The Australian Church Record celebrated a significant milestone at this year’s Sydney Synod, with a motion recognising 100 years since the publication adopted its present name in 1926. Giving thanks for the ACR’s ministry as an independent theological voice for Reformed Evangelical Anglicanism, the Rev Dr Mark Earngey reflected on its long history of defending biblical truth, encouraging gospel ministry and supporting evangelical work across Australia. You can read his speech below.
Mr President, members of Synod,
It is a privilege to speak in support of this motion and to give thanks to God for the ministry of the Australian Church Record.
Now, a centenary can tempt us merely to celebrate longevity. But the significance of the ACR lies not so much in how long it has existed, but in what it has sought to do: to call us back to the supreme authority of the Bible, the sufficiency of Christ, and the gospel doctrines expressed in our Reformed Anglican formularies. It is for this reason that Donald Robinson described its history, and those involved with it over its long life, as representing “a very solid phalanx of evangelical strength”.
The publication began in Sydney in 1880, when the evangelical character of this diocese could not be taken for granted. The growth of ritualism and Anglo-Catholic influence within global Anglicanism raised serious questions about the identity and direction of Australian Anglicanism. In that context, the Church Record provided evangelical Anglicans with an independent voice: reporting church affairs, articulating doctrine, and publicly contending for the faith. In fact, the very first edition included an article on Bishop Barker’s refusal to license a clergyman for his membership in a theological movement which opposed the Reformation.
When it adopted the name ‘Australian Church Record’ in 1926, that wider title expressed a wider concern. Its rejuvenated purpose was the encouragement of Reformed and Evangelical Anglican ministry throughout Australia.
That influence can be seen in several concrete ways.
The Record defended the authority of Scripture and the Protestant doctrine of the Book of Common Prayer and the Thirty-nine Articles when those convictions were being challenged or quietly neglected. Through writers such as TC Hammond, Broughton Knox and Donald Robinson, it equipped clergy and laypeople to understand why our doctrines of grace, justification, the cross, and the church matter for Christian ministry.
It helped keep evangelicals informed and united across considerable distances. In 1933, for example, the ACR publicly supported the election of Howard Mowll as Archbishop of Sydney. This was an election which, under God, led to the profound strengthening of evangelism, overseas mission, theological education, and compassionate ministry in this diocese.
The ACR also helped foster the annual Reformation Rallies. Beginning in 1929, these gatherings brought large numbers of Anglicans together to hear the biblical gospel afresh and to remember why it was that our Reformers were burned. And what did those voices proclaim? That the recovery and retention of salvation by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone, according to the Bible alone really does matter.
The ACR’s pages encouraged evangelistic missions, reported on the worldwide evangelical movement, scrutinised developments in liturgy and doctrine, and gave emerging evangelical leaders a place to think, write and sometimes disagree under the authority of God’s word—a good example of this being the way the Church Record aired and debated various viewpoints as the Constitution of the Anglican Church of Australia developed.
Then fast forward to the 70s when we gifted property assets—the Arrawatta Estate—to CMS, which recently helped make the CMS Parramatta property development a reality. And then to 1988, when the ACR provided seed funding for St Matthias Press. From that investment grew a publishing ministry whose biblical resources have equipped Christians, congregations and gospel workers throughout Australia and far beyond it.
Of course, no publication is infallible, and independent voices can occasionally be uncomfortable. But faithful friends sometimes need to ask uncomfortable questions.
So today we thank God, not just for an evangelical masthead or a publisher of reformed theology, but for generations of people who wrote, edited, printed, distributed, prayed and gave.
And we pray that the Australian Church Record will continue to serve Christ and his church: holding firmly to the Scriptures, defending the gospel and strengthening Reformed Evangelical Anglicanism for generations yet to come.
In response, the Synod passed the following motion:
16.6 Australian Church Record Centenary
The Rev Dr Mark Earngey moved –
‘Synod –
(a) notes that the publication first established in Sydney in 1880 adopted the name The Australian Church Record in 1926, and celebrates the centenary of ministry under that name,
(b) gives thanks to God for the ministry of the Australian Church Record as “an independent theological voice promoting and defending Reformed Evangelical Anglicanism”, and for its encouragement of gospel ministry through initiatives such as Reformation Rallies, publications supporting evangelical Anglicanism, and seed funding for St Matthias Press in 1988,
(c) remembers with gratitude those who have contributed to and shaped its ministry, including Mervyn Archdall, George Chambers, H S Begbie, S H Denman, Digges la Touche, D J and D B Knox, R B and D W B Robinson, T C Hammond, Marcus Loane, Allan Blanch, and Bruce Ballantine-Jones, together with its many other and more recent editors, directors, writers and supporters, and
(d) prays that God will sustain the Australian Church Record in its commitment to the Holy Scriptures, the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the strengthening of Reformed Evangelical Anglicanism in Sydney, throughout Australia, and beyond.’
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