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The Election of an ‘Outsider’ Archbishop
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 October 2024
Abstract
The 1984 election of David Penman as Anglican Archbishop of Melbourne was surprising, coming at the end of a controversial process in which two better-known candidates had consistently been the front runners. His election disrupted the longstanding power base of Melbourne Diocese represented by the two men passed over. But his election disrupted more than that – it disrupted the stalemate preventing the ordination of women in the Anglican Church of Australia. His election was crucial to the struggle to have women ordained in the Australian church. As Melbourne Diocesan Synod prepares to elect its next archbishop in 2025, it is timely to re-visit the 1984 election.
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- © The Author(s), 2024. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of The Journal of Anglican Studies Trust
References
1 The Electoral Board comprised six clergy and six lay people, elected by the 1981 Melbourne Synod.
2 This discussion is drawn from the handwritten records of the meetings of the Board (henceforth called the Electoral Board minutes,) made by the chair of the Board, Professor Kevin Westfold, an Australian academic and radio astronomer. It is not known if copies were made available to the other members of the Board. These and other materials relating to the election are among papers given by Professor Westfold before his death in 2001 into the care of my late husband, the Reverend Dr Brian Porter. They have been deposited in the Melbourne Diocesan archives.
3 Electoral Board minutes, meeting 6, 24 October 1983, and meeting 7, 7 November 1983.
4 The Brotherhood of St Laurence is one of Australia’s premier social justice organizations. Founded in Newcastle, NSW, in 1930, it relocated to Melbourne in 1933.
5 Melbourne Diocese has historically comprised both Evangelical and Anglo-Catholic factions, though neither faction has been extreme; its archbishops have been either of Evangelical, Anglo-Catholic, or broad-church sympathies. In the 1980s, the Anglo-Catholic faction was quite strong. In the twenty-first century, Evangelicals in Melbourne, as in the Anglican Church of Australia generally, are in the ascendancy.
6 ‘An election for God’s eyes only’, by Kerry Wakefield. The Age, 2 November 1983, p.11.
7 Electoral Board minutes, meeting 7, 7 November 1983.
8 Electoral Board minutes, meeting 10, 15 December 1983, and meeting 12, 15 February 1984.
9 Electoral Board minutes, meeting 13, 20 February 1984.
10 Mrs Heath was public affairs manager at the Mission of St James and St John. Ordained in 1993, she died in 2011. Deaconess McGregor was a parish social worker ministering at St Stephen’s Church, Richmond. Later Archdeacon McGregor, she died in 2022.
11 Electoral Board minutes, meeting 16, 15 March 1984.
12 Electoral Board minutes, meeting 18, 28 March 1984.
13 The Australian Church Record, 11 June 1984, p.1. The Diocese of Sydney’s implacable, continuing opposition to women priests was already clearly evident in 1984; Archbishop Robinson was a leading opponent.
14 Brian Porter, ‘Minutes of a meeting held at St Bartholomew’s Church, Burnley, at 8am on Saturday April 7, 1984’. The typed minutes, together with Porter’s original hand-written notes and numerous other papers related to that meeting, were in the author’s possession. They have been placed in the Melbourne Diocesan archives.
In the following days, the attendance figure varied. The letter Dr Sharwood sent to the Board on behalf of the meeting claimed that ‘over 70 clergy and laity’ attended; the press release he authorized said ‘about 75’ were present, and The Age report the following Monday morning 9 April said there were 80 present. The letter to the Board also included the names of 16 people ‘not able to be present but who had indicated a wish to be associated with such a resolution’.
15 Photocopy of letter from Robin Sharwood to Kevin Westfold dated 2 April 1984.
16 ‘Search for the next Archbishop seems to have widened’, by Olga Fernley. The Age, 7 April 1984, p.18.
17 Electoral Board minutes, meeting 18, 28 March 1984.
18 Electoral Board minutes, meeting 18, 28 March 1984.
19 ‘Anglicans split over election of archbishop’, by Olga Fernley. The Age, 9 April 1984, p.1.
20 The Diocesan Chancellor, Justice Clive Tadgell, wrote to Dr Sharwood on 9 April remonstrating with him for his comments in that morning’s Age. He was concerned that the publicity was ‘calculated to undermine the Board’ and was by extension, denigrating the diocese. It was inappropriate ‘coming from one in your position in the Diocese’. In reply on 11 April, Dr Sharwood said the article ‘did not accurately reflect… what I had thought to be the careful statements I had made to the reporter’. Copies of both letters were provided to Professor Westfold.
21 Electoral Board minutes, extraordinary meeting 18A, 10 April 1984.
22 Electoral Board minutes, extraordinary meeting 18A, 10 April 1984.
23 ‘Church Electoral Board rejects call to quit over bishop selection’, by Olga Fernley. The Age, 12 April 1984, p.3.
24 Church Scene, 18 May 1984, p.1.
25 Church Scene, 18 May 1984, p.1.
26 Electoral Board minutes, meetings 19, 16 April 1984, and 21, 3 May 1984.
27 Letter from Bishop David Penman to Professor Keven Westfold, dated 5 May 1984. A typed note added: ‘Individual copies to all members of the Electoral Board’.
28 Electoral Board minutes, meeting 22, 21 May 1984.
29 ‘Anglicans elect Penman as their new archbishop’, by Olga Fernley. The Age, Wednesday 23 May 1984, p.1.
30 ‘Penman to rewrite the rules’, by Rex Lopez. The Sun, 24 May 1984, p.3.
31 Electoral Board minutes, meeting 22, 21 May 1984.
32 Lopez, ‘Penman to re-write the rules’.
33 ‘Penman preaches a multicultural goal’ by Olga Fernley. The Age, 30 July 1984, p.3.
34 ‘Ruxton’s prejudices an embarrassment’, by Jane Munday. The Age, 4 September 1984, p.3.
35 Muriel Porter, Women in the Church: The Great Ordination Debate in Australia, Ringwood, Victoria: Penguin Books, pp.100–101.
36 Muriel Porter, pp.108–109. The Appellate Tribunal, the Australian Anglican Church’s highest court, was called on a number of times to determine the constitutional validity of the ordination of women. In 1985, it was once again examining the issues, including hospitality for visiting women priests.
37 Muriel Porter, p.111.
38 Muriel Porter, p.115.
39 The Australian Anglican Church is effectively a federation of dioceses, a mirror of the Australian federation of states. General Synod legislation in most areas, including ordination, does not come into effect in a diocese unless the diocese’s synod adopts it. The 1992 General Synod legislation for women priests is still not in place in three dioceses – Sydney and two dioceses aligned to Sydney, Armidale NSW, and North-West Australia.
40 Muriel Porter, pp.119–125
41 Muriel Porter, p.120
42 General Synod, Anglican Church of Australia. Report of the Appellate Tribunal Re Ordination of Women to the Office of Deacon Canon 1985, 4 March 1987. ‘The Tribunal (Archbishop D.W.B. Robinson dissenting) has held the canon to be valid… This decision of the Appellate Tribunal upholds the validity of the ordination of those women who have been made deacons under the provisions of the canon.’
43 Perth Synod had passed diocesan legislation for women priests; it survived a last-minute court challenge, allowing the first Australian women priests to be ordained in Perth on 7 March 1992.
44 The motion was moved by Muriel Porter, with the Reverend Dr Charles Sherlock seconding.
45 Muriel Porter, pp.133–136.
46 Anglican Church of Australia, Appellate Tribunal 1989, ‘Report and Opinion of the Tribunal on the “Ordination of Women to the Office of Priest Act 1988” of the Synod of the Diocese of Melbourne’, p.32. Melbourne Diocesan Synod, initially called an ‘assembly’, was formed in 1854, one of the earliest Anglican diocesan synods in the world. Its founding legislation, ‘An Act to enable the bishops, clergy and laity of the United Church of England and Ireland in Victoria to provide for the regulation of the affairs of the said Church’, passed by the Parliament of Victoria on 30 November 1854, known as ‘The 1854 Act’ is, unsurprisingly, very limited.
47 Alan Nichols, David Penman: Bridge-builder, Peacemaker, Fighter for Social Justice, Sutherland, NSW: Albatross Books, 1991, p.203.
48 Keith Rayner, Archbishop of Adelaide, elected to Melbourne 1990; Peter Watson, regional bishop in Sydney, elected to Melbourne 2000; Philip Freier, Bishop of the Northern Territory, elected to Melbourne 2006.
49 In 2020, the Appellate Tribunal ruled that the blessing service for married same-sex couples approved by the synod of the Diocese of Wangaratta, a regional diocese in Victoria, Australia, was authorized by the General Synod Canon Concerning Services 1992, and was not ‘inconsistent with the Fundamental Declarations and Ruling Principles of the Constitution of the Church’. Appellate Tribunal of the Anglican Church of Australia, ‘Primates’ references re Wangaratta Blessing Service’, 11 November 2020. It is believed that numbers of services using the Wangaratta liturgy have since been held quietly in different parts of Australia under this authority.
50 The Anglican Church of Australia Directory 2022/23, Mulgrave, Vic: Broughton Publishing, 2022, p.26.