Anglican Diocese of Dunedin

The Diocese of Dunedin is one of the thirteen dioceses and hui amorangi of the Anglican Church in Aotearoa, New Zealand and Polynesia. 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 Roman 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 by which local people are ordained to serve in a parish which cannot afford to support full-time professional clergy.

The diocese includes Anglo-Catholic, broad and Evangelical parishes.

The first person named as Bishop of Dunedin was Henry Lascelles Jenner. At the request of Bishop George Selwyn, Primate of New Zealand, in 1866 Charles Longley, Archbishop 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 Andrew Suter (candidate as 2nd Bishop of Nelson) by Longley, Archibald Tait, Bishop of London (later Archbishop of Canterbury) and William Thomson, Bishop of Gloucester and Bristol on 24 August 1866 at Canterbury Cathedral. In 1867 Jenner embarked on a fundraising tour in England for his new diocese. He was an enthusiastic 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.

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