02:30
JULIA BAIRD, MOVEMENT FOR THE ORDINATION OF WOMEN: You see the politicking, the factionalism. You can see brutality.
02:59
ANDREW FOWLER: It's one of the most powerful and venerable institutions in the nation.
Millions of Australians count themselves Anglican. But behind the ceremonial pomp is a vicious struggle for power.
The brawling rivals anything in party politics.
03:16
BISHOP ROGER HERFT, NEWCASTLE DIOCESE: Never experienced anything like this in any of the churches and dioceses that I've worked in my life.
ANDREW FOWLER: It's a church in danger of breaking apart.
ARCHBISHOP PETER CARNLEY, PRIMATE: And if a parish in my diocese tried to do that, I would be jumping on them like a ton of bricks.
ANDREW FOWLER: Tonight, on Four Corners, inside the Anglican Church -- an unholy row.
03:56
ANDREW FOWLER: Two months ago, the Anglican Church installed its new national leader at an elaborate ceremony in Sydney's St Andrews Cathedral.
CLERGYMAN: Can we have two lines, please, bishops. Two lines so that we can have a guard of honour down this way.
ANDREW FOWLER: However, a few hours earlier, in an extraordinary display of dissent, one of the leading Anglican preachers in the diocese hosting the ceremony called for radical action.
04:23
REV DR JOHN WOODHOUSE, ANGLICAN MINISTER: Today, at 3:00pm, in St Andrews Cathedral in Sydney, there will be a service to mark the inauguration of Archbishop Carnley as primate. This is an enormous embarrassment to us all. I was asked several times during this week whether or not I will attend the service. I've replied that I will not and that I would discourage others from doing so.
04:48
ARCHBISHOP PETER CARNLEY, PRIMATE: I think there is a bit of bullying. I think a bully is defined as a person who behaves in such a way that everybody else's behaviour has to circle around theirs. And I think there is an element of that in it and I certainly am not going to be bullied by fundamentalist Christians, that's for sure.
05:06
ANDREW FOWLER: The installation went ahead but those who gave it a miss included some of the most powerful people in the nation's most powerful diocese, two bishops among them.
Just why they decided to boycott the honouring of a new primate is an indication of the passion stirred by the election of liberal theologian Dr Peter Carnley.
A few days earlier, Carnley, a renowned scholar with a taste for challenging orthodoxy, had written an article on the meaning of the resurrection.
In it, he suggested that some other religions had merit which offered equally valid paths to God.
05:57
ARCHBISHOP PETER CARNLEY: I can say to the whole Anglican Church of Australia that we are a church where there are diversities of viewpoint. This diversity is an enrichment and we must hold on to that through thick and thin.
REV DR JOHN WOODHOUSE: I didn't think that I could be present because I thought that my presence would indicate to people support of Peter and what he was using his office to say. And therefore I didn't want to be present and I wanted to discourage others from being present.
06:28
CLERGYMAN (Initiation ceremony): As primate, you will preside over this church and its decision making in General Synod and in Standing Committee.
ANDREW FOWLER: Carnley's election was always going to test Sydney, the most unusual, politicised and passionate diocese within mainstream Australian Christianity.
Hostility towards the new man threatens to bust the church apart.
CLERGYMAN (Initiation ceremony): On behalf of the clergy of this church, I welcome you as our primate.
07:08
ANDREW FOWLER: The history of Sydney Anglicanism goes back to the First Fleet.
Then, it represented the only church in Australia and was responsible for Christianity across the whole continent.
As other dioceses were set up, Sydney's jurisdiction shrunk but the branch retained its wealth.
It is still a powerful and influential force inside the church.
ARCHBISHOP PETER HOLLINGWORTH, BRISBANE DIOCESE: It actually has resources that none of the other dioceses in the Australian Church have. That's part of its historic heritage.
07:43
JULIA BAIRD, MOVEMENT FOR THE ORDINATION OF WOMEN: We have half of the country's wealth, a third of the country's Anglicans. And also the Sydney diocese is very strong in terms of attendances and numbers and growth.
08:00
ANDREW FOWLER: Today, the Anglican communion is deeply divided.
Very traditional Anglicans are often called Anglo-Catholics.
They owe much to the Church's ancient past.
This section of the Church uses Catholic trappings -- robes, incense and a heavy focus on Holy Communion.
Anglo-Catholics have a great regard for the authority of archbishops, bishops and priests.
Some other Anglicans -- typified by Carnley -- tend to be social and theological liberals.
These Anglicans have much in common with the liberal wings of the Catholic and Uniting Churches.
08:59
ARCHBISHOP PETER CARNLEY (After church service): Hi.
WOMAN: How are you?
ARCHBISHOP PETER CARNLEY: It's a great service.
I'm a Uniting Church minister.
WOMAN: Good.
Thank you. Thank you for coming.
WOMAN 2: I'm Catholic Church in Sydney.
Welcome.
ARCHBISHOP PETER CARNLEY: The Catholic Church too?
This is ecumenical, isn't it?
WOMAN 2: Yeah, we are.
We're very ecumenical.
ARCHBISHOP PETER CARNLEY: Yeah, very good.
Hi, Issy, how are you?
09:15
ANDREW FOWLER: With its informal air and modern beat, this young congregation looks as if it might belong to the liberal wing of the Church -- Peter Carnley's constituency.
But looks are deceptive. What you see here is a third force, Sydney evangelicals -- the most religiously conservative Anglicans in the entire world.
09:41
BRUCE BALLANTINE-JONES, ANGLICAN CHURCH LEAGUE: The kind of Anglicanism that people find elsewhere is very ritualistic and very liberal in theology and in some ways quite old-fashioned. And many people will say when they go outside to other churches that they didn't feel that they had the Bible taught to them clearly and so forth.
ANDREW FOWLER: These Sydney Anglicans have much in common with American evangelists.
Sydney priest Bruce Ballantine-Jones was converted at a Billy Graham crusade 40 years ago when he was in his teens.
10:20
BRUCE BALLANTINE-JONES (To congregation): Now it's your turn to welcome one another. So, what I want you to do is take a few minutes off, stand up, walk around and say hello to everybody, make sure everybody's welcome. Let's do it. Thank you.
10:34
ANDREW FOWLER: Ballantine-Jones's easygoing style belies the fact that he heads one of the most hard-nosed factions within the Sydney diocese.
He's a man with strong views on the literal truth of the Bible and on its teachings about women in the family.
BRUCE BALLANTINE-JONES: Are you our reader tonight?
WOMAN: Yes, I am.
BRUCE BALLANTINE-JONES: Good girl.
10:53
BRUCE BALLANTINE-JONES: Marriage is a partnership whereby the man takes the lead in serving the interests of his wife and family, and the woman takes the role of supporting him in that role. Now, when people see marriage as a competition or more concerned with rights rather than duties, then, of course, tensions get set up and there are ongoing and developing problems in the relationship. And I think that if people are more concerned to serve and support and complement rather than compete, they're gonna have a lot more happiness in their marriage.
11:34
EVANGELIST (To congregation) : You sit and you watch the chimpanzee enclosure and it's great, because all human life is there. You've got Alpha, the big, dominant, macho chimp who is in charge of all he surveys.
ANDREW FOWLER: The trump card for Sydney evangelicals is that their congregations are growing at a spirited rate -- far outstripping Anglo-Catholic and socially liberal parishes around the rest of Australia.
EVANGELIST: See - Chimpanzees know what it's all about. Sex and power.
12:07
ANDREW FOWLER: What evangelicalism offers in an uncertain world is certainty -- particularly to the young.
EVANGELIST: They long to see the world put right. They are so --
BRUCE BALLANTINE-JONES: People at that age are very responsive and they're very sort of group oriented, so they do it together and, uh -- so we think that if we can win people to Christ in their teenage years, there's a great chance that they will have a very fulfilling life and a very useful life for God.
Drink this in remembrance of Christ's blood shed for you.
12:47
ANDREW FOWLER: But it's not just a battle over souls. The evangelicals fight church politics with a tough-mindedness that wouldn't be out of place in the NSW Labor Party.
BRUCE BALLANTINE-JONES: The Anglican Church is like any other large institution.
It has power structures and it has, therefore, political methodologies. The bishops, for example, have enormous power and they use it politically. And if you don't have other people banding together to see that their point of view is heard as well, then, of course, the whole church just becomes a thing of the bishops.
13:27
JULIA BAIRD: We get the -- probably, the worst elements of the institutional church. You see the politicking, the factionalism. You can -- you can see brutality. You can see people using procedures and motions and laws to stifle discussion and stifle dissent.
13:47
ANDREW FOWLER: Over the years, conservative political power has been consolidated within Church institutions which hold the key to the future. The most important is Moore College -- the intellectual engine of the diocese.
This college trains almost all Sydney's priests and sends graduates around Australia.
It's regarded as academically rigorous -- teaching Greek, Hebrew and religious doctrine.
What's frowned upon at Moore is any deviation from what the college sees as biblical truth.
Its principal is a leading conservative.
14:36
CANON PETER JENSEN, PRINCIPAL, MOORE THEOLOGICAL COLLEGE: Our students spend four years at Moore College studying the Scriptures. I can assure you that they are fully aware of all sorts of meanings in the text and all sorts of ways of looking at the Bible. However, it is also true to say that there is such a thing as truth. There is such a thing as truth, and it goes against the modern mood of post-modernism to think there is truth, but we are pre-modern at that point. And we want to say, unpopularly, in Australian society, "No, there is truth. It's found in Jesus Christ.And you can come and search it with us in the Scriptures."
15L14
REV DR JOHN WOODHOUSE (In class): The Book of Joshua brings to a conclusion or a resolution, a narrative that really goes all the way back to the Book of Genesis, 'cause have a look back at Genesis, Chapter 50. The Book of Genesis concludes with this anticipation of what will happen to the bones of Joseph. The story goes on. You get to the end of the Book of Joshua and you've found it's happened. You find what was anticipated in the days of the patriarchs has actually come to realisation.
15:40
ANDREW FOWLER: Dr John Woodhouse, who was a leader of the Carnley boycott, is one of the leading lights of the college. He gives weekly Bible classes on the Old Testament.
Dr Woodhouses's parish on Sydney's North Shore also funnels students into the college.
15:50
REV DR JOHN WOODHOUSE: We find that the number of young people wanting to enter into Christian ministry is growing and growing and growing. Our theological college is bursting with very fine young people and we are very excited about the leadership in people that are being produced within this city.
ANDREW FOWLER: Many students are at Moore College to sharpen beliefs that have already been passed onto them by clergy who have themselves been students at Moore.
TIM BOWDEN, STUDENT, MOORE COLLEGE: The College is strongly committed to the authority of the Bible and that's a conviction that doesn't stand strongly in a lot of colleges around the world, but it was one that I wanted to undergird my education.
16:38
NATALIE GOULD, STUDENT, MOORE COLLEGE: When I left law, I did that because the message of the Bible that Jesus died on the Cross and rose again so that our sins could be forgiven is the most relevant message that people can hear now. And it's the most important message that people can hear now, with consequences for their future forever. And when I weighed up what I was doing as a solicitor and what I could do in teaching the Bible and telling people that message about Jesus, there was no comparison.
ANDREW FOWLER: One major difference between this and other Anglican colleges is its ministry for women.
17:17
CARMELINA RE, STUDENT, MOORE COLLEGE: Do you know what you're doing next year?
FEMALE STUDENT: No, we don't.
No.
CARMELINA RE: It's all up in the air?
FEMALE STUDENT: We've got to wait till August-October till we get the listing and find out what we're want to do.
CARMELINA RE: It's nerve-racking, isn't it?
FEMALE STUDENT: Not really.
CARMELINA RE: No?!
FEMALE STUDENT: No.
CARMELINA RE: You're quite calm.
FEMALE STUDENT: Yeah, whatever God has in store, that's where we'll go.
17:30
ANDREW FOWLER: No matter how committed women like these are they can't train for the priesthood here.
The Sydney diocese is one of the few places in the Anglican world which does not accept women priests.
CANON PETER JENSEN: This has been the constant belief of the Christian church for 2,000 years, until quite recently. I believe that there is an appropriate women's ministry within the Church and an appropriate men's ministry. And, uh -- what the apostle Paul says, "That a woman should not teach or have authority over men in the church," translated into our context means that a woman should not be a priest and a rector in our congregations.
18:14
ARCHBISHOP PETER HOLLINGWORTH: That's a very literalist interpretation of a small number of Scriptures on which to try and hang a whole ecclesiology, to be quite honest.
ANDREW FOWLER: But that's what it does say?
ARCHBISHOP PETER HOLLINGWORTH: Yes, oh, yes. The Scriptures say all manner of things, you know, and at different times in history within different kinds of context. The real question is do those particular texts about the ordering of households -- are they fundamental theological points about the Christian -- the nature of the Christian church? I think not.
18:50
ANDREW FOWLER: Natalie, you're a candidate for deacon.
NATALIE GOULD: That's right.
ANDREW FOWLER: In the debate over interpretation of the Bible, the students take the word of the college.
NATALIE GOULD: Again, when I look at the Bible to establish what my role should be as a woman, I think it's appropriate for me to be a deacon and to work in a team ministry in a church and to work under the minister -- the senior minister of the church. But I don't think that it's appropriate for me to be priested. So that's -- I'm happy to stay in the situation as it is in Sydney.
19:22
CARMELINA RE: I think the Bible teaches that women shouldn't have authority over men and teach men.
ANDREW FOWLER: How do you find that sits with your day-to-day existence?
CARMELINA RE: I think it sits perfectly. I don't have any problem with that. I'm so busy and run off my feet. I love dealing with women. I love teaching women the Bible. It's the most important thing I could ever do in my life and I just don't see why it's a problem.
19:43
BRUCE BALLANTINE-JONES: Most women, I find, actually don't want to be led by other women. They actually are more comfortable with male ministers than female ministers. And certainly men would be uncomfortable, as a general rule, under the leadership of a woman minister.
ANDREW FOWLER: Why do you think that is?
BRUCE BALLANTINE-JONES: I think it's part of human nature. I think it's the way God has wired us.
20:08
ARCHBISHOP PETER HOLLINGWORTH: Pretty clearly, if you've got virtual control of the theological college of the diocese and you produce candidates in a certain mould, inevitably, they are the only ones available for appointment in parishes and gradually the tradition of that parish gets shaped around the teaching of the clergyman.
ANDREW FOWLER: Only a few Sydney parishes don't fall under Moore's influence. John McIntyre is a rarity.
He's a Sydney Anglican priest but not a graduate of Moore. He's from Melbourne and got his job in inner-city Redfern because no-one from Moore College would take it on.
20:54
REV JOHN McINTYRE, ANGLICAN MINISTER: The people in this parish told me that they asked over 30 clergy of this diocese to come here and they were refused by every one of them. In the end, the bishop of the region in that day had to start looking further afield in order to fill the position.
ANDREW FOWLER: McIntyre is a critic of the Moore tradition. He feels Redfern was unwanted because it's a hard place to achieve the mark of success for an ambitious evangelical -- growth in church attendance.
21:20
REV JOHN McINTYRE: So you read those papers I give you? MAN: Yeah, I did.
ANDREW FOWLER: McIntyre likes to go to people outside the church, acting as part priest, part social worker. He views this ministry as more crucial than pews overflowing with converts.
21:40
REV JOHN McINTYRE: I think that if you're brought up in a particular way to try and get as many people gathered together under the roof of the church and into this community of people who think in a certain way, then you know it's not gonna work in an area like Redfern. I think the average person who lives in Redfern is far more sceptical and far more earthed in reality than a lot of other people. And I don't think they'd be sold on a lot of those sorts of ideas that are being pushed at them.
22:17
CANON PETER JENSEN: I could point to other people doing work for Christ in very difficult places that are a bit like Redfern, if you like, and happy to do it. So I think he's entitled to his opinion -- I don't share it.
ANDREW FOWLER: In the nation's biggest city, there's another centre of power which the conservative evangelicals attempt to control. The Synod which meets at the Wesley Mission is the parliament of the diocese. Once a year, its 800 members -- bishops, priests and lay-people from the parishes -- vote on Church policy and law.
It's highly political and legalistic.
22:57
JULIA BAIRD: It's modelled on an act of parliament. And we've got judges sitting up in front of us in a row, we've got judges who dominate the debate. So for anyone else to basically get a grip on how procedure works I think is quite difficult.
ARCHBISHOP PETER CARNLEY: Well, there are factions -- well-organised factions with names. And, um -- And I think it's not unheard of that they have voting tickets and all that kind of thing. I think that's quite foreign to some other synods around the country.
23:30
ANDREW FOWLER: Many members are Moore College supporters and their conservative views hold increasing sway in the Synod.
When the rest of the national church voted to allow women priests, Sydney rejected it in a bloody battle that scattered its enemies.
JULIA BAIRD: The ordination of women has been before Sydney Synod for over 20 years. So there have been more than two decades of it being put up every single year. Now, all the people who are pro ordination of women that were putting it through all the '80s and the early '90s have gone. You know, they've either gone into the priesthood in other dioceses or they've left the Church because it's been too difficult and too traumatic.
2414
ANDREW FOWLER: Julia Baird leads the Movement for the Ordination of Women in Sydney.
On the Synod, she's in a minority -- she's a liberal and she's a woman.
JULIA BAIRD: Usually, in the couple of weeks after Synod people will say to you, "Do you know what you're doing? It's idolatry. You're making women idols of God by talking about them." Or, "You're doing the Devil's work. You will destroy the Church by asking that women enter the priesthood." Um, you get those kinds of allegations and people really being very suspicious of what your motivations would be, as if your standing there was some kind of anvil wanting to, you know, smash it and, you know, make Germaine Greer pope.
24:00
ANDREW FOWLER: Straddling all this is Archbishop Harry Goodhew, the man who leads the diocese and the Synod.
He's an evangelical but compared with the Sydney powerbrokers, he's a moderate.
ARCHBISHOP HARRY GOODHEW, SYDNEY DIOCESE: The notion that the bishop's point of view will always prevail may be stronger in some dioceses than it is here. And this has always been a robust diocese where the lay voice has been very strong. And to that degree it's had a degree of health.
25:29
ANDREW FOWLER: Archbishop Goodhew is often at odds with influential hardliners and tends to resist their separatist instincts. He's a strong believer in national church unity. For example, he wants Sydney to contribute to a Special Fund managed by the national church or General Synod. The money goes to groups representing all the Christian churches. But for the past five years, Synod has voted against it.
ARCHBISHOP PETER HOLLINGWORTH: There were a variety of reasons given. One of them is they didn't at the time much like the ecumenical partnerships we were involved in through the Australian Council of Churches and the World Council of Churches. There were various activities within the wider Anglican communion that they didn't want to support.
26:14
REV DR JOHN WOODHOUSE: There have been disagreements about the use of some of the funds and the accounting processes, as I understand it, and the reporting processes. The General Synod has tended to expand its budget in ways that there has not been full agreement with in the Sydney Synod. And the Special Fund is quite explicitly a voluntary fund.
ARCHBISHOP HARRY GOODHEW: If I had my way, I would have it contributing because I think that's part of the pattern that one ought to follow. But that's not what the Synod has determined and because we're synodically governed, that's the way it goes.
26:50
ANDREW FOWLER: Why can't you convince the Synod of that?
ARCHBISHOP HARRY GOODHEW: I'm not persuasive enough a speaker.
ANDREW FOWLER: If the Synod can be tough for the Archbishop, the Church's Standing Committee is tougher still. This committee is a policy body, a kind of church cabinet. Along with Moore College and the Synod, the Standing Committee forms the third axis of an ecclesiastical iron triangle.
Dr John Woodhouse is one of the committee's 51 members and is among its shrewdest strategists. He belongs to the Anglican Church League, a group led by Bruce Ballantine-Jones and which includes Moore College principal Peter Jensen.
Although Archbishop Goodhew is himself a member of the League and chairs the committee, he often finds himself outmanoeuvred by this conservative alliance.
28:00
ARCHBISHOP HARRY GOODHEW: Good evening, ladies and gentlemen.
ALL: Good evening, Archbishop.
ARCHBISHOP HARRY GOODHEW: I welcome you to the Standing Committee this evening. I'm going to call on the Reverend Narelle Jarrett and Dr Steven Judd to lead us in prayer.
REV NARELLE JARRETT: As we turn to the business of the evening, Father, we pray that you would help us to be good shepherds to this activity of discussion and decision making.
ANDREW FOWLER: One of the few committee independents is John McIntyre.
REV NARELLE JARRETT: Father, we ask for your help in Jesus' name.
REV JOHN McINTYRE: The Archbishop is constrained in a whole range of ways. The Anglican Church League in the diocese would have a lot of power -- political power. And they have a certain agenda that they're pursuing that they think is right. I mean, that's why they're pursuing it. And because they've got that power, they can get the numbers together through things like Standing Committee and sometimes Synod.
28:50
ANDREW FOWLER: How powerful is the Standing Committee and how difficult are they to deal with?
ARCHBISHOP HARRY GOODHEW: Um -- if I don't always get my way, I suppose I would feel they were difficult. But it's a body of people where there are a variety of views represented. And it's a robust body -- it always has been -- with some very capable people in it.And it's quite vigorous at times. But it does its job.
ANDREW FOWLER: How often do you get rolled?
ARCHBISHOP HARRY GOODHEW: Oh, well, it all depends what the issue is. I win some, lose some.
29:24
ARCHBISHOP PETER HOLLINGWORTH: It seems to me that an archbishop of Sydney is, looking at it from the outside, much more constrained and controlled by his Standing Committee and his Synod than any other diocese that we know of.
ARCHBISHOP PETER CARNLEY: I think he has quite a difficult time, from time to time. Um, I think, um -- he doesn't command a great majority of support there so he has to argue for what he wants to happen pretty aggressively.
REV DR JOHN WOODHOUSE: To be quite honest, I think that the Archbishop proposes things and sometimes he is supported and sometimes he isn't. It's just an open discussion. I don't really note the times where -- It's not as though this is a great event when the Archbishop proposes something and goodness gracious me, the Standing Committee doesn't agree with him. Sometimes they agree, sometimes they don't.
30:20
ANDREW FOWLER: Last week, Archbishop Goodhew had a win. He installed a new bishop for South Sydney. But the fight behind the ceremony typifies the politics of the Standing Committee.
When the bishop's position became vacant, a dispute grew up over whether Goodhew should choose a replacement.
It appears some of the committee wanted to delay the decision until the Archbishop himself retires next year.
30:48
REV JOHN McINTYRE: There are people in the diocese who didn't want to see a bishop appointed to South Sydney because a new archbishop will be elected next year in 2001 and they wanted to leave the position open so the new archbishop could appoint his own person and a number of other bishops who are retiring soon, so he would have had, if you like, a free hand.
31:14
ANDREW FOWLER: It's believed members of the committee also feared that by appointing a new bishop, Goodhew would be anointing a possible successor -- a moderate like himself.
In the end, it became a battle over numbers.
REV DR JOHN WOODHOUSE: An impossible majority was required that you couldn't even get if everybody voted the one way. As it turned out, you couldn't get the majority to get the bishop appointed on that occasion. It was just impossible, mathematically.
REV JOHN McINTYRE: The evidence that we were given by the secretary of the Standing Committee was that all it would require was one member of the House of Clergy to oppose the notion of even appointing a new bishop and we wouldn't be able to appoint a bishop. It was just a trick of numbers in some ways.
32:07
ANDREW FOWLER: To bypass a fight he couldn't win in the Standing Committee, Archbishop Goodhew called a special sitting of the Synod. There, he persuaded enough members to give him his way.
ARCHBISHOP HARRY GOODHEW: People expressed the point of view about the fact that it might be inappropriate for an archbishop to make that appointment. I made the point that I felt that the position of South Sydney was so important that the prospects of some 18 months without a bishop was from my point of view not acceptable. And, therefore, I took the steps that I took to ask a special Synod to consider it.
32:46
ARCHBISHOP PETER CARNLEY: I've not heard of it happening before. But I think it was a pretty sensible thing for him to do, to go to the whole church, as it were, to get support. I think that was a good move.
ANDREW FOWLER: Goodhew's small victory signals that hardline evangelical power is not yet complete. For that, the conservatives need to control one further Sydney institution -- the office of archbishop itself.
There will be intense politicking when Goodhew retires next year.
A leading contender to succeed him is evangelical principal of Moore College Peter Jensen.
33:36
CANON PETER JENSEN: I think if your fellow Christians in the Diocese of Sydney were to say to you, "We think you should be our archbishop," you would have to have a very good reason to say no.
33:45
ANDREW FOWLER: The election of a man like Jensen could lead the Church into a national crisis. This is because his supporters want to push ahead with their most treasured goal -- lay presidency. It's an idea that stems from an obscure debate harking back to the Reformation but it's bitterly fought.
Anglicans, like Catholics, only allow priests to bless communion bread and wine. Sydney evangelicals want to give ordinary parishioners the power to hold communion. They argue that priestly hierarchies should not interpose between the believer and the Gospels.
34:36
REV DR JOHN WOODHOUSE: There has developed historically a prohibition in our church and almost a taboo that is unhealthy. And that is the idea that there is a priest who has special powers that other people don't have. That's got into the mind of a number of church folk over the years and I don't believe it's true. I don't believe that there's a special class of holy people. And one of the ways to express that is to break down this particular little taboo.
ARCHBISHOP PETER HOLLINGWORTH: They are saying, "Well, anybody can do it really. It's a democratic thing. Why shouldn't any good lay person do it regardless of whether they've been ordained or not?" Now, I think that strikes at the heart of Anglican and Catholic order, actually.
35:18
ARCHBISHOP PETER CARNLEY: I think in terms of world Anglicanism, it's very clear that there's not one church in the Anglican Communion that is interested in pursuing lay presidency. The Church of the Southern Cone of South America was a few years ago and looked at it fairly seriously but they have decided that they're no longer interested in it. So there's nobody or no church in the Anglican Communion which is interested in this.
ANDREW FOWLER: Apart from Sydney?
ARCHBISHOP PETER CARNLEY: Apart from Sydney.
35:44
ANDREW FOWLER: Lay presidency is not radical for some Protestants but to adopt it within Anglicanism amounts to setting up a splinter church.
Sydney Synod approved lay presidency last year but Archbishop Goodhew used a veto to stop it going ahead - for now.
36:04
ARCHBISHOP HARRY GOODHEW: My judgment is that it will be difficult for someone to be elected as the next archbishop who does not support the question of lay presidency. In other words, since the Synod has voted so strongly in favour of it, it's hardly likely to appoint a new archbishop who didn't agree with that point of view or wasn't prepared to support it.
ARCHBISHOP PETER HOLLINGWORTH: Now, of course, this is a very serious problem for the whole church, especially the national church in Australia, because Sydney is the mother diocese. It is the biggest diocese. It has the most number of Anglicans.It has the most amount of resources and wealth. It would seriously diminish the Church. It's in nobody's interest to see the Diocese of Sydney going off into a state of isolation.
36:52
CANON PETER JENSEN: It would cause some loosening of the bonds that bind us but so too has women's ordination and we have lived with that. I do think that some sort of restructuring of the Church is most likely in the next five to ten years. I don't see some sort of secession occurring.
ANDREW FOWLER: It's Sydney's separatist streak which leads the new national primate to accuse parts of the diocese of behaving not like a mainstream church, but like a sect.
37:28
ARCHBISHOP PETER CARNLEY: You can categorise different kinds of embodiment of Christianity in terms of church type and sect type. The church type engages with the world, gets involved with the world and sees its mission as transforming the world. The sect type tends to define itself however against the world and it takes a fairly hard line with regard to what's going on out in the world. And I think I see some of the sect type which is very lively and powerful and successful .I see that, certainly, in pockets in Sydney.
38:07
REV DR JOHN WOODHOUSE: He claims that my church is a sect kind of mentality? Well, he's never been here. To my mind, he's never spoken to any member of this congregation. It's an interesting, very strong view to hold from a distance, from the other side of the continent. I'm not sure what information he would base that on. And I think it's an extraordinary thing to say without knowledge, without ever having been here.
38:35
ANDREW FOWLER: This place of worship represents the most provocative strategy yet of Sydney's conservative evangelicals. With missionary zeal, they have broken out of Sydney and set up in competition to a local Anglican church in another diocese. They call it church planting and it directly challenges the authority of the Anglican Church.
REV ANDREW HEARD, PASTOR, CENTRAL COAST EVANGELICAL CHURCH: We all have an overriding concern, over and above institutions, to bring people to consider the claims of Jesus themselves. And for us, that matters more than anything because it's such important news. It's so important that people hear it and consider it themselves that we're prepared to break out of structures, if need be, if they're holding us back.
39:19
REV ANDREW HEARD (To congregation): Come back with me to Chapter Six, Verse Six. The plagues themselves are described as God's great acts of judgment. Chapter Six, Verse Six. Look at it there with me --
ANDREW FOWLER: Andrew Heard is a Sydney Anglican minister. He describes his new venture in the Newcastle diocese as independent.Yet his church has the support of Sydney Anglican powerbrokers Peter Jensen and John Woodhouse.
39:44
REV DR JOHN WOODHOUSE: I am involved on a board which is supporting a church plant on the Central Coast. And I was invited onto that just to be a group of advisers in the setting up of that particular church.
CANON PETER JENSEN: I think that it's very important indeed that we sustain the growth of new churches throughout Australia. And I'd like to see churches, I'd like to see our graduates planting churches wherever there is a need right throughout the Commonwealth of Australia.
ANDREW FOWLER: In an act of bravado, the new evangelical seedling was planted in a rival diocese with the permission of neither the Archbishop of Sydney nor the Bishop of Newcastle.
40:34
ARCHBISHOP HARRY GOODHEW: I went up into the area and had contact with the Bishop and also spoke with the clergy in that area. And they were concerned that perhaps I had sanctioned this. But it doesn't have a connection with me. It doesn't have a connection, a strict connection in this sense, with this diocese. It's a man who was a priest in this diocese who's gone up to do that.
REV ANDREW HEARD: It's a big country. It's a free country. We didn't coerce anybody. In fact, rather --
ANDREW FOWLER: So you didn't think you needed permission to come into the diocese and set up the church, even though you were with the Anglican Church of Sydney?
REV ANDREW HEARD: No. No. And still don't. I don't think -- I don't think the work of Christ is such that we need institutions to validate it or give it permission.
41:24
ANDREW FOWLER: Word of the new planted church was a shock to the local Anglicans at St Paul's. What's more, the Sydney parish backing the new church had published a newsletter claiming it was needed because other churches in the area weren't teaching the Bible properly.
The Bishop of Newcastle and the local priest were outraged.
MEL NELSON, FORMER MINISTER, ST PAUL'S: I remember being quite -- well, blown away. It was breathtaking to -- to read the assumptions that were being made in that -- in that piece of paper about the churches across the board in the Central Coast.
42:03
BISHOP ROGER HERFT, NEWCASTLE DIOCESE: So when they spoke about the fact that there were only three Bible-based Christ-centred churches in the Central Coast, that saddened me. I think they were specially pointing the finger at the Anglicans because the movement had begun from a particular parish in Sydney.
42:19
REV DR JOHN WOODHOUSE: We realised that the Archbishop of -- that the Bishop of Newcastle was unhappy about this move. It seemed to us that that was not a determining factor. That is to say, we live in a country with freedom of speech and freedom of movement. And if a Christian person wants to gather people around them and form a church on the Central Coast, it's not against the law of the land.
BISHOP ROGER HERFT: And I've never experienced anything like this in any of the churches and dioceses that I've worked in my life.
42:50
ANDREW FOWLER: Sydney's evangelical ideology is spreading to other dioceses. More churches have been planted in Bathurst and Orange. And Archbishop Goodhew has gone so far as to warn his fellow bishops there may be more.
ARCHBISHOP HARRY GOODHEW: I've indicated to other bishops in Australia that it's a real possibility in some of their dioceses. So it's not been that I've tried to hide the matter.
ANDREW FOWLER: So it could happen elsewhere?
ARCHBISHOP HARRY GOODHEW: I'm sure it could. Mmm.
43:21
ANDREW FOWLER: That people from Sydney may come to the diocese and set up their evangelical church alongside the more orthodox, if you like, Anglican Church?
ARCHBISHOP HARRY GOODHEW: I think it may be that there -- that people from this diocese will go and begin churches in other places. I think that's a real possibility.
43:40
BRUCE BALLANTINE-JONES: There are churches which are being planted or growing around the country by people from the Diocese of Sydney. But they're not doing it in the name of or on behalf of the Diocese of Sydney. It's almost an informal breakout, if you like. There is an impatience with the Anglican Church at the point where the Anglican Church is not responding to contemporary situations in the community for the Gospel and where the polarisation of opinion is such that Sydney people get frozen out.
44:12
ANDREW FOWLER: Primate Peter Carnley strongly disapproves of church planting but has no authority outside his Perth jurisdiction except the power of persuasion.
ARCHBISHOP PETER CARNLEY: If a parish in my diocese tried to do that, I would be jumping on them like a ton of bricks.
ANDREW FOWLER: Why do you think that hasn't happened here?
ARCHBISHOP PETER CARNLEY: Well, I think probably in Sydney, those who want to do that are very powerful. They have a mind of their own. They are very difficult people to handle in terms of the normal conventions of the Anglican Communion. So I think -- I think it is a difficult scene for any archbishop in Sydney to manage.
44:56
ANDREW FOWLER: As the rest of the Church engages more and more with the modern world, the Diocese of Sydney remains steadfast on its chosen path.
Far from reconciling their differences, opposing Anglican factions are moving further apart on the role of women, on lay presidency, on church planting and interpretations of the Bible.
CANON PETER JENSEN: I respect Peter Carnley. I understand him. As I say, I think we have a friendship. But I think he is profoundly wrong. And his way is not going to carry the Gospel forward into Australian community in the next 50 to 100 years.
45:39
JULIA BAIRD: Sydney is really in danger of becoming more and more sectarian, you know. We, um -- We look after our own. We adhere to literal truth. We frown upon anyone that hasn't been taught at one theological college up in Newtown. I think that -- that we will really find it difficult to have dialogue.
BRUCE BALLANTINE-JONES: I think what will happen is that the dioceses of the Anglican Church in Australia will tend to drift apart and become more independent of each other. So that the Anglican Church looks more like a loose federation, rather than a tight-knit national body.
46:26
ANDREW FOWLER: Four million Australians declare allegiance to the Anglican Church. But how many realise that the comfortable old institution they might only visit for weddings and funerals is in fact a church full of bitterness?
At best, it faces prolonged internal turmoil and at worst, disintegration.
ENDS 47:18
Reporter: Andrew Fowler
Producer: Anne Connolly