Links to view and listen to an excellent choir on ABCTV
Australia’s many different Cathedral church choirs are visited by ABCTV one at a time, year after year to share their Christmas carols with the nation. Lessons and Carols this year on ABC1 come from the oldest standing Cathedral in Australia; Sydney Anglican Cathedral. Sydney also happens to be one of the most distinctively evangelical Anglican diocese in the whole world. Its predominant evangelicalism has been continuously developing since the founding of the colony of Sydney.
World Anglicanism has had two chief polarities since its founding; firstly a “catholic” sense of continuity with the universal church, and secondly a “protestant” sense of reform and renewal which consciously rejects catholic ideas. These polarities have developed and changed over centuries to produce a complex international fellowship of Anglican churches – some “high” church, some “low” church, some “broad” church. The tensions among the various factions have played on the world stage over issues like how to interpret the Bible, the role of women in ministry, human sexuality (especially gay and lesbian issues) and, of course, styles of worship.
The founding of Sydney diocese predates the famous “Oxford Movement” that has so significantly produced a more catholic form of Anglicanism in most other locations in Australia and the English speaking world. Sydney diocesan leadership has consciously resisted the Oxford movement’s influence, and promoted and developed the Reformed Protestant tradition of its founders.
The Anglican diocese of Sydney has been a significant influence on world Anglican affairs. It works through its emissaries, missionaries, its robust preaching, and through lobbying to argue its own understanding of Biblical Christianity. Moore Theological College in Sydney is its “brains-trust” where its ministers and lay leaders are educated.
Simplicity, Sobriety and Measure are markers for the Calvinist and reformed Christian aesthetic. These are fundamental influences for the majority of the Anglican diocese of Sydney; and they are reflected in this year’s presentation of Carols. Clerical vestments are put aside, and a sense of gathering around God’s Word as a community is the pre-eminent conceit of this presentation. Though the famous Rembrandt himself was a Calvinist, religious imagery is not favoured in Sydney Anglicanism, and the aesthetic differs markedly from Catholic and High Anglican imagery and gesture.
To get a sense of some of the religious motivations of Sydney Anglicans, it is helpful to read Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion (1536). Contained in the Institutes are the five basic doctrines of the Protestant churches and Reformed tradition:
– total depravity—the complete corruption of humanity resulting from Original Sin
– unconditional election—the predestined salvation or damnation of every individual
– irresistible grace—necessary for conversion but available to the “elect” only;
– perseverance of the saints—”the enduring justification and righteousness of the converted” and
– limited atonement—”Christ’s gift of life through His death but only for those already predestined for heaven”
Carols from St Andrew’s
http://www.abc.net.au/iview/#/program/870482