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This book contains a series of essays based on previously published articles but all revised and updated. One on the founding of the university of Sydney has been totally re-written. They deal with the cultural and political tsunami that swept over the British empire and especially the colonies in Australia in the middle of the nineteenth century. The effects on those changes continue to this day for both church and state. The recent debates on marriage and religious freedom have about them the marks of these nineteenth century changes. Not all is simple continuity. State aid for independent schools initiated by Robert Menzies but carried to enormous lengths by his successors to this day actually turned the nineteenth century resolution totally on its head. The issues in these essays turn of the collapse of the English Christendom version of church state relations. The implications of that long running change are still central to the stuttering re-thinking by Anglicans of what it means to be a church in Australia in the twenty first century. That struggle has its analogues in the broader culture and nation as it tries to find a way to be Australia.
The Revd Dr Bruce Kaye AM is a graduate of the Universities of Sydney, London and Basel. He has taught at the University of Durham in England (1968–1982) and the University of New South Wales, where he was also Master of New College (1983–1994). He has had Visiting Fellowships at Cambridge University UK, Seattle University and as a DAAD scholar at Albert Ludwig University Freiburg im Breisgau. He was General Secretary of the Anglican Church of Australia (1994–2004), a member of the Inter Anglican Doctrine Commission, a Trustee of the Archbishop of Canterbury’s Anglican Communion Trust and the Founding Editor of the Journal of Anglican Studies. He is currently an Adjunct Research Professor in the research Centre for Public and Contextual Theology at Charles Sturt University. His recent books include, An Introduction to World Anglicanism (2008), Conflict and the Practice of Christian Faith: The Anglican Experiment (2009) and The Rise and Fall of the English Christendom, Theocracy, Christology, Order and Power (2018). He has transcribed and edited the correspondence of WG Broughton, the first bishop of Australia with Edward Coleridge in England which will be made available online in 2020.
