Ernest Anderson (bishop)

{{short description|English Anglican bishop (1859-1945)}}

{{Use Australian English|date=June 2020}}

{{Use dmy dates|date=July 2019}}

Ernest Augustus Anderson, DD (24 March 1859 – 5 April 1945) was an Anglican bishop in the late nineteenth and early 20th centuries.{{cite book | last=Malden Richard (ed) | author-link= | title= Crockford's Clerical Directory for 1920 (51st edn) | location= London | publisher= The Field Press| pages=1274| year=1920 | isbn=}}

Anderson was born in Milton Damerel, Devon, England and educated at Bedford School and Queens' College, Cambridge. He went to North Queensland as a mission preacher in 1882, and was ordained deacon the same year, and priest in 1883.

He was installed in Hay, New South Wales as the second Anglican Bishop of the Diocese of Riverina, New South Wales Australia, on 11 February 1896, at a time of financial difficulty for the church.{{Australian Dictionary of Biography |last=Clyde|first=Laurel |year=1979 |id2=anderson-ernest-augustus-5014 |title=Ernest Augustus Anderson |accessdate= 12 June 2012}}

Because of the continuing drought and rabbit plague, station owners no longer had the means of supporting the church, which meant that clergy had to work for almost nothing. Anderson's episcopate was also a time of conflict between the bishop and his clergy and the clergy and their parishioners. In 1915 the Vicar of Broken Hill, the Rev Albert Frost, was cited to appear before Anderson on charges of false doctrine,{{Cite web|url=https://www.anglicanhistory.org/aus/cci/|title=Project Canterbury: Cable Clerical Index|access-date=21 April 2022|archive-date=22 May 2022|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220522065925/http://anglicanhistory.org/aus/cci/|url-status=dead}} having taught his confirmation candidates to make confession to a priest before taking communion, invocation of the Blessed Virgin Mary and the Saints, and other 'Romish' practices such as describing the main Sunday service as High Mass.{{Cite web|url=https://www.anglicanhistory.org/essays/hilliard1993.pdf|title=Hilliard, David, "The Anglo-Catholic Tradition in Australian Anglicanism", St Mark's Review, (1994: 158), p 14|access-date=21 April 2022}}{{Cite web|url=https://www.ukpressonline.co.uk/ukpressonline/view/pagview/ChTm_1961_05_12_019|title=Church Times: "Fr Bede Frost, O.S.B.", 12 May 1961, p 19|access-date=21 April 2022}} This was reputedly the only Anglican heresy trial to take place in Australia.{{Cite web|url=https://www.anglicanhistory.org/essays/hilliard1993.pdf|title=Hilliard, David, "The Anglo-Catholic Tradition in Australian Anglicanism", St Mark's Review, (1994: 158), p 14|access-date=21 April 2022}} Although acquitted of heresy, under pressure from Anderson, Frost felt obliged to resign.{{Cite book|chapter-url=https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/anderson-ernest-augustus-5014|title=Australian Dictionary of Biography: Ernest Augustus Anderson|chapter=Ernest Augustus Anderson (1859–1945) |publisher=National Centre of Biography, Australian National University |access-date=21 April 2022}}

By the turn of the century, new towns were flourishing throughout the Riverina, as the growing wheat industry gave the district a much needed economic boost. Anderson retired from active ministry in 1925, leaving twice as many parishes in the diocese as he took over originally.