The Anglican Church of Australia, formerly known as the Church of England in Australia and Tasmania, is a Christian church in Australia and an autonomous church of the Anglican Communion. It is the second largest church in Australia after the Catholic Church. According to the 2016 census, 3.1 million Australians identify as Anglicans. As of 2016, the Anglican Church of Australia had more than 3 million nominal members and 437,880 active baptised members. For much of Australian history since the arrival of the First Fleet in January 1788, the church was the largest religious denomination. It remains today one of the largest providers of social welfare services in Australia.
A provincial episcopal visitor (PEV), popularly known as a flying bishop, is a Church of England bishop assigned to minister to many of the clergy, laity and parishes who on grounds of theological conviction, "are unable to receive the ministry of women bishops or priests". The system by which such bishops oversee certain churches is referred to as alternative episcopal oversight (AEO).
Phillip John Aspinall is an Australian Anglican bishop who served as Anglican Archbishop of Brisbane from February 2002 until December 2022, and was also the Primate of the Anglican Church of Australia from July 2005 until he stood down on 4 July 2014.
Roger Adrian Herft is a former bishop in the Anglican Church of Australia. He was the Archbishop of Perth from 2005 to 2017. He was previously the Bishop of Newcastle from 1993 to 2005 and the Bishop of Waikato in New Zealand from 1986.
The Anglican Diocese of Perth is one of the 23 dioceses of the Anglican Church of Australia. The constitution of the Diocese of Perth was passed and adopted in 1872 at the first synod held in Western Australia. In 1914, the Province of Western Australia was created and the diocesan bishop of Perth became ex officio metropolitan bishop of the new province and therefore also an archbishop.
The Anglican ministry is both the leadership and agency of Christian service in the Anglican Communion. Ministry commonly refers to the office of ordained clergy: the threefold order of bishops, priests and deacons. More accurately, Anglican ministry includes many laypeople who devote themselves to the ministry of the church, either individually or in lower/assisting offices such as lector, acolyte, sub-deacon, Eucharistic minister, cantor, musicians, parish secretary or assistant, warden, vestry member, etc. Ultimately, all baptized members of the church are considered to partake in the ministry of the Body of Christ.
The Anglican Diocese of Brisbane, also known as Anglican Church Southern Queensland, is based in Brisbane, Queensland, Australia. The diocesan bishop's seat is at St John's Cathedral, Brisbane. The diocese stretches from the south-eastern coastline of Queensland, down to the New South Wales border and west to the Northern Territory and South Australian borders. The diocese currently markets itself as "Anglican Church Southern Queensland" (ACSQ). The "Anglicare Southern Queensland" brand is also heavily promoted by the diocese.
The Anglican Diocese of Adelaide is a diocese of the Anglican Church of Australia. It is centred in the city of Adelaide in the state of South Australia and extends along the eastern shore of the Gulf St Vincent from the town of Eudunda in the north to Aldgate in the south. The diocesan cathedral is Saint Peter's Cathedral in Adelaide. The diocese was founded in 1847 with Augustus Short as the first bishop. The incumbent Archbishop of Adelaide since 2017 has been Geoffrey Smith, who has also been the Anglican Primate of Australia since 2020.
Kay Maree Goldsworthy is an Australian bishop of the Anglican Church of Australia. She is the current archbishop of Perth in the Province of Western Australia. Upon her installation as archbishop, on 10 February 2018, she became the first female archbishop in the Anglican Church of Australia. Previously, she served as diocesan bishop of the Diocese of Gippsland in the south-eastern Australian state of Victoria.
Alfred Charles Holland was an Australian Anglican bishop. He was consecrated as a bishop on 6 August 1972 and was an assistant bishop in the Diocese of Perth before becoming the diocesan Bishop of Newcastle in New South Wales from 1978 to 1992.
The ordination of women in the Anglican Communion has been increasingly common in certain provinces since the 1970s. Several provinces, however, and certain dioceses within otherwise ordaining provinces, continue to ordain only men. Disputes over the ordination of women have contributed to the establishment and growth of progressive tendencies, such as the Anglican realignment and Continuing Anglican movements.
Robert David Silk was an English priest of the Roman Catholic Church. He was formerly an Anglican bishop and was the Bishop of Ballarat in the Anglican Church of Australia.
Genieve Mary Blackwell is an Australian Anglican bishop who has served as an assistant bishop in the Diocese of Melbourne since June 2015, and previously served as an assistant bishop in the Diocese of Canberra and Goulburn from 2012 to 2015. She was the first woman to be consecrated as a bishop in the state of New South Wales and the third in Australia.
Karen Marisa Gorham, is a British Church of England bishop. Since February 2016, she has been the Bishop of Sherborne, a suffragan bishop in the Diocese of Salisbury; and she was Acting Bishop of Salisbury from 2021 to 2022. From 2007 to 2016, she was the Archdeacon of Buckingham in the Diocese of Oxford.
Emma Gwynneth Ineson is a British Anglican bishop and academic, specialising in practical theology. Since 2023, she has served as Bishop of Kensington, the area bishop for West London. From 2014 to 2019, she was Principal of Trinity College, Bristol, an evangelical Anglican theological college; from 2019 to 2021, she was Bishop of Penrith, the suffragan bishop of the Diocese of Carlisle; and from 2021 to 2023, she served as "Bishop to the Archbishops of Canterbury and York", i.e. assistant bishop on the staffs of both archbishops.
Jeremy Noel Robert James is a British-born Anglican bishop in Australia. He has served as the Bishop of Willochra since 25 February 2023. He previously served from 6 August 2014 to 2022 as an assistant bishop in the Anglican Diocese of Perth.
Elizabeth Joyce Smith is an Australian Anglican priest and hymnist. She has published three collections of hymns, and several of her hymns have been included in the ecumenical hymnal Together in Song. Ordained a deacon in the Anglican Church in Australia in 1987, Smith became a priest in 1993. She earned a PhD from the Pacific School of Religion, where she focused on feminist hermeneutics and liturgical studies. Her doctoral thesis was published in 1999, with the title Bearing Fruit in Due Season: Feminist Hermeneutics and the Bible in Worship. She has served on the Liturgy Commission for the Anglican Church of Australia since 1997. In 2018, she was commissioned to write a hymn for the installation of Archbishop Kay Goldsworthy. In 2020, she was appointed a Member of the Order of Australia for her contributions to liturgical scholarship and to the Anglican Church of Australia.
Helen Jane Kennedy is a bishop of the Anglican Church of Canada. She is the current bishop of the Diocese of Qu'Appelle in southern Saskatchewan.
Paul Richard Thomas SSC is a British Anglican bishop who has served as Bishop of Oswestry, a suffragan bishop in the Diocese of Lichfield and the provincial episcopal visitor for the western half of the Province of Canterbury since February 2023. From 2011, he was vicar of St James's Church, Paddington.
Susanna Pain is an Australian Anglican priest, former Dean of St Paul's Anglican Cathedral, Sale in Victoria, Australia and spiritual director. She was one of the first women ordained as an Anglican priest in Australia in 1992, one of the five women ordained in Adelaide, and the first female dean of St Paul's, Diocese of Gippsland. The features of her ministry have been pastoral care, leading spiritual retreats and contemplative prayer, and encouraging use of the creative and performance arts for worship.
