Sydney James Kirkby

Sydney James Kirkby
Born	24 January 1879 Sandhurst, Victoria
Died	12 July 1935 Sydney, Australia
Venerated in	Anglican Church of Australia
Feast	13 July

Sydney James Kirkby (24 January 1879 – 12 July 1935) was a bishop of the Church of England in Australia and Tasmania (now renamed the Anglican Church of Australia).

He was born in Sandhurst (now Bendigo), Victoria, the eleventh child of Joseph Kirkby, a clerk, and his wife Alice Maude Paine Kirkby, both natives of England. Six of the couple's previous children had not survived.

Kirkby was educated at Gravel Hill State School, where he was profoundly influenced by the Reverend Herbert Begbie toward the religious life, to the point of becoming a lay reader in 1902.

He was sent by Bishop Langley to Moore Theological College in Sydney, where he proved a very capable student. He was selected as an Abbott scholar and senior student for 1905 and was one of the few students who took a first in the Oxford and Cambridge preliminary examination.

He returned to Bendigo, and was made a deacon on 24 December 1905, and placed at Pyramid Hill, Victoria. Almost a year later, on 17 October 1906, he married Victoria Ethel Godfrey. On 21 December he was made a priest by Archbishop Henry Lowther Clarke and became the rector of the church at Malmsbury, Victoria. While he proved himself to be a vigorous pastor with a deep spiritual dimension, his scholastic temperament and abilities remained strong. In 1911 he returned to Moore College, where he served as a tutor and acting principal. There he took advantage of the school's recent affiliation with Durham University in England to continue his education with a diploma in theology. He remained there though 1912 and graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree. In 1914 he returned to pastoral duties at St Anne's church in Ryde, New South Wales.

Kirkby was a devout Evangelical and was particularly interested in promoting that tradition through the work of the Anglican Church League and similar groups. He also believed that Evangelicals had a role to play in the missions in the Outback. In 1920 the Bush Church Aid Society for Australia and Tasmania was founded, with pledged support from the Colonial and Continental Church Society in England. Kirkby was installed as the group's executive officer. The new group did not have widespread support from the Anglican clergy of Australia, Archbishop John Charles Wright of Sydney being one of its few supporters.

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