Peter Frederick Jensen (born 11 July 1943) is a retired Australian Anglican bishop, theologian and academic. From 1985 to 2001, he was principal of Moore Theological College. From 2001 to 2013, he was the Archbishop of Sydney and Metropolitan of the Province of New South Wales in the Anglican Church of Australia. He retired on his 70th birthday, 11 July 2013. In late 2007, Jensen was one of the founding members of the Global Anglican Future Conference (GAFCON), which he served as General Secretary. He stepped down in early 2019 and was succeeded by Benjamin Kwashi, former archbishop of Jos in Nigeria.

Early life and education

Jensen was born in Sydney and educated at Bellevue Hill Public School and The Scots College. After completing his Leaving Certificate, Jensen studied law for two years and worked as an articled clerk before he moved into primary school teaching.

Jensen entered Moore Theological College in the late 1960s

From 1973 to 1976 and 1980 to 1984, and was often seen at the annual Katoomba Christian Conventions.

On 5 June 2001, Jensen became the 11th Archbishop of Sydney. He was consecrated on St Peter's Day, 29 June 2001. He called upon all churches in the Sydney diocese to aim to reach 10% of their communities by 2012. He also encouraged an unprecedented increase in church planting. Over the course of 2002–2008, 136 new congregations were started within the diocese, particularly within the Northern, Western and Wollongong regions. The number of candidates for ordination within the diocese increased from 20 to 30 per year to 40-50 by 2008. However, according to a spokesperson for Jensen, his wife was the only unpaid member of this team, and the new role was "just an extension of what she's been doing for many years, as the wife of the Moore College principal and now as the wife of the archbishop".

Views

Jensen has a reputation with the Australian media for being an outspoken advocate for evangelical Christianity. euthanasia and embryonic stem cell research as well as on industrial relations. He has expressed his opposition to the ordination of women as priests, saying "the church is more like a family and, within the family, men are the spiritual guides", but believes women can be appointed to the diaconate, and has ordained women as such within the Sydney diocese. He is opposed to the ordination of women as bishops. In 2012 he declined to participate in the consecration of a woman bishop, Genieve Blackwell, within the Canberra-Goulburn diocese of the province of New South Wales "for reasons of conscience" and deputised the Bishop of Newcastle to do so. He has also opposed the ordination of non-celibate gay people as clergy.

In late 2007, Jensen was one of the founding members of the Global Anglican Future Conference which was held in June 2008, one month prior to the Lambeth Conference.

In a June 2012 opinion piece, Jensen argued that the acceptance of same-sex marriage is not "for the moral good". He also criticised the notion of "marriage equality", noting that society does not allow marriage between siblings or between adults and children. He also wrote a letter to parishioners of Sydney's Anglican churches in which he quoted Bible extracts from Genesis on the nature of marriage and said that "The education of children must not be distorted by the state-imposed idea that a family can be founded on the sexual union of two men or two women as a valid alternative to that of a man and a woman."

In September 2012, Jensen was a panellist on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation's Q&A program and was questioned about his views on several key issues involving the church and society. Jensen was questioned by a young homosexual Christian man who had contemplated suicide about what he would say to young people in that position. It was stated by a panel member, journalist Anna Crean, that Jensen's position was one of influence and that people, by the process of being made to feel ostracised, were subject to "self-destruction". Jensen was then offered by a youth worker in the audience the opportunity to discuss the suffering of young homosexual people resulting from comments made by Jensen and the ACL. Jensen responded that the matter was complex and that he would like to hear the facts. He said, "It's all very well to say that what I say causes this. That to my mind is ...already facile." This reflects his view that the ministry of word and sacrament belong together and, as lay people have long been permitted to preach in the Sydney diocese, it is thought they ought to be permitted to lead communion services.

Publications

Jensen has written a number of books on Christian doctrine, including At the Heart of the Universe (1991) and The Revelation of God (2002). In November and December 2005 he also delivered the Australian Broadcasting Corporation's Boyer Lectures on the topic "The Future of Jesus". He also authored the Lenten study Power and Promise released by Anglican Press Australia in late 2014.

References

Further reading

  • Profile on the Sydney Anglicans website
  • Sunday Nights article
  • Biographical information in Who's Who 2013, A & C Black, 2013; online edn, Oxford University Press, Dec 2012