When the appointment of Archbishop Hollingworth as governor-general was announced last year, some critics argued that the separation of church and state was placed at risk. This objection was not heard when Pastor Doug Nicholls was appointed governor of South Australia in 1976, nor when Davis McCaughey, a Uniting Church minister, became governor of Victoria in 1986. Was the governor-generalship of Australia seen as being in a league of its own, or did the title ‘Archbishop’ ring alarm bells? And when the new governor-general became embroiled in the controversy over the church’s response to cases of child abuse, this secularist undercurrent bubbled to the surface again. I was struck by the strain of virulent anti-clericalism that ran through much of the talk-back commentary. Somehow the Anglican Church seemed easily identified in the popular imagination as part of the Establishment – remote, authoritarian and out of date.