Chapter 40 : A Time for Every Purpose Under Heaven

Since pandemic restrictions hit the Australian music industry, we’ve been locked in to home bunkers, learning to Zoom and posting online.

Faced with lockdown challenges and live singing bans, the words of the folk song “Turn, Turn, Turn”, made familiar by Peter Seeger, ring true. Right now we live in a time of weeping, that will change and develop, because we exist in emplaced temporal spirals that never stand still. Since we live in different places, but are globally networked, multiple influences can sway our behaviour. Managing these online influences wisely, and maintaining healthy daily routines and relstionships, can shape our lives and actions for the better. Human lives are rich palettes of joy and sorrow, creation and destruction; this is the ultimate lot of every divinely created, but fallible, human being. How we react to this living maze, and where we choose to go within it, takes us in different directions. The “Turn, Turn, Turn” song lists conflicting opposites, that seem to have nothing in common, but in fact they hold a mirror up to the full spectrum of human experience. Invoking divine blessings is not an easy way out of facing these paradoxes, but if we look for the pathways that grace offers, they can lead us to what various cultures have named salvation, dadirri, heaven, nirvana, and enlightenment. If we get lost, we can retrace our steps and find the right track. What the world sees as uncompetitive weakness, may incorporate hidden, lasting strengths. Every humane culture has teachings that communicate this truth.

Institutional Church ministry, that is publicly defined, enigmatically codified, strictly regulated, and is lived, paradoxically, as humble servanthood within an elite ministerial class, has often been illegitimately used to mask malignant worldly power structures. This is clearly the case in Australia, where predominantly non-Aboriginal church ministry hierarchies overwhelmingly endorse racist geographical segregation from Australia’s ghettoised Aboriginal First Nations churches. 

People who are elevated to privilege and power, including that of church ministry, choose to exercise their power over others with varying degrees of responsibility. Some have no conscience at all, and never consider what effect their actions may have. Others may be fully aware of potential effects, but either dismiss them, or readily pass the blame on to hapless colleagues. In Australian Church ministry circles it is rare to encounter anyone prepared to admit that they have done wrong, or sincerely makes amends. But Australia’s churches still favour self righteous elites. So does Australia still have churches, or just ghostly, lost remnants of the community founded by Jesus Christ?

Perhaps the Australian church is going through a dormant period, like the three day Easter Triduum that precedes the Resurrection. We need a Reveille, a clear trumpet call, to wake us from the dead. A remedy has been offered to Australia, in the Uluru Statement from the Heart, but I have yet to see any Australian Church leaders and musicians endorse and promote the Uluru Statement wholeheartedly, using powerful church media strategies that are readily available. Australia urgently needs to face the truth of its colonial history, accept the strong Aboriginal Voice of the Uluru Statement, and forge a lasting Treaty. But Australia’s divided churches are still promoting factional doctrines, blindly acting as if Australia’s First Nations don’t exist or need “protection”, and busily maintaining racist segregation. And all this, in a networked world where virtual intercultural worship and friendships can and should be flourishing. After weeping, comes laughter. Australia has had enough of weeping.

Chapter 39: Multicultural Religious Economies in Western Sydney

In 2017 Western Sydney is bursting with religious activity. Yet much of this activity, deemed “politically incorrect” by secularist government censorship, is excluded from local newspapers and media. Those not swayed by racism, religious prejudice or computer phobia, who pay attention to influential social media, are regularly notified of diverse religious events, activities and campaigns. This information costs nothing, and is advantageous for anyone involved in ecumenical cooperation and interfaith discussions in multicultural Greater Western Sydney. Western Sydney residents are free to visit diverse religious venues, and access accurate information about religious activities and ventures. Western Sydney is in fact a world leader in peaceful religious coexistence. One of the tools we use to achieve this remarkable level of multicultural cooperation is meaningful engagement in viable, profitable religious industries.

In the City of Parramatta, where I live, there are twenty five Christian churches, one synagogue, one mosque, and a Buddhist temple. In Greater Western Sydney the statistics are 220 churches, 5 synagogues, 5 mosques, and 3 Buddhist temples. And that's without counting Western Sydney's many football stadiums and Service Clubs as very well patronised quasi religious centres, well attended by thousands of cultish fans. As well as the four mainstream religions of Christianity, Judaism, Islam, and Buddhism, Greater Western Sydney hosts adherents of Agnosticism, Atheism, Druidism, alternative New Age religions, Wicca, Aurobindism, Masonism, Hinduism, Wahabism, Taoism, Australian Aboriginal Spirituality, Cao Daoism, Marianism, Animism, Bahaism, and countless cult-like fan groups attached to a huge variety of music and sports idols, from Palestrina to Lady GaGa and beyond. Australian music fans and gamers generally don't consider themselves religious, but take a look at what they do. Hard core Elvis fans make a pilgrimage to Graceland. Gamers who want to be taken seriously attend international gaming contests, where their insider cult knowledge and prowess can be affirmed. All over Australia, Medievalists, Cosplayers, Vintage Costumiers and Ecovillagers regularly converge on festival sites to trade and celebrate their common values and cultures. These are all religious economies.

Countless local and Australian religious industries were founded by, and are managed by, Western Sydney religious organisations. One of these industries is the sandalwood Industry of Western Australia. This stepped into a market gap left by undersupply of Indian sandalwood to religious organisations, and has since grown into an international venture that also supplies French perfumiers. Since I arrived in Western Sydney in the 1990s I've seen many religious ventures succeed and flourish. These ventures are not confined to charity Opportunity Shops such as Vinnies or the Salvos, or to volunteer staffed ventures, although this sector makes a significant contribution to the religious economy. From the well paid church architect, to the church florist, organist and sound technician, to the lady who sews and mends clergy vestments, to skilled craftspeople, musicians and artists, many religious people benefit from, and serve Greater Western Sydney communities in a socially and economically productive way. And with the current revival of Australian indigenous languages, a brand new music industry, spiritual to its core, is set to take off.

Chapter 38: Sydney’s Anglican Movement for the Ordination of Women

Last Saturday, 17 September 2016, I travelled to St Albans Anglican Church at Epping, to attend the Annual General Meeting of MOW Sydney, the Sydney Branch of Australia's National Anglican Movement for the Ordination of Women. MOW Sydney was founded by a group of Sydney Anglican women, led by Patricia Brennan. The group campaigned for the priestly ordination of Anglican women in Sydney and beyond. These women pioneered a movement that inspired hundreds of Anglican women who were trained and ordained outside Sydney, and now lead many flourishing Australian Anglican parishes with their priestly ministry. But the male dominated Sydney Anglican Diocese still bans the ordination of women.

In the 1980s and 1990s, MOW Sydney's mission to enlarge and enrich Australian Anglican women's contribution to church service was strenuously opposed by Bishop Donald Robinson and a fiercely misogynist faction of the Sydney Anglican Synod who insisted, and still insist, that women are Biblically required to submit to male domination, and refrain from any kind of church leadership, teaching or preaching. These men and their subjugated female allies succeeded in subverting the women's ordination movement with fears of slippery slope moral decline. The Sydney Anglican misogynist faction unscrupulously defamed MOW Sydney members, while also subverting Sydney Anglican women to betray their own gender, by inventing  an erroneous "complementarian" theology that undepins a submissive female diaconate managed by men. 

The untimely death of slandered Patricia Brennan, MOW Sydney's inspired and ethical leader, saddened and subdued MOW Sydney's severely harassed members. Nevertheless, they continued to meet to consolidate and pursue their mission. Memories of MOW Sydney's activist glory days were collected and published in a hefty tome entitled Prophets, Preachers, and Heretics, and the battle for Anglican women's priestly ordination in Sydney continues. More than glory days nostalgia is needed to promote the cause of Anglican women's priestly ordination in Sydney.

At Saturday's MOW Sydney AGM, speakers Robyn and David Claydon, of the Lausanne Movement for Women's Ministry, gave insights into how to walk through ministry doors previously closed to Anglican women. Greater awareness of the effects of male subjugation of women has validated women's ministry internationally, as the Claydons have witnessed, so MOW Sydney's mission may eventually succeed.

After its sojourn in the wilderness, MOW Sydney has reformed, and in 2017 it is celebrating its Jubilee year. Last Saturday MOW Sydney elected a new young President, Angela Peverell. Angela has declared her priestly vocation, and is engaging with the ministerial minefield of the Sydney Anglican Diocese by distance study through Melbourne's Trinity College, combined with her Anglican parish service. Angela leadership for MOW Sydney, administrative and online expertise, and strong advocacy for Sydney Anglican women. She leads a newly restructured, incorporated MOW Sydney,  with an active social media presence, and a committed member network throughout Anglican parishes in Sydney, New South Wales and Australia.

Chapter 37: Sydney Anglican Diocese bans Australia’s Five Anglican Women Bishops

Sydney Anglican Diocese is painting itself into a corner yet again, by presumptuously and disrespectfully banning Australia's five legally ordained Anglican women Bishops (Bishops Kay Goldsworthy, Genieve Blackwell, Sarah MacNeil, Angela Taylor, and Kate Wilmot) from ministering in their authorised priestly capacity within the Sydney Anglican Diocese. Unlike their male counterparts, these five Australian women Bishops did not receive invitations to attend the episcopal consecration of the current Sydney Anglican Archbishop, Dr. Glenn Davies. 

Well known for its obdurate opposition to the ordination of Anglican women to the Anglican priesthood, the Sydney Anglican Synod, and its softly spoken leader, Archbishop Glenn Davies, irrationally combine their misogynist ban with an unsustainable claim that they welcome and promote women into the fullness of priestly Anglican ministry. But a close examination of Sydney Anglican Diocesan ministry training programs at Moore College and elsewhere reveals that Sydney Anglican women receive only a parody of the training that male candidates for Anglican priestly ministry receive. Women trained under this oppressive patriarchal regime are banned from celebrating Holy Communion, teaching, preaching,  conferring blessings, and from leading parishes. Sydney Anglican Diocese's misogynist ban on women's priestly ministry is now its defining characteristic. 

The General Synod of the Anglican Church of Australia, and the Australian Anglican Primate, Archbishop Phillip Freier, appear to endorse the Sydney Anglican Diocese's blatant discrimination against Australia's Anglican women Bishops. No official reprimand has been issued by Archbishop Freier. The ministry of male Sydney Anglican Bishops and priests is still permitted and welcomed in Anglican parishes throughout Australia. Since the Sydney Anglican Diocese persists in its offensive ban on Australia's five Anglican Women Bishops, reciprocal ministry bans on misogynist Sydney Anglican male clergy should be enacted by Archbishop Freier, to support legitimately ordained women Bishops.

Chapter 36: Village Churches vs. the Urban MegaChurch

When I moved to Sydney in 1989, I found hundreds of city churches immersed in a huge metropolis, crammed into small, concreted plots of land on busy highways, with pocket handkerchief gardens, and plagued by constant traffic noise. This horrified me. Sydney's urban churches were unlike the other Australian churches I had attended. Where I grew up, churches were oases of peace, set well back from noisy main roads, and shielded by carefully tended gardens. The parishioners knew each other well, and lived in spacious ground floor houses, or on farms. Parishioners who lived in a country town or regional centre generally walked to their local church: only farmers drove to town for Sunday worship.

The Churches of megametropolis Sydney were further apart from each other, and urban community ties and common courtesy also seemed to be falling apart. On buses and trains, people eyed each other suspiciously, and didn't talk with strangers. Many failed churches had been deconsecrated, sold and converted into restaurants or homes. When I saw how crowded the city was, I assumed that its urban churches, surrounded as they were by traffic and high rises, would have left the village model of church far behind. They obviously needed technology to communicate with the crowded city population. But many of the churches I explored were still operating on the “safe and friendly village” model, which doesn't work in crowded, depersonalised cities. As a result, they were poorly attended by elderly parishioners, who were suspicious of outsiders and focused on maintaining fortress churches. Their querulous resistance to change, and their insistent demands that past traditions must be restored, told me that future shock had stopped these communities in their tracks. Elderly house owners mourned the loss of friendly urban streets and corner shops, and complained about the disturbing influx of inconsiderate refugees, immigrant workers, and unemployed jobseekers, who lived in high rise apartments.

Since I arrived, Sydney churches have separated into two distinct groups - traditional church communities, and progressive reformed churches who embrace technology. Pastoral care of parishioners is often outsourced to secular providers or religious retreat houses who cater for niche markets. Popular contemporary megachurches have ditched tradition, embraced the future, and grown into globalised corporate churches. They provide adult education, recreational clubs and social venues, and confidently promise health and wealth to tithing disciples. But many traditional churches have also survived by gathering bequests, assisting migrants, building global networks, and founding lucrative globalised businesses that promote and sell traditional music, books, customs, dress and liturgies. Churches who refuse to adapt, have closed, or have been absorbed into amalgamated collectives. Frequent clergy re-appointments, and increasing lay management of parishes, have replaced long term clergy residences. Either way,  survivor churches have found that attracting young families, and providing culturally appropriate activities, attractive products and community services as well as worship, is essential to managing a thriving city church.

Chapter 35: Lopsided Women’s Ministries = Lopsided Churches?

Judging from many responses to my last blog post, Anglican women's ministry in the Sydney Anglican Diocese is growing. Archbishop Glenn Davies has opened a door to asymmetrical female Anglican ministry, with an intriguing new theology of women's ministry. Archbishop Davies maintains that this new theology of Anglican female ministry is based on divinely accredited assymetric order, not on failed assumptions of patriarchal hierarchy. This distinction is untested, nor has it been proven to be effective.

Unbalanced lopsidedness (asymmetry) in Christian ministry is something that never crossed my mind until I read Archbishop Glenn Davies' recent advocacy for asymmetrical women's ministry. Silly me! I always imagined that Anglican ministry of all kinds is firmly grounded in a balanced relationship with the Holy Trinity, combined with balanced Christian human relationships that are equal under God, as mandated by the founder of Christianity.

So how is a trained, diaconally ordained Sydney Anglican woman expected to carry out her non-hierarchical, but assymertically ordered, supposedly Christian ministry, lopsidedly, in Sydney and beyond? Lopsidedness in ministry sounds like a difficult act to maintain. But we may have nothing at all to worry about. Sydney Anglican women ministers are overseen by an army of thoughtful asymmetrical male ministers who ensure that women deacons and their lay female assistants carry the lopsided weight of their ministerial tasks, while their male colleagues make all the decisions and get all the glory.

But I forget - Sydney already has a well recognised female role model for asymmetrical Anglican women's ministry. The Rev. Lucille Piper, an ordained Anglican priest who has willingly served as a Deacon in the Sydney Anglican Diocese, is also a respected missionary in Papua New Guinea. This saintly Anglican woman priest will, in all likelihood, be disrespectfully dubbed "Lopsided Lu" by the AAAWM (Archepiscopal Advocate for Asymmetical Women's Ministry)! But perhaps she will sensibly flee Sydney, before Archbishop Davies’ misogynistic displeasure descends on her.

The Rev. Lucille Piper: Prophet, Preacher, Missionary and Priest.

Anglican minister Rev. Lucille Piper OAM, known to her friends as Lu, is an outstanding witness for Christ in Australia, and beyond, as a missionary in Papua New Guinea. She has had a wonderfully varied church ministry. Finding herself faced with constantly changing circumstances, she did not hesitate to adapt her ministry flexibly to whatever God and her church communities required of her. 

After becoming a teacher, and being awarded a BA Honours from the University of New England in 1977, Lu went on missionary service in Papua New Guinea during 1968-73 and 1978-81. She served as an Anglican Church Army Officer in the Mosman area during 1984-90. This was followed by study leave and the award of a Bachelor of Divinity from Melbourne College of Divinity in 1994. Lu was deaconed in the Sydney Anglican Diocese in 1991, and priested in the Newcastle Anglican Diocese in 1995, From 1995-2004 Lu ministered at Stroud in the Hunter Valley of New South Wales. She returned to church missionary service in Papua New Guinea in 2004-2012. 

Lu's valuable contribution of nearly 20 years service in Papua New Guinea was recognised when she was awarded the Order of Australia Medal. After her return to Australia in 2012, Lu was appointed Assistant Minister at St Luke's Anglican Church, Mosman, where she ministered for several years before retiring from that parish and applying for a general licence to minister and preach in the Sydney Anglican Diocese. She is still awaiting the Diocese's response to her application.

In 2013 Lu was elected Convenor of the Sydney Branch of the Movement for the Ordination of Women, where she meets regularly with young and mature committed Anglican women engaged in Anglican church ministry all over Sydney. In January 2016 Lu returned briefly to Papua New Guinea to oversee the completion of church building works there. She will soon be returning to Sydney. 

Lu is much loved and admired by all who meet and know her. Please support her valuable, outstanding Anglican church ministry, and include her in your prayers.

Chapter 34: Paige Katay’s Go Girl Ministry in the Sydney Anglican Diocese

The Sydney Anglican worm has turned! Paige Katay's brave defence of women's ministry in Sydney Anglican churches has overturned the corrupt merchants' tables in God's Temple. On the 18th February 2016, Paige Katay, a Meriden College student, proclaimed that the Bible is not sexist, and that Archbishop Glenn Davies has never said anything that restricts women's ministry in Sydney Anglican churches. Bravo, Paige! Paige has bucked the misogynist Sydney Anglican system: she has persuaded us that God wants women to be ordained as Anglican women priests to minister in the Sydney Anglican Diocese. 

Women priests have arrived, and they're staying. Via Paige, God has declared "GO GIRL!", revealed that the Bible imposes no limitations on women's ministry, and has ordained brilliant women preachers to serve the Sydney Anglican Diocese. Many Anglican women preach in Sydney, and their reasonable, inspired teaching and preaching, like Paige's teaching and preaching, is attentively heard. Last Sunday (21/2/2016) I witnessed a brilliant team of Sydney Anglican women lead the worship at St Barnabas' Church Broadway. Many women exercise powerful Christian leadership and management in Sydney Anglican churches, and the vast majority of Sydney Anglican men respect and defer to them, just as all Sydney Anglicans defer to Paige's reasonable judgement and proclamation. 

It is certainly a fact that Sydney Anglican parishes could not function without their current women leaders, administrators and managers. In fact, gender discrimination against women's priestly ministry in all its forms has fallen flat on it's face in the Sydney Anglican Diocese since journalists revealed how prejudiced churchmen exposed church women to domestic violence by endorsing rampant male misogyny. Ordained Anglican women priests from outside Sydney visit many Sydney parishes regularly, and Holy Communion has been celebrated by an Anglican woman priest (a senior Australian Defence Force military chaplain) in Sydney, without the heavens falling in. Sydney Anglican discriminative male dogmatism has collapsed in shame at its excessive hubris. The army of offensive Sydney Anglican male misogynists who invaded Sydney Anglican churches and dominated them for many years are definitely on the way out. However, they're kicking and screaming all the way down the nave to the church door. The Sydney Anglican Synod is still dominated by men who disagree violently with Paige. Their latest coward punch is to use indoctrinated, clearly good-hearted, but confused babes in arms as human shields.

Scared out of their wits by being consigned to misogynist hell and damnation by the community at large, these Sydney Anglican churchmen scrambled to rewrite their anti-women-priest dogmas. Rapidly backing away from their insistence on exclusively male church headship coupled with righteous male subordination of church women, they (and a cohort of well rewarded, subordained female deacons who have signed away their right to female priesthood) are now teaching two convoluted, unattractive red herring heresies about women's ministry that distract and confuse parishioners.

Complementarianism - otherwise known as Plugging the Gaps Ministry

Ironically, Sydney Anglican mob bosses couldn't find a word in the Oxford English Dictionary to describe it, so they invented a new buzzword - complementarianism. This convenient invention illogically asserts that trained and subordained women ministers, however capable, should do only what male ministers can't do, or don't want to do. Women get the ministry crumbs that fall under the table, the leftovers, and are supposed to lick them up gratefully. Like cleaning the church. It's so completely in tune with Vatican male misogyny that even Pope Francis is promoting it!

Egalitarianism - otherwise known as KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid) Ministry

This heresy involves replacing the word "equal" with "egalitarian", in order to control discourse about women's ministry. "Egalitarianism" is reductive, but the equality of women with men under God, preached by Jesus Christ, raises us all up to enjoy the riches of God's glory together. Egalitarian churches are anti-equality: the egalitarian church system reduces ministry to a lowest common denominator, promotes pseudo-ministry TAFE level adult education courses, and denigrates tertiary education in Christianity, reserving it for senior males. Egalitarian churches claim to honour women's ministry, while avoiding the issue of women ministers' equality with male ministers under God, and the right of women to be ordained to sacramental priestly ministry. Celebration of Holy Communion (Eucharist) is minimised and sometimes abandoned in egalitarian churches. Overworked, undereducated male and female Deacons carry out a greatly simplified public egalitarian ministry, while a selected caste of ordained male priests avoid the limelight, celebrate Holy Communion privately and regularly, and reserve all power to themselves and their selected, well paid, silent lay allies. This is the same system used by the Pharisees in Jesus' time on earth. Jesus condemned the Pharisees for parading themselves as holy and sinless, while condemning others to perpetual servitude.