Wowsers

Evangelical Anglicans arrived with the First Fleet in 1788 and they’ve been asked to stand between savagery and civilisation ever since. The first chaplain, Richard Johnson, could not take it for very long and returned home in some despondence. The second chaplain, Samuel Marsden, was oftentimes more magistrate than minister. Sydney’s Anglicans have subsequently shared in the building of a mighty city in what appeared to all as a godforsaken corner of the world only good for exiles and aborigines. They have felt themselves caught between their commission to preach the gospel of God’s free grace to sinners and the need to decry the licentiousness, greed and corruption upon which the new nation was being founded.

It has never been easy to peddle religion in this town. We should not overestimate the extent to which even nineteenth century Sydney was ever a ‘Christian’ society. There has always been a vigorously secular streak in the harbour city – exemplified by the jaunty articles in the colonial magazines Bulletin and Truth. ‘Wowser’ is a term of contempt and derision invented in Sydney to describe those who would seek to impose their morality on everyone else; and it illustrates the kind of reaction against institutional Christianity that some Sydney-siders have considered as an identifying mark. Journalist Mike Carlton’s satires of Sydney Anglicans sit in the tradition of scallywag stone-throwers against the perceived stained-glass pomposity of the city’s church leaders.

Since the 1960s the tide of secularism has turned even more decisively against the churches. Speaking from the vantage point of 2010, the triumph of secularism is almost complete and is, in human terms, almost completely assured. Though Australia is by and large conservative and cautious, it is true that an argument from apparent fairness will always convince them; and that they react badly to ecclesiastical intrusion into public affairs. Middle-aged Sydney siders, born in the mid-60s and early 70s, are by now a group of people who never even had the chance to walk away from church, since they were not taken to Sunday School and Youth Group by their parents. They are ignorant of the Bible and of Christian traditions and don’t particularly want that state of affairs to change.

The Sydney Anglican story could read then as a story of decline and retreat in the face of two centuries of barely-concealed hostility. While there has been remarkable work done in the last thirty years or so, it could be interpreted as merely a rear-guard action, a staving off for a generation of a collapse that must surely come. Compared to Anglicans elsewhere of course this halting of decline looks like roaring success. The average age of attendees in some Anglican dioceses is well over 70 years old. Never mind that: in real terms, the relative health of Sydney diocese could be read as really just a more muted failure.

Yet the vigour of the opposition has made Sydney Anglicans battle-hardened. They are toughened by bad news. They are used to ridicule. They are not shocked by invective against them. Insult them all you like: it makes little difference. You could also point to a resourcefulness of spirit and a stubborn determination to bear the gospel come what may. There is an edge to the Sydney diocese that has not yet been blunted by the relentless pressure to go quietly into what from a secularist point of view would be a sweet and silent oblivion.

It would however be a mistake to consider this gingery determination from a merely human angle. If it is a virtue, it is so only because it stems from a faith in the rule of all things by the God who raised Jesus Christ from the dead. This must not be interpreted, by opponents or by Sydney Anglicans themselves, as a kind of divine vindication of Sydney Anglicans for their faithfulness and their commitment to doctrinal purity. On the contrary: the Anglican Church in Sydney may completely collapse and empty and be in a century’s time a quirk of history, as defunct as the Bulletin and Truth. Faith in the sovereignty of God is faith that he will continue his work, not faith in the eternal security of Sydney Anglicanism.

This foundational theological belief in the sovereign rule of God in the risen Jesus Christ can be the basis for an attitude of confidence without lapsing into an ugly triumphalism or a defensive paranoia. The sovereignty of God is the basis not for a martyr complex, but for true martyrdom – which is witnessing to Jesus Christ come what may. A persecution complex is essentially self-interested and even narcissistic. A life lived for Jesus Christ, on the other hand, risks itself entirely for the good of the other without regard for self – knowing that it entrusts itself to the God who raised Jesus from the dead.

That then is the challenge for Sydney’s evangelical Anglicans: do they put their trust in the sovereign Lord, the God of the risen Christ? The circumstances of life in 21st century Sydney are uncertain for those who would seek to preach Christ. The rise of the New Atheists has given unbelievers are more confident and at times strident voice. The possibility of a public sphere that more strictly polices itself against the intrusion of the religious is imminent. There is less and less native traction for the Christian message amongst those who have a churched upbringing of some kind. There is the outright fear expressed towards the religious way of being because of its association with violence and prudery.

But from the perspective of Christian faith, these difficulties are quite trivial. The job of the fellowship of churches that make up the diocese of Sydney is not to defend their own establishment or privilege. Their call, alongside other Christians, is to preach the gospel of Jesus Christ, the crucified and risen saviour and entrust themselves to providence...