Anglican Communion News Service

by Jeremy Halcrow

[Anglican Media Sydney] The Most Rev Harry Goodhew, Archbishop of Sydney and Metropolitan of New South Wales (NSW), will retire on March 19, the date of his seventieth birthday.

In the tributes Archbishop Goodhew has received as his retirement draws near, one theme reoccurs. The Archbishop's greatest legacy rests in his personal attributes: his humility, his integrity and his faith. Dr Paul Barnett, Bishop of North Sydney, believes it is these characteristics that have made Archbishop Goodhew one of Australia's most influential players in world-wide Anglican debate during the past decade. "At the Lambeth Conference in 1998, where he was on the conservative side of the debate on sexuality, he won the respect of all from both sides. It's safe to say that no Archbishop in the world is better known or widely respected than our Archbishop," he said.

The Archbishop of Melbourne, Peter Watson, has worked closely with Archbishop Goodhew for over 20 years. He served as a parish minister under Goodhew's leadership, first as Archdeacon and then as Bishop. Later they were episcopal colleagues in Sydney Diocese.

"When you work closely with someone it soon emerges whether or not there's integrity between their words and their actions. In Harry Goodhew that integrity is remarkable," Archbishop Watson said. "He is a man of considerable personal warmth. He displays an impressive and ready godliness. His faith in Christ works.

"Harry's achievements are many, both in his personal achievements and in his relationships with others including those in the wider community. He is rightly perceived to be a fair minded and decent person."

Even those who may be on the other side of debates in the Australian Church back this kind of assessment of the man.

The Anglo-Catholic Bishop of Bathurst, Richard Hurford, said Archbishop Goodhew has provided leadership across the Australian Church, and especially in country NSW as it struggles with rural decline.

"To me he is almost Franciscan in his simplicity and humility," said Bishop Hurford. "He is a great encourager of the small parochial unit."

Archbishop Goodhew has been outspoken on the human sexuality issue, and yet, Bishop Hurford said, he is greatly loved across the spectrum of Anglicanism because he has been 'accessible and compassionate' to all clergy. "He manages not to water-down what he believes but he keeps listening," said Bishop Hurford. "He does not ignore or eschew those of a more liberal persuasion."

What impresses Bishop Hurford most about Archbishop Goodhew is that 'he models his own ideals'.

The Archbishop has become renowned for a five point slogan he has used to sum up his vision for Anglican ministry: observably God's people, evangelistically enterprising, pastorally effective, genuinely caring, and dynamically Anglican.

"He has modeled these gospel priorities with integrity and great personal warmth," said Bishop Hurford. It is an assessment that will probably please Archbishop Goodhew more than any other tribute, as he hopes to be remembered for promoting those characteristics summed up by his five-point slogan. For they were the things he set out to achieve when he was elected Archbishop by the Synod of the Diocese in 1993, becoming, at the same time, the Metropolitan of NSW.

"I began with a desire to see the lives of individual Christians strengthened and encouraged in their work and witness, and also to see the process of the sharing of the knowledge of Jesus with the community advanced," he said. "I asked myself, 'What is Christian ministry about?' It must achieve godliness in God's people. This is how I arrived at the five points."

The Archbishop acknowledges that his five points, particularly the notion of being 'dynamically Anglican', raise a smile with some. Goodhew takes this reaction with good humour. Yet perhaps the ready dismissal of a 'dynamic Anglicanism' masks more serious points of tension between the Archbishop and some in his own diocese over his strong advocacy of the Prayer Book and his refusal to pass legislation to allow lay administration (presidency) of Holy Communion.

For his part, the Archbishop wonders if Evangelicals have too readily> absorbed the informality of Australian culture. "A lot of Anglicans sell away their heritage too easily," he said. "I have tried to protect the great truths that have value in the Anglican formularies."

A strength of the Prayer Book, says the Archbishop, is that it protects congregations from the vagaries of the individual minister. He observes that when ministers move away from using the Prayer Book, church services often become characterised by longer and less corporate prayers, a smaller variety of hymns, and an absence of humble confession and absolution. Even the breadth of Bible readings is reduced.

"There is great strength in sharp, succinct and theologically thought-out prayers," he said.

He also believes the supposed advantage of informal services for reaching contemporary Australians is 'more subtle than often portrayed'.

"The choreographed pattern appeals to a wider group that just ABC (public broadcasting) type listeners," he said. "To put it crudely, a lot of young people prefer a gothic roof to a flat roof. You can not deny an emotional element to worshipping God."

Regrets? Women's ministry in Sydney Diocese

There is little in the past eight years that Archbishop Goodhew would do differently with the benefit of hindsight. "A man would be a fool to say he never made decisions that were wrong. However on the major issues, I think that I would have gone in the same direction."

In 1997, Archbishop Goodhew organised a Women's Ministry Conference, an attempt to end the angst surrounding the issue of women's ordination to the priesthood that dogged Sydney Diocese during the 1990s. He admits that he is 'disappointed' that the conference produced 'little forward movement on the issue'.

"It is a difficult issue because you have two different approaches and it is difficult to see how one could find a reconciliation. Women can either have up front, public ministry or they can't. It is therefore hard to find a compromise that either side would find acceptable."

His disappointment at the failure of the conference to resolve the issue is felt most intensely when he thinks of the continuing hurt of many women.

"My deepest concern has been for the women who get caught in the midst of this. I feel it must be extremely difficult for that sort of discussion to go on and the women involved not to feel that they are being dissected, analysed, and spoken of in a way that makes them feel like objects out there."

Archbishop Goodhew has been a strong advocate for women deacons, playing an active role in team ministries in parishes. He appointed the Diocese's first female Archdeacon, the Venerable Dianne Nicolios, to co-ordinate ministry by women in the Diocese.

He hopes some of the initiatives he has implemented for women won't be reversed and the Diocese 'won't put unnecessary restraints on the ministry women exercise'. He also hopes rectors who want women to preach in their churches will be able to continue to do so.

Civic honour reflects vision for the Anglican Communion

In January, Archbishop Goodhew was appointed as an Officer in the General Division of the Order of Australia (AO) in the Australia Day Honours List issued by the nation's Governor-General.

With typical humility, Archbishop Goodhew said the honour was really for all those hard-working parishioners who are never recognised. However, those closest to the Archbishop say the honour was more than well deserved. "I have to say that I have not met anyone who works as hard as this man. I simply do not know how he does it. It must come from God," Bishop Barnett said.

The citation said Archbishop Goodhew was appointed 'for service to the Anglican Church and to the community, particularly in the areas of education, reconciliation between white and indigenous communities, overseas aid and the value of maintaining a strong family life'.

He has been closely involved in plans for the establishment of low-fee Anglican schools in the Diocese of Sydney. During his episcopate six new schools have been established, mainly in Sydney's western suburbs and on the South Coast of NSW. Five sites have been obtained for development within the next few years.

He has also established an Aboriginal Task Force, charged with the development of work for, and by, Aborigines in the Sydney area and beyond.

The Indigenous People's Ministry Program has also been established, and the fruit of this ministry was seen on February 3, when two Aboriginal deacons were ordained by Archbishop Goodhew for ministry in Sydney.

Asked to reflect on the citation, the Archbishop said he helped promote the strategy for low-fee schools in conjunction with others and he played a 'minor' role in the reconciliation debate because he wanted to lend encouragement to his indigenous Christian friends.

It is his role in tackling the plight of struggling third world countries of which he seems most proud. As an Australian patron of Jubilee 2000, he has taken a leading role in working towards the cancellation of unpayable debt of the world's poorest nations.

"We have an obligation to our brothers and sisters to help alleviate the great burden debt is to them."

Through his Overseas Relief and Aid Fund, Archbishop Goodhew has also given support for numerous appeals from overseas countries, and as a particular legacy to the Diocese of Sydney, Archbishop Goodhew has established an Archbishop's Overseas Ministry Fund, to help fund ministry in African and Asia.

His concern for the developing world rests on his belief that these countries are the great hope for the Anglican Communion.

"The Lambeth Conference of 1998 brought home to me very strongly that the typical Anglican is black and does not come from an Anglo-Saxon background. And also that, because there is so much spiritual vitality within the Communion, we owe it to each other to work together to achieve faithfulness and determine what are the limits of diversity in the Anglican Communion."

Archbishop Goodhew believes the Church in the West has become too enslaved to its own culture and has lost its prophetic voice.

The central challenge to the Church in the West, believes the Archbishop, comes from the pressure to 'compromise on the deity of Jesus and the elements that go with a traditional understanding of his death, resurrection, ascension and present reign in glory'.

"In our pluralist, multi-faith societies it is a challenge that people find difficult to receive and the Christian [finds difficult] to maintain - that Jesus is the only Saviour. But the very nature of the Christian gospel requires faithfulness to saying 'he is the only Saviour'. The articles of the Anglican Church say that; the Prayer Book makes it clear; and not to say that is to abandon central tenets of the Christian faith."

He believes such relativism will impact on all areas of the Church's moral teaching.

"Within the western part of the church we are subject to the spirit of our own age that abhors absolutist claims," he said. "Our culture will inevitably compromise us on the question of sexual ethics. In a world where there are no universal demands, the Christian standard of sexual expression - one man and one woman for the whole of life and abstinence outside that - is not only seen as hard but impossible. The freedom, now, in a multi-attitudinal society for people to express their sexuality in any way they find acceptable - that is always going to conflict with a Christian view of sexuality."

Archbishop Goodhew acknowledges that the challenge to the limit of diversity in the Communion is currently 'very great'.

"We must speak out when issues genuinely compromise what is fundamental for Christian life and faith," he said. "I hope that in dealing with those challenges - and we must deal with them - we do not forget that our major concern is the proclamation of the Lordship of Jesus Christ to the world outside that is need of that message."

Goodhew's greatest achievement finds heart in industrial region

Archbishop Goodhew lists his greatest achievement as his drive to regionalise the massive Sydney Diocese, which serves 60,000 church-goers each week and over 1 million people who claim to be Anglicans.

Bishop Barnett agreed that regionalisation tops the list of Archbishop Goodhew's achievements.

"I would rate highly the consolidation of the diocese in five very different regions each led by a local bishop, archdeacon and elected council. This has brought help and encouragement at the 'coal face', a huge advantage over the distant centralism with its unfair distribution of resources," he said.

The Archbishop said regionalism was driven by his desire to promote 'the proclamation of the gospel to those who are not yet Christians and the building up of those who are'.

"Firstly, it helps to create a sense of fellowship between the parishes, so that people do not feel they are alone. Secondly, it allows focus on the needs of each particular region. It gives a greater sense of ownership in decision making and gives more people a say in how things are funded. Thirdly, it has allowed a greater degree of intimacy between parishes and the episcopal ministry than would otherwise be possible in a very large diocese," he said.

Archbishop Goodhew has served as the 10th Bishop of Sydney and the 7th Archbishop. Prior to his election as Diocesan Bishop he was the Bishop of Wollongong, one of Sydney's five episcopal regions which is centred on the industrial city of the same name 100km south of Sydney.

Harry Goodhew was born in Sydney on 19 March 1931, and grew up in Marrickville, attending Dulwich Hill Central School. He studied accounting and worked in the commercial field before he was appointed a Staff Worker with the Church of England Youth Department. This department was developing into a major ministry in the diocese of Sydney in the post World War period.

He entered Moore Theological College, Sydney for ordination training and served as Rector in some of the largest parishes in the diocese. He was also rector of Ceduna in South Australia and Coorparoo in Queensland.

But 18 years of ministry was spent in Wollongong, first at rector of St Michael's, Wollongong, from 1976, then as Archdeacon of the region and then Bishop. He is well known and loved in the wider community, and the Mayor of Wollongong is holding a civic function in honour of Goodhew's retirement this month. No place in Australia could be better described as Goodhew's home.

So it is little surprise that he plans to return to the city in retirement. And although he is set to spend the first month and a half of his retirement travelling the US for meetings and to visit relatives, it is the thought of giving his new home a lick of paint and tidying up the yard that generates a real spark of enthusiasm in his face.

A keen sportsman - he played grade cricket in the Sydney district competition in his youth - the Archbishop is also looking forward to reacquainting himself with Wollongong's local soccer team, the Wolves, and Rugby League team, the Dragons.

There is a famous picture of the Archbishop throwing a football, while dressed in an episcopal collar and the scarlet Rugby League jersey of the Wollongong team. The Archbishop only agreed to the photo after the journalist concerned said he could keep the jumper.

He still has the jersey, and it isn't hard to imagine him wearing it in the crowd when, in his retirement, he finally gets a chance to see his team. Yet that photo also says a lot about Harry Goodhew - a humble sense of humour and a down-to-earth self-awareness that has led to his great concern for people at the grass-roots. Maybe it even says something about the creative use of old and new that defines what it means to be a dynamic Anglican in the service of Christ. This is something that Archbishop Harry Goodhew has certainly modeled with style.