The Anglican Church of Australia, previously known as the Church of England in Australia and Tasmania, is a Christian church in Australia and an autonomous church of the worldwide Anglican Communion. It is the second largest Christian church in Australia, after the Catholic Church. In 2016, responding to a peer-reviewed study published in the Journal of Anglican Studies by Cambridge University Press, the Anglican Church of Australia reported that it had 4,865,328 total baptised members. In 2017, Growth and Decline in the Anglican Communion: 1980 to the Present, published by Routledge, collected research reporting there were 3.8 million members of the church. In reporting to the World Council of Churches, the church claimed 3,881,000 total members. The Church of England Yearbook 2024 reported 3,679,688 members. According to the 2021 census, 2.5 million Australians (9.8% of the population) self-identified as Anglicans.
For much of Australian history since the arrival of the First Fleet in January 1788, the church was the largest religious denomination. In recent times, however, Anglicanism in Australia has mirrored the steep decline in church membership and attendance experienced in many first-world nations.
The church is one of the largest providers of social welfare services in Australia.
History
When the First Fleet was sent to New South Wales in 1787, Richard Johnson of the Church of England was licensed as chaplain to the fleet and the settlement. In 1825 Thomas Scott was appointed Archdeacon of Australia under the jurisdiction of the Bishop of Calcutta, Reginald Heber. William Grant Broughton, who succeeded Scott in 1829, was consecrated the first (and only) "Bishop of Australia" in 1836.
In early Colonial times, the Church of England clergy worked closely with the governors. Richard Johnson was charged by the governor, Arthur Phillip, with improving "public morality" in the colony, but he was also heavily involved in health and education. Samuel Marsden (1765–1838) had magisterial duties and so was equated with the authorities by the convicts. He became known as the "flogging parson" for the severity of his punishments. Some of the Irish convicts had been transported to Australia for political crimes or social rebellion in Ireland, so the authorities were suspicious of Roman Catholicism for the first three decades of settlement and Roman Catholic convicts were "compelled to attend the more or less perfunctory services of the Anglican Church". In New South Wales and Tasmania, the children of Catholic convicts and all orphans under the care of the colonial government were brought up as Anglicans.
The Church of England lost its legal privileges in the Colony of New South Wales by the Church Act of 1836. Drafted by the reformist attorney-general John Plunkett, the act established legal equality for Anglicans, Roman Catholics and Presbyterians and was later extended to Methodists.
The Church Missionary Society established a mission to Aboriginal people in 1832 in the Wellington Valley, New South Wales, but it ended in failure: indigenous people in the 19th century demonstrated a reluctance to convert to the religion of the colonists who were seizing their lands.
In 1842 the Diocese of Tasmania was created. In 1847 the rest of the Diocese of Australia was divided into the four separate dioceses of Sydney, Adelaide, Newcastle and Melbourne. Over the following 80 years the number of dioceses increased to 25.
The Australian Constitution of 1901 provided for freedom of religion. Australian society was predominantly Anglo-Celtic, with 40% of the population being Anglican.
In the early years of the 20th century the Church of England transformed itself in its patterns of worship, in the internal appearances of its churches, and in the forms of piety recommended by its clergy. The changes represented a heightened emphasis on the sacraments and were introduced by younger clergy trained in England and inspired by the Oxford and Anglo-Catholic movements. The church's women and its upper and middle class parishes were most supportive, overcoming the reluctance of some of the men. The changes were widely adopted by the 1920s, making the Church of England more self-consciously "Anglican" and distinct from other churches. Controversy erupted, especially in New South Wales, between the politically liberal proponents of the Social Gospel, who wanted more church attention to the social ills of society, and conservative elements. The opposition of the strong conservative evangelical forces within the Sydney diocese limited the liberals during the 1930s, but their ideas contributed to the formation of the influential post-World War II Christian Social Order Movement.
The church remained the largest Christian denomination until the 1986 census. After World War II, the ethnic and cultural mix of Australia diversified and Anglicanism gave way to Roman Catholicism as the largest denomination. The number of Anglicans attending regular worship began to decline in 1959 and figures for occasional services (baptisms, confirmations, weddings and funerals) started to decline after 1966. In recent times, the Anglican and other Christian churches in Australia have been active in ecumenical activity. The Australian committee for the World Council of Churches was established in 1946 by the Anglican and mainline Protestant churches. The movement evolved and expanded with Eastern and Oriental Orthodox churches later joining and by 1994 the Roman Catholic Church was also a member of the national ecumenical body, the National Council of Churches in Australia.
Since 1 January 1962 the Australian church has been autocephalous and headed by its own primate. On 24 August 1981 the church officially changed its name from the Church of England in Australia and Tasmania to the Anglican Church of Australia.When did the Church of England become the Anglican Church of Australia?
Although the Book of Common Prayer remains the official standard for Anglican belief and worship in Australia, An Australian Prayer Book (AAPB) was published in 1978 after a prolonged revision of liturgy. Another alternative service book, A Prayer Book for Australia (APBA), was published in 1995.
In 1985 the general synod of the Australian church passed a canon to allow the ordination of women as deacons. In 1992 the general synod approved legislation allowing dioceses to ordain women to the priesthood. Dioceses could choose to adopt the legislation. In 1992, 90 women were ordained in the Anglican Church of Australia and three others who had been ordained overseas were recognised. After decades of debate, women's ordination is rejected in a minority of dioceses. As of November 2024, only two (Sydney and North-West Australia) of the 23 dioceses have never ordained women as priests. A third diocese (Armidale) has ordained two women as priests but limited their service to the Anglican girls school and does not ordain women as priests for its churches. In 2008, Kay Goldsworthy was ordained as an assistant bishop for the Diocese of Perth, thus becoming the first woman consecrated as a bishop of the Anglican Church of Australia. Sarah Macneil was elected in 2013 to be the first female diocesan bishop in Australia. In 2014 she was consecrated and installed as the first female diocesan bishop in Australia (for the Diocese of Grafton in New South Wales).
The church remains a major provider of education and welfare services in Australia.About Australia: Religious Freedom It provides chaplains to the Australian Defence Force, hospitals, schools, industry and prisons. Senior clergy such as Peter Jensen, former Archbishop of Sydney, have a high profile in discussions on a diverse range of social issues in contemporary national debates. In recent times the church has encouraged its leaders to talk on such issues as indigenous rights; international security; peace and justice; and poverty and equity. The current primate is Mark Short, bishop of Canberra and Goulburn, who commenced in the role on 1 November 2025. Short is the first-ever non-metropolitan bishop to serve as primate and the first evangelical to hold the post since Marcus Loane of Sydney retired in 1982.
Like other religious groups, the church has come under criticism in light of cases of sexual abuse by clergy and others. For example, in 2003, one of the former leading clergy was defrocked for sexual misconduct involving a 14-year-old girl. Victor Roland Cole relinquished his holy orders at the request of then Archbishop of Sydney, Peter Jensen.
2022 split On 16 August 2022, the church experienced a split when some conservatives formed the breakaway Diocese of the Southern Cross. It is led by a former Archbishop of Sydney, Glenn Davies. The split was principally caused over same sex marriage among other issues. The diocese is backed by the current Archbishop of Sydney, Kanishka Raffel, and the Bishop of Tasmania, Richard Condie. In September 2022, the Diocese of Sydney voted to declare the church to be in a state of "deep breach of fellowship" as a result of the division. The diocese vowed to provide support for conservative Anglicans both within the Anglican Church of Australia and the breakaway Diocese of the Southern Cross.
Demographics
Since the arrival of the First Fleet in 1788, the Anglican Church of Australia had been the largest religious denomination until the 1986 census,Greg Sheridan; God is Good for You; Allen & Unwin; 2018, p. 25. after which Roman Catholics outnumbered Anglicans by an increasing margin. The percentage of Anglican affiliation peaked in 1921 at 43.7%, and the number of persons indicating Anglican affiliation in an Australian census peaked in 1991 at 4,018,779.
In the 2011 Census, 3,679,907 people named their religious affiliation as Anglican. In the 2016 Census, 3.1 million Australians self-identified as Anglicans. Five years later, in the 2021 Census, the total was 2,496,273 – a decline of almost one-third, 32 per cent. Those figures represented 17.1% and 9.8% respectively of the census populations, a decline of 42%. In 2016, the Journal of Anglican Studies stated that of approximately 4,865,328 total members claimed by the church, the number of active members was 437,880. In 2017, another peer-reviewed study, published by Routledge Press, reported that the average weekly Anglican attendance had fallen to 155,000 in 2011 from 191,600 in 1991. The steep decline in church membership and attendance has mirrored the experience in many first-world, mostly post-modern nations.
State / territory% 2021 % 2016 % 2011 % 2006 % 2001 Australian Capital Territory8.2 10.8 14.7 16.7 18.5 New South Wales11.9 15.5 20.0 21.8 23.8 Northern Territory6.0 8.4 11.4 12.3 14.7 Queensland11.3 15.3 18.9 20.4 22.5 South Australia7.2 10.0 12.6 13.7 15.2 Tasmania14.4 20.4 26.0 29.3 32.4 Victoria6.5 9.0 12.3 13.6 15.3 Western Australia10.1 14.3 18.8 20.4 22.6Total Australia9.8 13.3 17.1 18.7 20.7
One explanation for the reduced prevalence of Anglicanism relates to changes in Australia's immigration patterns. Before the Second World War, the majority of immigrants to Australia had come from the United Kingdom – though most of Australia's Roman Catholic immigrants had come from Ireland. After World War II, Australia's immigration program diversified and more than 6.5 million migrants arrived in Australia in the 60 years after the war, including more than a million Roman Catholics.
Unlike other churches, the Anglican Church of Australia does not publish churchwide attendance statistics. In 2011, the National Church Life Survey estimated that 155,000 Australians attended an Anglican church weekly, down from 191,600 in 1991. However, the church does tabulate figures on clergy, which are used to allocate diocesan representation at General Synod. In 2015, there were 2,441 active bishops, priests and deacons in the church, up from 2,340 in 1991.
Structure