Robert Forsyth, Bishop of South Sydney, wrote this response which was published in The Age. Although the articles are not available on The Age website, you can read Bishop Forsyth's response here:
"As painful as it may be, we in the Diocese of Sydney welcome critique and challenge from other Anglicans and Christians of good will. It is important always to be open to learn from others.
I am aware that Dr Porter strongly disagrees with the views of Sydney Anglicans, and for that matter, many other Christians throughout the world including the Roman Catholic and Orthodox churches, on matters concerning homosexual relationships and the appropriateness of women in ordained ministry.
This disagreement is no surprise, reflecting as it does some of the major differences presently occurring throughout global Christianity. However, Dr Porter's main thesis in The New Puritans is not convincing.
Indeed, Sydney Diocese has always been a vigorous, albeit at times cantankerous, place, while still playing a role in the wider Anglican Church in Australia and the world. But there has not been, as Dr Porter suggests, some terrible shift of late towards fundamentalism or an effort to revitalise sixteenth-century English Puritanism. There have certainly been significant changes in matters of style, music, dress and the conduct of services, reflecting our hopefully creative response to the massive cultural changes occurring in secular Australia.
But on the more substantial debates in the contemporary church about homosexuality, the ordination of women or even the special place of Jesus Christ, Sydney Diocese simply continues to hold the classic historic Christian positions it has always held, including the time when Dr Porter was a happy parishioner in Sydney in the 1950s.
If anything, Sydney Diocese is less "fundamentalist" than during the 1950s. For example, those proposing creation science or even intelligent design find little interest from those of us in Sydney who understand and appreciate both the supreme authority of Scripture and what God is teaching us through modern sciences.
In typical Anglican fashion, Dr Porter engages in what one might call "a rush to the middle ground,' portraying her kind of Anglicanism as moderate and reasonable and those with whom she disagrees as extreme, not really Anglican "mainstream.'
The truth of the matter is that the very Anglicanism promoted by Dr Porter is itself posing radical questions to Christian life and belief, whether rightly or wrongly. It is certainly inadequate to portray it as the moderate, reasonable middle facing up to the extremist conservatives.
I am sorry that The New Puritans does not shed as much light on the massive challenges confronting Australian Anglican Christianity as it might have done."
