Jeremy Halcrow

Chris McGillion has made a sincere attempt to understand the "Sydney Anglican' phenomenon and wrap it within a ripping political yarn. Some might be shocked at what they perceive as ungodly political machinations and harden their hearts against the church leadership. Others, sensing the book is alien to their experience of church life, will dismiss it as a web of lies. Neither response, I believe, is healthy.

A clear-headed analysis of this book will note that McGillion has cast a political lens over the Diocese, filtering out all other signs of life. Politics is all he sees.

Rather than search for the proverbial skeleton in the closest, he has given the Diocese an acid bath, leaching the flesh and animating Spirit from the body and leaving only the bare political bones. What remains may seem ugly to some. But readers note "

1. A political skeleton is what gives every human organisation its necessary framework and strength.

2. McGillion has dissolved away the beating heart of the story " the work of Christ which gives life and shape to all he writes about.
Throughout McGillion struggles hard to construct a racy narrative from the plodding reality of church committee work and doctrinal think-tanks. I find it hard to believe the average reader won't tire of it all, as they drown with McGillion in a sea of organisational details. 

Jeremy Halcrow is Publications Manager for Anglican Media and was editor of Southern Cross from 1998-2003.

Stephen Judd

This book has two parts:  "Holy Wars" or the politics within the Sydney diocese from the 1990s to the election of Peter Jensen in 2001; and "The Jensen Ascendancy" in which McGillion discusses first the theology of Archbishop Jensen and secondly what he believes are the implications of this perspective on the diocese as well as the Anglican Church Australia and overseas.

In "Holy Wars", McGillion has relied heavily on fifteen interviews that he conducted.  This makes the section remarkably attractive: the description of the politics of the time " the elections of Goodhew and Jensen and the stoushes in between " is told through "the voices" of observers and participants.

The result is that McGillion's account is pretty accurate. Yes, there might be a whiff here or there of an interviewee putting a bit too much spin on the ball. Yes, others might seem to talk up their role in events, reminding one of Spike Milligan's classic Hitler:  My Part in his Downfall. But, in the main, McGillion is to be congratulated for this contribution to the history of Sydney Anglicans.

This section is the strongest section of the book. Is it history? Well, maybe " or perhaps it is better described as an excellent journalistic article that is an excellent oral history resource. My one disappointment is that many of the significant issues which are raised by these interviews are not explored in any depth. 

One such issue is leadership.  Christian and secular bookshops are full of books on the qualities and behaviours of the leader. But little is written about the qualities and behaviours of those who are led.  McGillion's book should prompt us to think about this. We are all only too aware of each others' weaknesses; we all have our views on what our boss or the minister or the archbishop should have done or should be doing. But where does "loyal dissent" stop and "disloyal opposition" start? When a minister comes to a parish, a bishop appointed or an archbishop elected, do we as church members give that person every opportunity to succeed " or to fail? This is not to say we blindly follow; nor does it mean leaders should not be held accountable.  But the capacity of leaders to succeed or fail is, I submit, as much determined by those whom they would lead as by their own attributes and actions.

In the next section McGillion attempts to describe the theology of Archbishop Jensen.  It is a valiant effort but he does not succeed. McGillion is in a bind: he is trying to connect the dots of President Bush and the US Right, fundamentalism in the US, Australian conservative political parties and their association with churches such as Hillsong " and the theology of Peter Jensen. But the dots are not readily connectable. Conservatives and right wing radicals do have some perspectives in common:  but they are also poles apart. Even McGillion cannot suggest that Jensen has much in common with the success theology of Hillsong!

This brings me to my third and final point. Throughout the book McGillion infers that "unity is good, dissent is bad." Hence "Sydney"  by its actions " or opposition to the actions of others " is seen to be divisive. This may be true. But dividing and dissenting are part of the Reformed "Protestant" psyche just as, almost by definition, the Roman Catholic Church has a pre-eminent goal of unity. The whole history of Protestantism since the sixteenth century tells that story. While McGillion is acutely aware of the conflict within Anglicanism, I was not convinced that McGillion completely understood the essential dissenting pre-disposition inherent in Protestantism. Some would even say that is its genius.

The Right of Private Judgement " rather than blindly following what the priests dish out " is, as Bishop Ryle pointed out in Knots Untied, one of the Reformation's great achievements. The challenge for the Sydney diocese is to preserve, - nay, encourage and promote - this right of private judgement for and amongst all its people. To do that we must ensure that our words and actions reflect the fact that our God is a God of relationships. If we fail, we will merely encourage conformist tribalism.

Dr Stephen Judd is co-author of Sydney Anglicans, a history of the Sydney Diocese.

Glenn Davies

A major flaw in McGillion's thesis is his assumption that you can divorce theology from a study of Church governance.
I can understand why McGillion has done this. He admits he is not qualified to make theological judgements. However, such judgements cannot be avoided when analysing a Church. And at a number of points this is exactly what McGillion does, without seeking any scholarly, let alone biblical, insights to weigh up the accuracy of his assessments.

For example, McGillion links trends in Sydney Diocese with the world political scene. He incorrectly draws a straight line from George Bush to the Howard Government to their support of Hillsong and then Peter Jensen's theology. The implication: Sydney Anglicans fit into an American-led Christian fundamentalism that threatens world peace. Yet there are obvious differences between us and US pre-millennialists. Likewise we do not hold to prosperity theology like many Pentecostals. Clearly, he hasn't asked the right questions nor understood his subject matter.

In the final analysis McGillion does not appreciate the Protestant mindset of Sydney Anglicans and their desire to see the gospel believed and experienced in the lives of ordinary people. Congregations have always been our lifeblood, not institutions. Organisational unity has never held the attraction that it does for Roman Catholics.

Dr Glenn Davies is Bishop of North Sydney.

Comment for April Southern Cross newspaper