How do we evangelise when the reputation of the Church is in disarray and the Bible’s message is dismissed as irrelevant?

The outbreak of war in Iraq constitutes a solemn moment, with many dangers and threats and potential for great human suffering. There are strongly held differences of opinion about our participation in this war. For my own part I remain unpersuaded that we ought to have committed our military forces, but I recognise the limitations of my judgment and the sincerity of those who differ.

Voluntary euthanasia is the unfinished business of the moral revolution of the mid-20th century. (An address given at Westmead Hospital.)

Archbishop Jensen’s talks shock some, but enthuse many.

In a world facing instability and risk, Christians have an opportunity to bear witness to the sovereign power of God.

We are not dealing here with a fable, but with a true man, a man with hands and feet and a body and ligaments and teeth and nerve-endings and a head and a face and a mother, and with real events. I want us to notice his head and his face and his body and his hands and his feet, to underline the reality of who and what we are dealing with. These are not old tales intended to give us consolation in the face of trouble: Christianity is not a philosophy of life. If the cross really is an event in history, and if at the cross we see both the singular death of a singular man, and also the crucifixion of the Son of God, then this singular event is history’s culminating moment, and everything before and since has to be judged in relation to it. Is this what we did to the Son of God? Then that changes everything for ever.

Anglican evangelicals are authentic confessional Anglicans, but they are also evangelicals, and this means that they – like charismatics and like Anglo-Catholics and like liberals for that matter – will cross cultural boundaries where necessary. They will do it to see the gospel preached and the churches nourished. The business of mission politics is to make sure that the boundaries can be crossed with minimum disruption or dismay.

In my first talk I argued that evangelicalism has every right to be regarded as authentically Anglican. But there is another question equally as pressing for many. Should evangelicals stay in the Anglican church? We may have a legitimate place within it from the point of view of history, but does contemporary Anglicanism, in practice and in ideology, so compromise the gospel that it is impossible to stay?

Neil Armstrong’s voyage to the moon was not as difficult, or dangerous, or desperate as that made by the first settlers in the Antipodes. As both guardians and villains made their way to the mysterious south, they could never have imagined that they were going to contribute to the birth of two famous, largely Christian nations. How significant, then, that the very first Christian sermon preached in Australia was delivered by an Evangelical clergyman of the Church of England, named Richard Johnson, and that the very first Christian sermon preached in New Zealand was delivered by an Evangelical clergyman of the Church of England, named Samuel Marsden.

As planning for mission takes place, prayer and obedience to God’s word must continue to be our top priorities.

What sort of world do you believe in? Do you have the sadness of inhabiting a world where no really new thing may happen, where no great miracle can occur, where there is nothing but the inexorable law of cause and effect? Do you console yourself with your grim philosophy by saying that it is at least real, and not fairy story? Do you pride yourself at looking reality straight in the face and saying that stories of Santa and Jesus and in the end the same, that there is no other reality, that we are deluding ourselves to think that there is? Do you smile at Mary’s story of a virginal conception and quote he words of Mandy Rice Davies: ‘well she would say that wouldn’t she?’

In tonight’s consecration of Ivan Lee as a bishop, we do not rob him of one ministry in order to give him another. He remains what he now is: a servant and a presbyter in the church of God. If titles matter, he could scarcely be given a more elevated rank or a more heavy responsibility than the one he has already exercised. He must continue to fulfil that ministry of word and sacrament which he undertook 21 years ago in 1981.

Christmas is often presented as a picture of happiness – with Australians enjoying their family, friends and the best this country has to offer. But it’s a two-dimensional picture. More image than reality. Behind the scenes there are plenty of people who hate Christmas or find it difficult – and for good reason.

What are the factors behind the increasing irregular church-attendance of committed Christians?

We live in a society which appears to have lost its nerve. It no longer believes in its own identity. It refuses to acknowledge how much it owes to the Christian faith. The loss is going to be a desperate one. How else can we explain the puzzling tendency to deliberately cut Christ out of Christmas. We hear of nativity scenes being banned from shopping malls, of schools becoming hesitant about carol singing, of the growth of the ugly euphemism 'festive season' to hide the fact that it is the birth of Jesus Christ which has caused the festivity in the first place.

Sermon at the Commissioning of Rev Narelle Jarrett and the women’s Ministry Team at St Andrew’s Cathedral (15th November 2002)

In a significant decision, parish representatives overwhelmingly endorsed the Mission. The decision will only be historic if we act.

The Archbishop of Sydney, Dr Peter Jensen, has expressed his disappointment at the passing of the Research on Human Embryos Bill through the lower house of Federal Parliament.

Archbishop Rowan Williams, Primate of Wales, is to be the 104th Archbishop of Canterbury. This is an historic and preeminent role in the leadership and life of the worldwide Anglican Communion which makes many demands upon the incumbent in the office.

Address to the Sydney Parliamentary Prayer Breakfast 2002 held in the Rydges Wentworth Hotel, Sydney on Friday 28th June, 2002. Societies, clubs, federations, associations, congregations, co-operatives, unions, families, - these are some of the best things about Australia. Our citizens getting together in voluntary societies provide the sinews of our nation. A government frightened of its legitimacy or bent on evil loathes voluntary societies. It tries to suborn and regulate the clubs and groups and even to disband them. In the ancient world, the state was even frightened of dining clubs and work clubs and funeral associations. In the end, the state becomes the only society, and its power the focal point of worship.

Archbishop Jensen's statement on a fundamental decision as it went before Parliament.

A Keynote Address given by Dr Peter Jensen, Archbishop of Sydney at the Dementia Conference and Exhibition, 2002. The obsession of our culture with individualism, human autonomy and personal rights seems insatiable. But although such individualism tries to satisfy our hunger for personal freedom, it cannot meet the equally insatiable needs of the human being for love. Whether we are thinking of the tiniest and most helpless of human beings, or those who are disabled or seriously sick, or those who are helpless through age and decay, all require the love which sacrifices itself for the other, and sees that we belong together in community. Selfishness is a fault deadly to others.

My thesis is simple: the role of the Christian churches in Australia today is to speak the truth in love. This is what we have failed to do effectively. But on this depends the future of the church and the good health of our society. To fail here is to fail everywhere; to succeed here is to lay the foundation for all that we need to do in God’s name and for his glory and for the good of people. The words of the Apostle Paul challenge us still: ‘the church of the living God…’ he wrote, is ‘a pillar and buttress of truth’ (1 Tim 3:15).

A transcript of a Bible study given by Archbishop Jensen at Chapter House, Sydney on April 18, 2002. In my office at home, I have a pile of old sermons going back to the early 1970s. From time to time, if I'm really stuck, I might go back and see if I can resurrect one of these old sermons. But if you sat down and read them all through, you wouldn't find a connected story. What you'd get is the collected sermons of Peter Frederick Jensen, 1970 to 2002.

The news media is continuing to focus on Israel, Jerusalem and surrounds even today. The prophet Isaiah, whose words we're studying today, wrote around 2700 years ago. He wrote about Jerusalem, and today we're still thinking about and praying for peace in that area.