This article examines a central concern for the Anglican Communion, namely how a Communion without a strong central authority structure can maintain its unity in the face of potentially church-dividing issues. At present the major such issue relates to human sexuality, but the underlying problem itself is not new, and the article draws a parallel with the Kikuyu controversy of 1913 and subsequent years. The author questions the customary practice of beginning from a universal doctrine of the Church and seeing it as ‘translated’ or ‘inculturated’ into a diversity of contexts. He argues that the New Testament pattern is different. There, the experience of a variety of local churches is the starting point. Drawing on the terminology of the political philosopher Michael Walzer, he designates the local embodiment of the Church as ‘thick’ and its universal expression as ‘thin’. The concrete local embodiments of the Church should be our conceptual starting point, not an idealized picture of the Church universal.

Focusing on the modern concept of spirituality, this article analyzes the various strategies available for giving power and potency to inherited forms of Christian language and practice. The first part of the paper discusses modern spirituality and shows how it appeals to an x outside of Christian language and practice to infuse it with spiritual potency. The second section investigates the motive for this modern strategy, illustrating the ways in which inherited forms of Christianity have become mute and ineffective. Anglo-Catholic and Evangelical alternatives are briefly canvased and set aside. With a discussion of Origen, the article ends by commending a spiritual practice that both takes seriously the weaknesses and impediments to faith and at the same time rejects the strategies of modern spirituality.

A series of issues have recently arisen that pose the question of whether or not the Anglican Communion will remain a communion of churches or become merely a loose federation. To remain a communion, Anglicans will have to come to some agreement about the relation between ecclesial integrity on the one hand and tolerable diversity on the other. The right balance between the two cannot be maintained by simple reference to such things as doctrinal statements, episcopal authority, or canon law. Ecclesial integrity and tolerable diversity are often not matters with a fixed and plainly recognizable identity. The right balance is to be found within an ethos defined by common practices that include hearing the Scriptures entire within an ordered form of worship, open theological debate, cohesive episcopal oversight, Godliness, and reluctance to change practice until wide agreement in respect to disputed issues is reached.

To answer the question of the title of this article, the words ‘community’, ‘postmodern’, ‘mission’ and ‘paradigm’ are examined in turn and defined. The central place of the ‘local church’ in contemporary missiology is discussed, and the need for a missional and communitarian ecclesiology is argued with positive but critical reference to the approach of the Gospel and Our Culture Network of North America. The article ends by suggesting that ‘community’ can indeed be seen as a mission paradigm for postmodernity, and by posing some key questions facing the local church if it is to become a missional community.

For more than twenty years the subject of authority has been in the forefront of discussions in the Anglican Communion and in ecumenical conversations. Authority in the Church was treated by the first Anglican Roman Catholic Commission. Both Communions recognized convergence in the Commission's reports but asked for further work. The most recent report, The Gift of Authority, is still being studied. It contains sharp challenges to both churches about their own exercise of authority. It is one thing to agree ideal statements about authority. It is quite another to move into visible unity with another church whose exercise of authority appears at odds with the ideal. If the two Communions can respond to these challenges then the suspicions that each has of the other will be alleviated and the move to visible unity made more possible. This article examines the content of the ARCIC reports and the challenges put to both Communions, arguing that there is much at stake in this conversation both for the internal life of the two Communions as well as for a life of communion in the future.

Initially the Church of England was the one recognized church in Australia. As other churches were established, it became the dominant church among a few others. Subsequently it became one Christian denomination among many. Now it finds itself, with other churches, among a plurality of other faiths. This evolution from singularity to plurality has raised such questions as whether truth is one or many, how unity relates to plurality and how a church conveys its message in a plural society. For Anglicans the intensity of these questions has been heightened by the plurality within Anglicanism itself. This article argues that plurality can contribute positively to a fuller perception of truth and that the pressure for unity continues in the face of pluralism, though it may be a unity obtained by excluding dissenting points of view or an inclusive unity which transcends plurality.

This article examines the early development of the Mitchell River Mission and explores how the missionary agenda developed in response to external circumstances. Even though the missionaries espoused a strong commitment to the land and cultural rights of Aborigines they quickly developed institutional practices in the Mission that seemed more designed for control than freedom. The Mitchell River Mission raises questions about Anglican identity especially in its form of expression in cross-cultural situations of frontier mission.

This article argues that the Church of England in Australia maintained for most of this period a culture of conservative political and social values. This conservative culture was a consequence of the Church of England being a subordinate partner in the hegemony of the ruling landed classes in England. In Australia, the Church of England, while never legally established, continued to act as though it was, and to strongly uphold conservative political and social values long after its monopolistic connection with the state had any practical reality. Consequently, the Church of England in Australia supported conventional values and solutions to social problems and marginalized Anglicans who challenged its prevailing conservatism. The catalysts for a change in this prevailing institutional culture were the First World War and the Great Depression. These challenges prompted the emergence within the institutional church of the beginnings of a more cautiously critical outlook towards the social status quo.

Theology in the time of apartheid in South Africa involved clear choices—either one supported the regime or one challenged it, as did the Kairos theologians. Since democratic elections in 1994, the choices are less clear and the issues more complex. The authors are South African theologians attempting to consider some of the challenges to doing theology in South Africa today. They argue that fundamental to this enterprise is the willingness to search for a new vision.

The paper introduces the Circle of Concerned African Women Theologians, popularly known as ‘the Circle’ begun in 1989, and the issues they raise for theological discussion. The Circle sets out to recreate and retrieve women's stories so that they become an integral part of the story of the Church and of Africa as a whole. The Circle and its methodology is set within the ecumenical and multi-faith context of its membership. The range of studies undertaken by its members is reviewed here. These come under four general headings: Biblical and Cultural Hermeneutics; Religion in Pluralistic Cultures; Theological and Ministerial Formation for Women; and Women in Religion, which focuses on the stories of women and religion in Africa.

For Hooker's opponents, sacraments could only be human actions designed to further the homogeneity of that community of uniform spiritual achievement which is the holy congregation. Hooker, on the other hand, affirms the possibility of uneven, confused faith, even the confused ecclesial loyalties of the ‘church papist’, as something acceptable within the reformed congregation. This is entirely of a piece with the defence of a liturgy that is more than verbal instruction. Hooker traces these two issues to a Christology which is centred upon divine gift and ontological transformation, and a consequent sacramental theology which affirms the hiddenness but effectiveness of divine presence and work in the forms of our ritual action.

The relationship between church and state in Australia has been examined on many occasions, though principally by historians and theologians. This article examines how the legislature and courts of Australia have handled problems where there has been a conflict at the interface between secular and religious interests. The article deals with constitutional issues, conflict in education, in town planning and taxation as well as considering what we really mean by ‘church’ and ‘state’ in this context and how problems might manifest themselves in the twenty-first century.