Bruce Kaye has produced a deeply and widely researched interpretation of church-state, indeed, church-society relations in Australian history, focusing especially on the colonial period from 1788–1901. Although the book's title has “colonial” in it, the final chapter brings the analysis up to contemporary times. The past five years has seen a flowering of important books on the history of Christianity in Australia and Kaye's book complements them well.

The lead protagonist is Bishop William Broughton, who came to the colony in 1829 eventually to become Bishop of Australia. Broughton was a man of superb learning and of a High Church disposition, which made him an awkward fit in a colony as religiously pluralistic as NSW – with its high proportion of evangelical Anglican clergy – and a society rapidly transforming under the forces of democracy and liberalism. Indeed, Kaye's book offers an excellent case study of the dialogue between old and new worlds, particularly in terms of the rise of liberalism and secularism in the British Empire. A couple of examples stand out.

Important is Kaye's discussion of the founding of the University of Sydney in 1850 – Australia's first university. The case study is illuminating for church state relations in Australia, not to mention the meaning of ‘secular’, and helps us overcome a long-standing misunderstanding about Australian society. The university is often said to have been founded as a secular institution, contra Cambridge and Oxford. And yet, as Kaye shows, ‘secular’ is best understood as ‘non-denominational’ rather than religionless. Indeed, the university's charter affirmed the furtherance of religion as one of its chief goals, and denominational colleges were established on the university's grounds. This case study is helpful in showing that the colonial settlement tended to be between two extremes: pure, religionless secularism (even Benthamism) and denominationalism (Coleridge's ideal of the state-church). Much the same can be said for the ‘secular’ school systems that emerged in the last third of the nineteenth century.

Kaye also explores the relationship between the Church of England and the emerging democratic spirit in the colonies. He painstakingly examines the minutes and the participants’ diaries of the 1850 Bishops’ conference to discern the forces at work creating the sydonal system of Australia. The upshot of Kaye's analysis is a subtle argument that the synodal system in Australia was, indeed, informed by British practice and precedent, as well as theological principle, but also that it was distinctively shaped by the strong democratic impulses in the Australian colonies in the 1840s and, especially, the 1850s. In this respect Kaye again shows the dialogue between ecclesiastical culture and broader colonial culture.

The final chapter brings the discussion up to the 2000s, looking at the place of the Anglican Church in a society that is both deeply pluralistic but also rapidly secularising. The chapter's title is telling: ‘From Anglican Gaol to Religious Plurality’. This chapter shows Kaye to be equally at home with more general historical trends and intellectual discussion in Australia as he is with the ecclesiastical tradition. During the nineteenth century the Australian colonies, not to mention much of the rest of the Western world, saw the rise of a non-ecclesiastical civil society, albeit mostly started by ecclesiastics and active Christians. The rise of “friendly societies” in fact would come to rival the churches as effective agents of social amelioration. This must have contributed to the gradual decentering of the churches in local communities, one aspect of a modern secular society. Public Christianity is perhaps a victim of its own success. Notwithstanding the value of this chapter, it would have been immensely beneficial to bring the analysis up to date with some reflections on attitudes to Christianity and the churches over the past five years, particularly since the same-sex marriage debate in Australia. The book's subtitle is ‘Conflict and Change in Church and State’, and the past five years has seen plenty of that as evidenced in the fact that religious liberty has been one of the most contentious public debates in many years. No doubt Kaye would have had some important reflections on the last five tumultuous years in church-society and church-state relations in Australia.

This is primarily a denominational history, but it is a denominational history linking ecclesiastical developments with broader secular change, thus avoiding being an insular denominational study. Kaye's essays are informed by a broad and deep grasp of the theological, political, and ideological forces of the mid-nineteenth century, making this a very readable and important contribution to the history of Anglicanism and culture in Australia.