The Rt. Rev. Dr. Mark Short, Bishop of Canberra & Goulburn since 2019, was elected on July 19 as Primate of the Anglican Church of Australia. He is the first non-metropolitan to be elected as primate since the church began electing its chief bishop in 1910, and the first evangelical to lead the church since the early 1980s.
Smith will work alongside the retiring primate, Archbishop Geoffrey Smith, and take over formally on November 1.
As in most of the Anglican Communion’s member churches, the Australian primate’s role is largely honorary, and Smith will continue to serve his diocese. The Episcopal Church and the Anglican Church of Canada are the only Anglican provinces to have a primate who relinquishes the diocesan see, and the Canadian church is considering abandoning this practice.
While Canberra is the nation’s capital, Short’s diocese also covers a large area of rural and coastal New South Wales. The mix of metropolitan and country is peculiarly appropriate for the challenges—and opportunities—the Australian church faces in 2025.
Short told The Living Church he was keen to sustain ministry in rural and regional areas. From 2011 to 2019, he led the Bush Church Aid Society, a mission organization that provides religious education, counseling, and medical services, and sends “flying padres” to offer pastoral care to isolated communities across the nation’s barren Outback.
“In metropolitan areas the boundaries between church and community can feel somewhat solid, whereas in rural and regional areas they are still much more open and fluid,” he said.
“Churches make a major contribution in rural areas by offering community but also being a source of people who volunteer in many ways for other organizations, whether that’s Landcare groups or local sporting clubs.”
That community involvement has been highlighted by the recent Hope 25 initiative, which ran between Easter and Pentecost, in which every diocese worked “to share the lasting hope that Jesus offers an uncertain world.”
“There are challenges and opportunities in communicating Christian faith in a compelling and relevant way at a time when our world feels increasingly fragile and uncertain. I think there are challenges and opportunities in responding to a growing mental health crisis. The church can and should offer a vision of caring and genuine community that addresses a lot of those issues,” he said.
He also acknowledged the need to recognize and give voice to the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander leaders in the church.
The 23 Australian dioceses have a high degree of independence compared with other national churches. It’s why there is a huge range of Anglican expression in Australia, from evangelicals in Sydney, which does not ordain women to the priesthood, to more liberal and Catholic Brisbane and Perth.
That independence cuts both ways, Short said.
“The good side of that is that it does allow different dioceses to pursue different passions and to find ways to do mission that is right for their particular contexts,” he said.
But the national church can also appear stretched to breaking point.
“It’s important that we also recognize our interdependence, that we recognize that we are in fellowship with one another and there is still a national constitution and a body of faith to which we are committed together,” he said.
There are strong internal tensions about the role of women, the blessing of gay marriages, and Sydney’s endorsement of the GAFCON-affiliated Diocese of the Southern Cross, which is led by its former archbishop, Glenn Davies.
Short is a graduate of Sydney’s Moore Theological College, a center of reformed evangelical thought, and has been active in Australia’s branch of the Evangelical Fellowship in the Anglican Communion.
He is considered the first evangelical to be elected as primate since Archbishop Marcus Loane of Sydney stepped down in 1982. Since then, the church’s evangelical dioceses, especially the Diocese of Sydney, have shrunk less dramatically than its more progressive dioceses.
Short backed an ultimately defeated resolution proposed by the current Archbishop of Sydney at the 2022 General Synod that described marriage as “the exclusive union of one man and one woman,” and added that “any rite or ceremony that purports to bless a same-sex marriage is not in accordance with the teaching of Christ and the faith, ritual, ceremonial and/or discipline of this Church.”
Still, he was diplomatic about the Australian church’s often fiery disputes.
“My heart’s desire is to see everyone who is currently part of the Anglican church both individually and as a parish to continue to find it a place where they can live out their Christian faith and engage in witness to the broader community. So I am grieved that people for various reasons have found it not to be the case,” he said.
He said the primate cannot claim to speak independently for the church, but should communicate what it has decided through bodies like its General Synod. But the primate, he said, can bring those disparate bodies together.
“Part of the role of the primate is facilitating those … conversations across the national church that both affirm our common faith but also recognize the opportunities for us to express it in ways that are appropriate for where we are called to serve,” he said.
The church’s General Synod will meet next on July 26 to consider a single resolution, which would allow all sessions of synod to be “hybrid” meetings—a mix of in-person and online—to allow the participation of those who cannot attend because of disability or a medical condition.
Before training for ministry, Short worked as an economist for the Australian government’s labor relations department and was a journalist for The Sydney Morning Herald, which is considered the nation’s most widely read newspaper. He earned a doctorate in Old Testament at Durham University in the U.K., writing on the Passover rite, and served in rural parish ministry and as an archdeacon before being chosen to lead the Bush Church Aid Society. He and his wife, Monica, have two children.
Correction: An earlier version of this story stated incorrectly that the Diocese of Sydney had “grown significantly,” based on earlier statistical totals. More recent data, from 2023, shows a 7% decline in attendance in the diocese over the past decade. Thanks to the Very Rev. Andrew McGowan for spotting the mistake.
Robyn Douglass grew up in Sydney and Melbourne, completing a journalism cadetship at the Anglican newspaper in Victoria. In South Australia, she has worked for church, local, and national media.
