The Anglican Primate of Australia and Archbishop of Melbourne, Dr Keith Rayner, retired today on his 70th birthday, bringing to an end almost 50 years of ministry with the Anglican Church of Australia.

Dr Rayner was publicly farewelled in St Paul's Cathedral, Melbourne on Sunday 21 November, at a service in which he lay up his pastoral staff and cross, and preached his final sermon as Archbishop. The service also included a message from the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr George Carey, and a tribute from the Governor of Victoria, Sir James Gobbo.

Dr Carey praised Dr Rayner for his role in chairing the organising committee for last year¹s Lambeth Conference. "The feedback from the Conference on organisation and vision has been almost unanimously positive. This is a great tribute to you and your ability to speak to and for the great diversity which exists within the communion ... [and] your marvellous organisational ability and attention to detail." Dr Carey said Dr Rayner "had been a deeply valued colleague, and someone to whom I have always felt able to turn for sound, faithful advice."

Dr Carey also recognised Mrs Rayner's ministry. "Audrey has been a wonderful companion and a warm and generous hostess to many visitors in Melbourne. I know that when Eileen and I were with you in 1997, it was just a great joy to be in your home, and to feel at home."

Victorian Governor Sir James Gobbo described Dr Rayner as "a man of deep spirituality, with a powerful mind linked to a human sensitivity to the needs of ordinary people, and as an austere man to whom the trappings of office have meant little." He also paid tribute to Dr Rayner as an advocate for the poor and underprivileged. "Premiers and Ministers of the Crown have sought your advice, though not always liking the answers you gave," he said.

The Revd Janet Turpie-Johnstone thanked Dr Rayner for his support for Aboriginal reconciliation; and Archdeacon Willy Maddock, one of the first women priests to be ordained by Dr Rayner, expressed her appreciation for the significant role he played in the debate over the ordination of women.

In his final sermon as archbishop, Dr Rayner refused to be despondent about the future of the Church. "I know there are marks of decline and signs of death - an old world is passing away and an old Church is caught up in its passing. But amid the decay there are many signs of new life. The death rattles of the old are the birth pangs of the new," he said.

46 years of ministry

Born in Brisbane, Queensland, Dr Rayner was ordained priest in St John's Cathedral, Brisbane, in 1953. One of his first notable achievements was the establishment of a new parish in suburban Brisbane in 1959.

In 1969 he was consecrated Bishop of Wangaratta, Victoria, where he served for six years, setting up close relationships between bishop, clergy and laity. As Archbishop of Adelaide (1975-1990) in South Australia, he oversaw the complete restructure of the diocese, set up an annual Youth Conference and established a commission on marriage and divorce.

Dr Rayner has been Archbishop of Melbourne since 1990 and Primate of Australia since 1991.

Issues

As Archbishop and Primate, Dr Rayner has dealt with a number of difficult and controversial issues within the Church and society.

He played a significant role in providing a way forward for the Church over the issue of the ordination of women, which had engulfed it in the early 1990s. In 1992, a special Synod was called to consider the issue, and in his Charge, Dr Rayner said: "I have come to see the importance of the ordination of women not because women and men are the same but because they are complementary. In our kind of society, a truly representative priesthood requires the participation of men and women in it ... We shall increasingly see the decline of the one-man-alone model of ministry... and the development of team ministry of men and women which will meet a much greater range of needs."

After last year's Lambeth Conference, Dr Rayner entered into the debate over the place of homosexuals in the Church. In his 1998 Synod sermon, he said that as a Church, "...we recognise that among the people whose orientation is homosexual and who do not feel called to celibacy are members of the Church, whose Christian character and pastoral gifts we respect ... May it be that God is calling us to review the received tradition to see whether further light is to be shed on it?"

In 1997 he delivered an address to the National Press Club on the question: Does the Church have a Future?, in which he acknowledged that "the Church does not have the credibility with youth that it should ... There is a culture gap which we have not effectively bridged; and a lot of the younger generation have grown up in a spiritual and moral vacuum bequeathed to them by their elders."

However, he said there were good reasons to be optimistic. "One is the massive contemporary interest in spirituality ... [The various forms of spirituality] represent a strong reaction against the sufficiency of materialist values on which both western capitalism and eastern communism placed their faith."

He has also been outspoken on issues of state and national interest.

Recently, the Archbishop expressed his views on the forthcoming Republic referendum. "I understand the popular sentiment, based partly on present cynicism about politicians, that the President be directly elected by the people," he said in his final Synod Charge this year. "I am convinced, however, that this would lead to precisely the result which people want to avoid. The election would be politicised, the political parties would field their candidates and eminently appropriate candidates would be unwilling to submit themselves to the process."

In the same address he reflected on the state of society today. "When I consider the degree of brokenness in family life, the sense of meaninglessness and moral confusion that show themselves in the drug scene and incidence of suicide, the emphasis on competition, efficiency and profit at the cost of human values, the damage to the environment, and the manipulation of life through genetic technology, I am not sure that modern society is a happier one than that which we knew half a century ago."

He also attributed the recent state election result to "a deep sense of unease about some of the trends that were developing." He was a consistent critic of the Kennett Government's promotion of gambling.

Final Synod tributes

At his final Melbourne Synod in October, several people paid tribute to Dr Rayner¹s leadership. The Venerable Ken Parker, Archdeacon of Frankston, thanked the Archbishop for his example of prayer: "Your prayerfulness is the key, I think, to your ministry, perhaps the source of youthfulness and that ever-black hair." He recalled that when another clergyman's car was recently broken into, the Archbishop "soon had the vacuum cleaner out and was on his knees cleaning up the broken glass in the car." He contrasted the "image of the bishop in the prayer desk and the image of him kneeling in service."

Prominent layperson Dr Muriel Porter remarked on Dr Rayner's "towering intellectual leadership. Living as we have done these past thirty years on the edge of a gigantic and explosive fault line in the church, we have needed the leadership of someone able to wrestle at depth with the fundamental and ecclesiological issues involved ... In Archbishop Rayner we have been led by a theologian with the rare gift of an authentic shaping intellect ..."

Archbishop Rayner and his wife Audrey will retire to Adelaide where two of their three adult children live.