, the chaplain of the
First Fleet 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. 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. 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. It provides chaplains to the
Australian Defence Force, hospitals, schools, industry and prisons. 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==