Books: The reality of being a Sydney Anglican

Sydney Anglicanism: An Apology Michael Jensen

Are you enjoying your summer reading? This book needs to be there with you. Amid the turbulence in Anglican circles locally and abroad, Dr Michael Jensen’s Sydney Anglicanism: An Apology injects much-needed calm and a constructive word into our ecclesiastical climate.

Holding a unique vantage point as lecturer in doctrine and church history at Moore College and as son of the outgoing Archbishop of Sydney, Jensen’s purpose is to explode a particular narrative about Sydney Anglicans.

The narrative is told two different ways. One side speaks as if Sydney is some kind of extremist monstrosity unleashed within the Anglican Communion. The other side speaks as if Sydney alone is the idealised New Jerusalem, holding the torch against the onslaught of darkness. Jensen’s major thesis is that both extremes are untrue and holding to either is potentially disastrous. He thus puts forward an apology setting forth a true telling of the narrative of Sydney Anglicans, albeit a true telling with constructive comments and ‘elements of honest critique’. Read more