This book considers the development of ecclesiological authority in the Cape Colony’s Anglican Church from 1806 until the death of Bishop Robert Gray in 1872, and its largely accidental contribution to the emergence of the worldwide Anglican Communion. The author relies on extensive, unpublished, and previously untapped archives, to reconsider characterisations of early South African Anglicanism as a conflict of ‘Evangelical’ and ‘Anglo-Catholic’ churchmanships.

Gray’s high ecclesiology, and struggles against heterodoxy – not only with Bishop Colenso of Natal – were some factors in this history. Cape ecclesiastical disputes also arose from resistance to episcopal oversight, local identities, religious conservatism, and the rarefied and dangerous context of nineteenth century southern Africa.