David Garnsey

David Arthur Garnsey (31 July 1909 – 14 July 1996^[1]) was the 5th Bishop of Gippsland^[2] from 1959 until 1974.

Educated at the University of Sydney^[3] and New College, Oxford, he was ordained in 1935.^[4] His first post was as a Curate at the University Church of St Mary the Virgin, Oxford.^[5] From 1941 he was Rector of Young, New South Wales, and was elected a Canon of St Saviour's Cathedral (Canberra and Goulburn). From 1948 until his elevation to the episcopate in 1959, he was headmaster of Canberra Grammar School.

In Gippsland, Bishop Garnsey took a leading role in promoting women for church leadership, and was "in the forefront of radical thinking in the areas of women's ministry and ecumenical partnerships". In 1966 the General Synod of Victoria appointed him to chair a Commission on the Ministry of Deaconesses. His own diocese had already accorded clerical (ordained by the laying on of hands) status to its deaconesses, but this practice (and recognition) was not universal among the Australian dioceses.^[6]

Notes

1. Papers of Bishop Garnsey
2. Diocesan history
3. “Who was Who” 1897-2007 London, A & C Black, 2007 ISBN 978-0-19-954087-7
4. The Times, Monday, Dec 23, 1935; pg. 6; Issue 47254; col A Ecclesiastical News Advent Ordinations
5. Crockford's Clerical Directory 1975-76 London: Oxford University Press, 1976 ISBN 0-19-200008-X
6. James Grant, Episcopally Led and Synodically Governed (North Melbourne: Australian Scholarly Publishing, 2010), pp. 257, 270.