The Diocese of Dunedin is one of the thirteen dioceses and hui amorangi of the Anglican Church in Aotearoa, New Zealand and Polynesia[1]. The Diocese covers the same area as the provinces of Otago and Southland in the South Island of New Zealand. Area 65,990 km², population 272,541 (2001). Anglicans are traditionally the third largest religious group in Otago and Southland after Presbyterians and Catholics.
Description of Arms: Gules between a cross saltire argent, four starts argent on the fess point a Bible.
The diocese was established in 1869. The seat of the Bishop of Dunedin is St Paul's Cathedral, Dunedin.
The diocese has a total of 33 parishes. The adaption of 'Local Shared Ministry' has been a strategy where local people are ordained to serve in a parish which cannot afford to support fulltime professional clergy.
The diocese includes Anglo-Catholic, broad and 'evangelical' parishes.
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The first person named as Bishop of Dunedin was Henry Lascelles Jenner. At the request of Bishop George Augustus Selwyn, Primate of New Zealand, in 1866 Archbishop Charles Thomas Longley of Canterbury selected Jenner for Dunedin. Jenner was consecrated in 1866 by royal licence as "Bishop of the United Church of England and Ireland in our colony of New Zealand". He was consecrated together with Suter (candidate as 2nd Bishop of Nelson) by Archbishop Longley, the Bishop of London Bishop Tait (later Archbishop Tait of Canterbury) and the bishops of Bristol and Gloucester. In 1867 Jenner embarked on a fundraising tour in England for his new diocese. He was an ethusiastic Anglo-Catholic. When news of his "ritualist" activities reached Dunedin, anti-ritualist and anti-catholic sentiment was whipped up in the city and diocese. New Zealand's 4th General Synod (1868) asked Jenner to give up his claim to the see of Dunedin. In 1869 the first session of the Dunedin diocesan synod rejected Jenner's claim to the see. Jenner resigned the see of Dunedin in 1871, the same year that S. T. Nevill was consecrated and enthroned as the first Bishop of Dunedin.
In 1990 the diocese made history by electing Penny Jamieson as the seventh Bishop. Jamieson was the first woman diocesan bishop in the Anglican Communion and only the second woman bishop, the first being Bishop Barbara Clementine Harris. The eighth Bishop was the Right Revd George Connor, who became Bishop of Dunedin in 2005. The diocese gained some publicity in 2006 when (with the support of the Diocesan Standing Committee), Bishop Connor ordained an openly gay man to the diaconate. A moratorium on ordinations in the diocese was declared until the New Zealand church achieved a common mind on the full inclusion of homosexual persons at every level of ministry in the church. Bishop Connor retired in November 2009. The incumbent Bishop of Dunedin is the Right Revd Kelvin Wright, who was installed as the ninth bishop of the diocese in February 2010.
Consecrated but not enthroned: Henry Lascelles Jenner (1866)
In the past the diocese operated St. Mary's Orphanage, Dunedin.
The episode of Bishop Jenner's appointment to the See of Dunedin is part of the history of the Anglican Communion. It concerns the relationship of the Archbishop of Canterbury to that Communion and the development of synodical government within it. The Queen's Mandate for his consecration referred simply to a Bishop from the colony of New Zealand (it also authorised the consecration of Bishop Suter for Nelson) the request of Bishop Selwyn was for a Bishop to be Bishop of Dunedin. Both the Archbishop of Canterbury and Bishop Selwyn personally addressed Bishop Jenner as Bishop of Dunedin.
While the Anglican Church in Aotearoa New Zealand is proud of its history and heritage there is a lingering sense of embarrassment and shame over what came to be known as "The Jenner Controversy" even though the affair took place over a century ago. In the interval, Church historians have mulled over the events which led Bishop Jenner finally and very reluctantly to forego his claims to the See of Dunedin and their conclusions are generally that something less than justice was accorded to the Bishop by the Diocese and the General Synod. Jenner participated in the first Lambeth Conference in 1867 as the Bishop of Dunedin.
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