What is the Anglican Church of Australia?
This is the Australian branch of the Anglican Communion.
The Anglican Communion is an inheritor of 2000 years of
catholic and apostolic tradition dating from Christ
himself, rooted in the Church of England. When the
Church of England spread throughout the (then) British
Empire, sister churches sprang up. These churches,
while autonomous in their governance, are bound together
by tradition, Scripture, and the inheritance they have
received from the Church of England. They together make
up the Anglican Communion, a body headed spiritually
by the Archbishop of Canterbury and having some
80 million members, making it the second largest
Christian body in the world.
The Australian Anglican Church evolved from colonial
times when it was called the Church of England. Today
it has between three and four million members throughout
Australia.
Regionally, the church is broken up into dioceses,
each containing a cathedral and headed by a Bishop.
The local diocese is Canberra and Goulburn.
Within a diocese, individual churches serve local
areas known as parishes. Usually, an ordained priest known
as a Rector leads a parish.
Bishops in the Anglican Church of Australia are
elected by individual dioceses and are consecrated into
the Apostolic Succession, considered to witness to an
unbroken line of Church leadership beginning with the
Apostles themselves.
Most dioceses of the Australian Anglican Church,
including Canberra and Goulburn, ordain both men and women
to the priesthood.
Although it subscribes to the historic Creeds
(the Nicene Creed and the Apostles' Creed), considers
the Bible to be divinely inspired, and holds the
Eucharist or Lord's Supper to be the central act of
Christian worship, the Anglican Church of Australia
grants tolerance in the interpretation of doctrine.
It tends to stress less the confession of particular beliefs
than the use of the Book of Common Prayer in public worship.
This book, first published in the sixteenth century,
even in its revisions, stands today as a major source
of unity for Anglicans around the world.
