasmania, 2009
Church polity, the parochial system. It is perfect as the lowest unit. But is pre-supposes the higher unities, diocesan, provincial, pan-Anglican.
9. Even though parochial and diocesan arrangements had been largely settled by this time Montgomery’s question about the relationship of the ‘higher unities’ sat unresolved and more generally persisted as an inadequately resolved question through the succeeding decades as Australian Anglicans struggled to find agreement on the structure of the Church and the distribution of responsibility and authority. While a status quo had been reached for the Church of England in Australia to exist as just that, there was still a long road to be travelled for it to become an autonomous and self-governing province of global Anglicanism. During much of the Twentieth Century Australian Anglicans were organised with more alignment to the colonial past than the new nation that Australia had become. There was much turbulence in the period that elapsed between the federation of the Australian colonies and the settling of a national constitution to form the Anglican Church of Australia out of what were previously the separate Church of England jurisdictions in each colony.
10.The role of the Archbishop of Canterbury outside of the Church of England remained acknowledged but not really tightly specified. The position of the Archbishop of Canterbury meant that his initiative in calling together the first Lambeth Conference in 1867 turned out to be successful in resolving the controversial Colenso Case in the Church in Southern Africa. In 1867, one Australian Bishop, Matthew Hale of Perth made the long trip and attended the meeting. The Archbishop of York, William Thomson was doubtful of the value of such a meeting and along with most of his suffragans didn’t attend. From this inauspicious start, Lambeth Conferences meeting broadly each ten years, took their place as a significant contributor to the life and order of the communion.
11.John Davis’ 1993 book, Australian Anglicans and their Constitution, carries the story of constitutional debate through the Twentieth Century to its ultimate agreement in the form of the 1962 Constitution which has set the shape of our
church nationally over the past 60 years. The role of Archbishop Geoffrey Fisher is acknowledged as instrumental in tipping the balance towards an agreed settlement of a long unresolved issue. The last words in John Davis’ book, written at the mid-point between the settling of the 1962 Constitution and today remain challenging.
There was at last an agreed autonomous national structure for the Anglican Church of Australia. But it is by no means clear that the problem is quite that simple. Against the ideal of a unified autonomous national structure stands the fact of the practical limits of comprehensiveness. Alongside that which is held in common lies the fundamental Reformation and nineteenth century issues that divide, and which give substance to the commentaries that speak of ‘two churches’ within Anglicanism. A national church constitution had been placed on top of a continuing collection of regional and diocesan churches. In 1962, big questions remained, despite the clear sense of achievement and satisfaction. How was this constitution actually going to operate? Would this national structure provide the means and opportunity to break down the pre-existing diocesan walls of suspicion, isolation and separate development? In 1992, the answer from across the country would appear to be no.
12.In this light, I think that it is worth a brief comment on s5 of our National Constitution which provides:
Subject to the Fundamental Declarations and the provisions of this chapter [Chapter 2] this Church has plenary authority and power to make canons, ordinances and rules for the order and good government of the Church, and to administer the affairs thereof. Such authority and power may be exercised by the several synods and tribunals in accordance with the provisions of this Constitution.
13.I’m always struck by the concluding words, ‘Such authority and power may be exercised by the several synods and tribunals in accordance with the provisions of this Constitution.’ It makes me wonder if we underutilise the founding provisions of our Constitution by meeting as the General Synod infrequently and treating references to our tribunals as exceptional rather than intended and necessary means of our common life being strengthened. I argued for this position in July 2017 when I wrote as Primate to the Australian bishops when it became known that several Australian bishops planned to participate in the consecration of the proposed ‘missionary bishop’ for the UK and Europe, Canon Andy Lines. I considered this to be an action contrary to the Canons of Nicaea.
14.I wrote in these terms, ‘I take the view that communion – koinonia, is a gift of our Lord to his Church and that in our context it is the Anglican Church of Australia, through its constitution and the framework it establishes, that determines how this is expressed in practical terms ‘. I then went on to say that it was not ‘for us individually, acting independently, to determine with whom we are in communion or to act unilaterally to that end. I do not think that it is for individual dioceses in the Anglican Church of Australia to determine with whom we, as members of that Church, are in communion. We must act in accordance with the Constitution that binds us as the Anglican Church of Australia. The consecration of Canon Lines and the participation of our colleagues raises significant questions how the close fellowship, cooperation and collegiality of the Communion to which I referred above is affected and, just as importantly, how individuals and member dioceses of the Anglican Church of Australia should conduct themselves to live out in accordance with the Constitution the mandated model of a Church in communion with other churches of the Anglican Communion so long as communion is consistent with the Fundamental Declarations contained in the Constitution.’
15.I went on to say, ‘I have deep concerns that the participation by our Episcopal colleagues in the consecration of Canon Lines, with or without the support of their respective dioceses, is contrary to the spirit of the canons of the Council
of Nicaea and, most importantly, outside of the authority of our National Constitution. It may also be outside the authority of the Consecration of Bishops Canon, 1966 of the Anglican Church of Australia. As we respond to these developments let us resolve to uphold each other in mutual prayer and to do all we can to strengthen the koinonia we share as bishops of the Anglican Church of Australia.’
16.In August 2017, I received correspondence from the Bishop of Bendigo, the Rt. Rev. Andrew Curnow, supported by four other bishops that resonated with my earlier letter and raised formal objections to the participation in the consecration of Bishop Andy Lines of the Anglican Church in North America by the three Australian bishops. On 16 August I wrote to the registrar of the Appellate Tribunal advising that I had received this notice and requesting the matter be referred to the Tribunal. This all took place on the eve of the 2017 General Synod that convened a little over three weeks later in Maroochydore, Queensland.
17.The matter was later brought to mediation as a preliminary stage to its reference to the Tribunal and at that point some of Bishop Curnow’s co-signers withdrew their objection and the whole matter lapsed. I think that this was unfortunate, as an opportunity for clarifying a contested matter according to means provided for in the Constitution was lost. In times of tension between us the Constitution provides a framework that we need to adhere to even though, by itself and without us working relationally and theologically as members of the Church, it will be insufficient to ensure our koinonia.
18.The Constitution, as we seem to be willing to use it, can only carry us so far in ensuring that we are a Christian community worthy of the many admonitions in the New Testament. If we agree with John Davis that the Constitution bears the shape of the unresolved differences of the first half of the Twentieth Century, we should not be surprised that its processes and our limited desire to exercise them, struggle to take us forward to the greater unity that Christ seeks for us. Carefully applying the constitutional means is important but needs the
lived relationship of Christian fellowship to prosper. We can ask ourselves John Davis’ same question in 2026, ‘Do our national structures provide the means and opportunity to break down the pre-existing diocesan walls of suspicion, isolation and separate development?’
19.In some respects, we have fewer national structures than at earlier times, the General Board of Religious Education and the National Home Mission Fund have ceased to exist, the Australian College of Theology now has university status but is no longer an Anglican institution.
20.By way of contrast to the examples of contraction, Anglican Schools Australia and Anglicare Australia are good contemporary examples of bodies emerging to meet the convergent needs for identity and advocacy experienced by Anglican schools and agencies. These more recent initiatives add to the long-established mission agencies, the Mothers’ Union and other ministry groups that flourish outside of the formal constitutional structure of the Church.
21.It was impressive that the 2017 General Synod, which I referred to earlier, responded to the national revelations of child sexual abuse within Australian Institutions by establishing robust national systems for clergy screening, child safety and importantly, participation in the National Redress Scheme. I chaired this General Synod as Primate and could see the sincere resolve of the members of General Synod to do whatever the Synod could to create a safer future for children and vulnerable people within the church and to respond with justice to past harm. A single Anglican entity was created to participate in the National Redress Scheme. This entity, administered by the General Synod soon had all dioceses, schools and agencies as participating members. In 2017, in anticipation of the commencement of the National Redress Scheme in 2018 it was reported to the General Synod that in excess of $30 million had already been paid in redress.
22.It says something about the Anglican Church that there is no consolidated reporting of the payments made under the redress scheme, and as a result of
civil litigation, over the decade since then. I suspect that it must have added up to a sum in the hundreds of millions of dollars across the broad Anglican ecosystem of dioceses, schools and agencies. Actuarial studies undertaken by many of these entities likely point to similar future liabilities, but once again this is only speculation in the absence of consolidated data. It is undoubtedly demoralising to confront the enormity of harm that is represented by this financial dimension of redress but without engaging with it we too easily move on from lamenting this tragic injury to vulnerable people and, with that, true repentance.
23.The court appointed receivership of the Diocese of North Queensland is a situation that challenges the status quo. This Diocese had earlier expended over $10 million for redress payments through the National Redress Scheme and the Personal Injuries Proceeding Act 2002 of the state of Queensland. The Anglican National Redress Scheme Limited, backed by a financial guarantee of the General Synod is the principal creditor. North Queensland has been determined to be a ‘missionary diocese’ under the relevant General Synod canon but only to the extent of having its General Synod statutory assessment contributions waived. The General Synod Standing Committee has not enacted a further provision of the Canon that would see the North Queensland debts assumed by the Church nationally and met through an increase in the statutory assessment. The Receiver is acting to sell many of the properties still in the ownership of the Diocese to pay current debts, but it remains uncertain whether there will be sufficient resources available to meet future liabilities. I suspect that North Queensland will not be the only diocese that faces these questions and that the national Church is certain to need to revisit its responsibility in the event of a failure of any particular diocese to meet these important liabilities for redress and personal injury.
24.I am certain that the encounter of Australian Anglican Christians with each other across all the boundaries of real or imagined identities is vital for the prospering of the church in unity. We owe a great debt to the big hearted and visionary people who have stepped forward over the years to promote national unity and
vitality in the Anglican Church of Australia. There are many examples, and those of you present tonight are amongst them. What a great concurrence of vision was evident at the 1995 General Synod when Archbishop Harry Goodhew moved a motion in support of the Rev’d Dr Bruce Kaye’s initiative for a National Anglican Conference in these words: ‘General Synod calls on all church members and dioceses to support this Conference so that it may be a means of assisting both the Church in its mission in Australia and Anglicans in engaging with Australian society’. The 1997 conference in Canberra was a great success with over 1000 participants, the largest national gathering of Anglicans since the establishment of our National Church Constitution in 1962. This was followed up in 2002 by a National Anglican Conference in Sydney. I was present at both conferences, and they were wonderful opportunities of empowering exactly what Archbishop Goodhew hoped for.
25.There are many small and perhaps, unrecognised aspects of our church experience that have links directly to the constitution and the processes of General Synod and the Constitution of the Anglican Church of Australia generally. It was true for me, as I suspect it must have been for others who participated in those National Anglican Conferences, the sense of joining a community that had a clear identity that went beyond just the local or parochial, a sense of the ‘higher unities’ as Montgomery called them, being valued and experienced.
26.At times, it has seemed to me that the national meeting of bishops was one of the few opportunities for building relationships and trust that would then permeate through other aspects of national church life. This was despite a pattern of often unforeseen matters becoming a crisis that demanded time within an already scheduled conference program. It was not just that there were additional items to be included but that crisis, by its nature, often brings with it a tension as different members react to it in different ways for their own reasons. We tended to lack a process to deal with these sorts of crises or have needed to develop a process on the run. Sometimes we didn’t know that there was a crisis until we arrived at the meeting. Sometimes the crisis, like Peter
Jensens’ withdrawal from Eucharistic fellowship with Peter Carnley, only became apparent to most of us in the context of the meeting. Then and since, it remains unclear to me whether these matters are a simple enacting of the Prayer Book admonition to refrain from receiving the Holy Communion if not ‘in perfect charity with all men’ or something else.
27.It is a task for another time to account for the division in Global Anglicanism amongst people and national churches who had all formerly been in fellowship with the See of Canterbury. TheAnglican Church of Australia is a constitutionally committed member of the Anglican Communion with our Constitution affirming: This Church will remain and be in communion with the Church of England in England and with churches in communion therewith so long as communion is consistent with the Fundamental Declarations contained in this Constitution.
28.The strength of the Anglican Communion over most of its history has been the close fellowship, co-operation and collegiality which has continued to flourish despite significant disagreements on certain issues. My experience of Primate’s Meetings, the Anglican Communion Standing Committee, meetings of the Anglican Consultative Council and two Lambeth Conferences confirms in my mind the insights that arise and the goodwill that is fostered when we gather together, despite difference, around the same table of the Lord.
29.The good work of the Inter-Anglican Standing Commission on Unity Faith and Order (IASCUFO) continues, and I am glad that the bishop of Gippsland, Bishop Richard Treloar is a member. IASCUFO has been tasked with exploring issues of structure and decision-making in the Anglican Communion. Its method is to learn from ecumenical conversations how to accommodate disagreement patiently and respectfully with the goal of affirming the importance of seeking to walk together to the highest degree possible. I hope that we take this work seriously and seek to apply it in our own context. There is no reason why we
could not form a group from amongst us in the Australian Church that embraces the spectrum of difference of opinion and conviction to ask the same questions and seeks the same outcome for the Australian church. There is much in which we can be creative as bishops if we open ourselves to God’s refreshing possibilities. To quote Montgomery again, ‘Whether the Church is ripe for it I know not’.
30.I have been glad to serve on the international Anglican and Catholic dialogue (ARCIC III) as co-chair since 2019. Just prior to this ARCIC III released an agreed statement, ‘Walking together on the Way’. This document was the result of applying Paul Murray’s ‘receptive ecumenism’ methodology where the partners in dialogue seek to identify the Christian and Ecclesial gifts of the other communion that are less developed or could be better expressed in their own. Not surprisingly, given the title of the agreed statement, synodality was identified as part of the shared apostolic inheritance that deserved more consideration and development within the Catholic tradition. This work has been a significant source of thinking on synodality and has been a step on the way to the Synod on Synodality that met in Rome during 2023 and 2024.
31.Just as Catholics seek to discern how to widen their reception of synodality beyond the meeting of bishops alone, I think that Australian Anglicans are wise to re-receive the apostolic character of a meetings of bishops as authentically synodal even if it is not the whole of the gift. I think that we should also be alert to the effect of ‘parliamentary’ thinking and practice on how we operate our meetings of synod at the diocesan and General Synod levels of the Church. Consensus and coming to ‘one mind’ is much to be preferred to a thinly won vote if we put koinonia as a central character of our life together. The unanimity of agreement that we require for the bishops’ protocols to apply is a good example of this principle already at work amongst us.
32.That is all to say that there are good resources available if we choose to use them. Our constitution recognises a distinctive role for bishops, the elected members of the clergy and laity. While it provides the only scaffolding we have
to shape how the Anglican Church of Australia operates it will inevitably be proven to be limited in truly fostering our koinonia unless we apply ourselves to this goal. It is good for the mission of Christ and his Church when we understand each other better and seek to ‘walk together on the way’ as people who follow Jesus, the Way the Truth and the Life. Where difficult conversations are needed, we should have them in the safety and confidence of the loving relationship that the Christian disciple knows and receives from our Lord.
33.No stranger to theological controversy himself, Philip Melanchthon has left a prayer worthy of our reflection and petition. And with this prayer I conclude the seventh Sharwood Lecture.
O God, we do not desire new contentions and discord. We pray only that the Son of God, our Lord Jesus Christ, who for us died and arose from the grave, will guide us, that all of us who are in many churches and many communions may be one church, one communion, and one in him. As he himself earnestly prayed for us in his hour of death, saying, “I pray also for those who through my Word will believe in me, that they may be one as thou, Father, art in union with me and I with thee, and that they may be one in us,” so also we pray. Amen