Anglican Diocese of Brisbane - Culture

Culture

The Diocese of Brisbane has a predominantly moderate Anglo-Catholic culture. Groups such as the Society of Saint Francis and the Oratory of the Good Shepherd have their Australian base in the City of Brisbane and the Society of the Sacred Advent first emerged in the city. This latter group is responsible for running St Margaret's Anglican Girls' School.

Saint Francis' Theological College, at which most of the diocese's priests are trained, has historically "combined a Catholic interpretation of the Book of Common Prayer with an acceptance of ‘moderate’ biblical criticism. This... ... the liberal Catholicism of Bishop Gore and Lux Mundi".

Archbishop Phillip Aspinall is, himself, a liberal Anglo-Catholic and gave the keynote address at the Australian Church Union's 2006 Keble Mass.

For the most part the diocese's parishes exhibit the "rather self-conscious Anglo-Catholic congregationalism of the capital cities, often tinged with radical Socialism". Parishes that reflect this outlook include Holy Trinity Fortitude Valley, with its emphasis on social justice, and Kilcoy-Woodford with its focus on Christian pacifism.

The Angligreen environmental group has also emerged as a significant voice in the diocese.

By contrast, All Saints' Brisbane is notable for having links to the conservative Forward in Faith organisation which maintains a small presence in the city. Of All Saints' masses, journalist Keith Dunstan noted "‘the whole sense of theatre’. Others, drawing on a religious vocabulary, compared the experience to ‘being in heaven’." However, All Saints is an exception to the more moderate approach as "‘extreme’ Anglo-Catholicism has flourished only among clergy in the diocese of Ballarat."

Despite this dominant Anglo-Catholic ethos, there is a low church Bible belt running through a few of the City of Brisbane's southern suburbs. However, the last time there was any major controversy about the diocese's Anglo-Catholic outlook was in 1956.