Abstract
This thesis explains how a holiness movement called the Oxford Movement, more popularly known as Anglo-Catholicism, became embedded in a parish struggling to survive in late nineteenth century South Dunedin. It analyses why this transformation in the character and identity of an otherwise unremarkable ecclesial community took place without the conflict and contestation that so often accompanied the arrival of this variety of ritualist religion. The personalities and ministry profiles of the clergy who brought about this revolution are assessed. The ways in which Anglo-Catholicism took institutional flesh in the lineaments of parish life are detailed together with an attempt to gauge the extent to which conviction Anglo-Catholicism came to be shared by the laity of the parish. As the thesis grapples with the issue of what Anglo-Catholicism is, it is then obliged to consider the deeper question of Anglican identity, of what the Anglican church stands for. It offers the proposal that Anglicanism is an experiment in reformed Catholicism, an experiment under way as the holiness movement of Anglo-Catholicism took root in parishes such as St Peter’s, Caversham. The generativity of the parish is considered, particularly in its spawning of three mission churches, and the ways in which some of its ordinands transmitted the gospel of Anglo-Catholicism to other parishes that came under their pastoral care and leadership as their ministries unfolded. The fate of the mission churches is detailed together with reflections on the lack of long-term mission planning to carry forward the mission of the church as the mission churches faded away. The thesis offers some explanations for the decline of organized religion in New Zealand society from the mid-1960s on and its effects on parish life in a winnowing process of attrition on its parish organisations, youth and children’s work and the disappearance of its outer circles of nominal Anglicans from whom it had drawn its new recruits. It concludes with an account of the remarkable and timely good fortune that has enabled the parish to persist and persevere into the twenty first century