Defenders of their Faith

The predominantly Evangelical character of the Diocese sets it apart from the rest of the Anglican Communion. Whenever two or three people have been gathered together in the name of Australian religious history one question has always been raised: "why is the Diocese of Sydney so Evangelical?" While the great number of exclusively Anglo-Catholic dioceses have escaped the same critical enquiry the very singularity of Sydney, one of the most populous and powerful of Anglican dioceses, has been a matter of genuine puzzlement for observers of religious affairs. That curiosity has been heightened by speculation that the differing developments and perceptions of Anglicanism in Sydney and Melbourne were a key to the comparative cultural styles of those two cities.

This book is a study of power and party in Anglicanism in Sydney, rather than the history of the Anglican Diocese of Sydney. It traces the political rather than the biographical or chronological. At the same time, it must be insisted that the development of political structures, disputes over millinery and the phenomenon of struggles for power in the church's decision-making councils are not divorced from the pew nor without social significance. No doubt the average parishioner and disinterested man in the street knew or cared little about these phenomena. But they nevertheless had a direct and profound bearing on the message which the pew and the society at large received.