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Frederick Barker, a third-generation clergyman with experience in three English parishes and the Irish Church Mission, was chosen to be the second Bishop of Sydney. He arrived in 1855 with Queen Victoria’s mandate to lead the Australian Church as it grew in response to the population surge in the three decades after gold discoveries, extensive land settlement, and the granting of responsible parliamentary government.
He believed that his leadership had the potential to ‘give a character to our future history which nothing shall hereafter efface’. During the next 27 years, he brought his enormous energy, wise counsel, large experience, comprehensive views, ready tact, discriminating judgement, calm and patient spirit, dignity and, above all, Evangelical churchmanship to Sydney diocese and the wider Australian Church. It consolidated a pattern established by early colonial chaplains that has been carried to the present day by the institutions he founded and the lay people and clergy who have supported, maintained and extended them.
His dynamic trailblazing initiatives took him through much of Eastern Australia mainly on horseback, which led to the formation of three new dioceses at Goulburn, Bathurst and North Queensland. Under his leadership, 236 new church and church-school buildings were built, while another 156 were transferred to the new dioceses. Two major building projects were completed during his episcopate: St Andrew’s Cathedral and Bishopscourt at Randwick. Barker established Moore Theological College for training ministers for seven of the Australian dioceses. He recruited more than 60 new clergy as well as licensing lay readers to serve the fourfold increase in the nominal Anglican population by 1881. Barker created the Church Society (now Anglicare) for ministry support and established funds to assist retired clergy, their widows and children. He introduced synods of clergy and lay people for the democratic government of the Church and became the first Primate of the Australian Anglican Church, which he unified. He also developed a system of Anglican schools. Only through his incessant fundraising efforts were these advances made.
Grant Maple was the Academic Dean of the School of Christian Studies, an affiliate of the Australian College of Theology and a member of its Academic Board. Previously he was Executive Director of the Anglican Education Commission, Diocese of Sydney and Editor of the Journal of Christian Education (now the International Journal of Christianity and Education). He is the author of numerous chapters and articles on historical, theological and educational topics.
