The Church of England in Australia and state aid for church schools in Canberra, 1956.

Abstract

This is a study of the discord and friction within the Church of England in Australia in 1956 in relation to the advent of state aid for church schools in Canberra. It asserts that the resulting controversy illustrated a persistent organisational dissonance within the Church of England in Australia at that time. The Commonwealth government’s financial proposal, early in July 1956, to the two Church of England secondary schools and the two Roman Catholic secondary schools in the Australian Capital Territory, by way of a subsidy on the interest on loans for new capital works, was to be the first direct state aid to church schools in Australia in the twentieth century. This study proposes that at the time the Church of England in Australia was a proposed confederation of twenty-five dioceses characterised by a persistent institutional inability to achieve coherence and unity generally. This was despite a recent agreement on a national constitution to achieve autonomy within the Anglican Communion. The state aid controversy brought several key governance questions to the surface. The resolve of the executive decision-makers of the diocese of Canberra and Goulburn to accept the Commonwealth proposal occurred against a church background of a declining adherence, a reducing national presence, and an increasing social and cultural marginalisation. There was, therefore, a growing reliance on church schooling as a means of social engagement for the institutional church. The dissensions, even antagonisms, within the national and the local diocesan church were encouraged by a remnant sectarianism among many Anglicans. At the same time, the actions of the diocese of Canberra and Goulburn highlighted not only its independence within the national church but the exceptionality of Canberra and the disagreements and ambivalence within the Church of England in Australia regarding the national capital.