Archbishop Philip Freier
2 February 2025
This year marks the centenary of an important gathering of Australian Anglicans in Melbourne over the period 3 to 13 May 1925. Archbishop Harrington Clare Lees chaired the Australian Church Congress, the ninth to be held since they were first instituted in 1883. In his sermon at the opening service of the congress, the Primate and Archbishop of Sydney, John Charles Wright, remarked on the contrast between the congress and the only other formal national gathering of Anglicans, the General Synod. “A Church Congress has, perhaps, larger scope for creating fellowship than our General Synod. The General Synod is official and elected. The Church Congress is voluntary, and opens its doors to the rank and file of the Church, without discrimination … The General Synod takes up many matters upon which opinion is already set and stereotyped, wisely or unwisely. At the Church Congress some subjects have not yet received definite pronouncement, and free interchange of thought may wholesomely balance, or correct, opinions.”
There is a remarkable photograph at our archives centre of the gathering of church leaders at Lambeth Palace by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Randall Davidson, on St Peter’s Day 1925. It is an impressive assembly of a wide range of Eastern Orthodox, Lutheran, Anglican and other leaders who are not named in the caption.
They gathered in remembrance of the 1600th anniversary of the Council of Nicaea. The Nicene Creed is but one of the achievements of the Council which set the path ahead for Christian orthodoxy in the undivided Church. This shared profession of Christian faith continues through the Churches of the East and the West after the Great Schism of 1054. With the passing of a further century, we now have the 17th century of the Council of Nicaea before us this year.
Both events certainly had an impetus from Christians reflecting on how the world entered, endured and then emerged from the Great War of 1914 to 1918. The war, and all the sacrifice that it entailed certainly spurred our predecessors in the faith to look for a different and more peaceful trajectory of human society.
Great movements from the United Nations and the World Council of Churches had their early roots in the impulse of this period that there must be a better way and that war on the scale they had suffered must not happen again. What a heartbreak for them that new horrors would unfold in only 14 years with the outbreak of the Second World War. Again, the response to this catastrophe was the building of an international rules-based order that we still benefit from.
Christian faith offers the world the divine perspective of the human condition in all its creative greatness and tragically flawed failings. I think we do well to contemplate these events of a century ago as we look to where our Christian faith is calling us to speak this divine truth to the world. The unity of Christians is hard won and can never be simply assumed but is a powerful witness that what we say to others we apply to ourselves. May we know the depths of God’s purposes revealed in Christ as we ponder the world around us.
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