Anglican Archbishop Jeremy Greaves reveals wild ride to senior position

He is from a famous clerical family, but Archbishop Jeremy Greaves’s rise in the Anglican Church - via a pizza joint and a cycling adventure - was far from certain, writes Michael Madigan

Anglican Archbishop Jeremy Greaves. Picture: Steve Pohlner

The road towards becoming an Anglican Archbishop has never been well defined.

But few would expect that a two-year bicycle ride around Europe funded by the sale of a pizza joint would provide the catalyst to transform a youthful Jeremy Greaves into the most senior Anglican prelate in Queensland.

Especially given he wasn’t even a Christian at the time.

“I had a very clear sense that I wanted nothing to do with the Church, and certainly did not want to be a priest,’’ Archbishop Greaves says of his teenage years in 1980s Adelaide when this scion of a famously clerical family rebelled against Christianity.

His great-grandfather, Arthur Nutter Thomas, was Bishop of Adelaide from 1906 to 1940, his grandfather, Walter Baddeley, was Bishop of Melanesia, based in the Solomon Islands, during World War II and there are a variety of other historic clerics scattered across the family tree, largely from his mother’s side of the family.

But the youthful Jeremy found far too many questions arising in his adolescent mind about Christianity, so much so that he would start arguing with his parents on the Sunday morning drive to church, then demand the car be stopped so he could walk home while the remaining five continued onto the service.

It was not all nasty and mean spirited. The family of six (including granny) were close and didn’t mind a robust debate about religion, and he was still very much in the family fold when he ventured out of school into the wider world, starting a science degree at uni, switching to an arts degree then deciding to go into a partnership with his cousin in a pizza shop.

The sale of the shop after one year gave him enough funds to plan a six-month bicycle ride around Europe.

Jeremy Greaves reveals his unlikely path to becoming the Anglican Archbishop of Brisbane over coffee in Ascot. Picture: Steve Pohlner

It ended up being a “Road to Damascus’’ moment but unlike St Paul, who took three days to covert to Christianity, Jeremy took two years.

Taking jobs in bars from Belfast to Bonn (or sometimes just drinking in them) he eventually found himself at a religious retreat in France largely because his sister had stayed there and it was a beacon for young people.

Following the rules and praying four times a day and becoming accustomed to the simple, monastic life, something clicked within.

“I suppose it was like a slow recognition of something that was always there,’’ he recalls.

”Things began to make sense and I wrote to the Archbishop in Adelaide and said, ‘you don’t know who I am, but I am coming back and I have a vocation.’’

By 21 he was at Saint Barnabas Theological College in the Adelaide Hills followed by postings as a youthful priest in South Australia, Western Australia, marriage and three kids.

After arriving in 2013 in Buderim as Parish rector and several years as assistant Bishop in the northern region he was elevated to his present role on December 16 last year.

There’s an air of celebrity about this progressive, still youthful looking priest.

Greaves last year delivered an apology to the LGBT community. Picture: Steve Pohlner

He is deeply supportive of inter faith dialogue, he’s more interested in the meaning of biblical parables than whether they are literally true and he delivered an apology to the LGBT community last July on behalf of the church, acknowledging LGBT people had been denigrated and “excluded from Baptism, Holy Communion, Holy Unction, and the community of the Anglican Church.’’

Over coffee and Apricot Danish at Le Bon Choix on Racecourse Road, two primary school kids from Bundaberg who attend an Anglican school and are visiting their Brisbane grandparents spy him sitting on the sidewalk and shyly approach to have a chat, their grandmother explaining that “they think the world of him.’’

Yet Archbishop Greaves still has challenging issues to confront, not least of which is the sexual abuse scandal which shattered the Catholic Church, but also had an impact on the Anglican community.

The resignation last month of the head of the Church of England, the Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby, was a powerful reminder the horrors will keep unfolding.

Coffee and cakes were the choice for the busy Archbishop. Picture: Steve Pohlner

Archbishop Greaves, himself a victim of sexual abuse when he was a kid in the Boy Scouts, has some admiration for Archbishop Welby having interacted with him at the Lambeth Conference in 2022.

But he believes the finding against the former Archbishop (specifically, that he had failed to inform police about serial physical and sexual abuse as soon as he had become aware of it) made the resignation the best path forward.

“”I think he probably did not have a choice,’’ Archbishop Greaves says.

“I think history tells us that perpetrators will find ways, (to offend)

“I think we always have to be on guard.

“The stuff that happened to the Archbishop of Canterbury is just another reminder that we can’t be complacent about these things.

“No matter what we put in place, we should never be complacent.

“While we do all we can to keep people safe, the other piece is working out how best to care for victim survivors, making sure we respond properly.’’

Archbishop Greaves notes the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Sexual Abuse found that it could take 30 years for people to disclose abuse.

‘’Even if over the last 20 years we have put things in place, we are still dealing with the legacy of abuse.

Greaves as Archbishop-elect at St John’s Cathedral in December last year. Picture: Glenn Hunt / The Australian

’“And we just need to make sure we are doing the best we can by victim survivors, so they are not retraumatised by processes that drag on or processes that don’t give them justice.’’

’Yet he also believes the tragedy of the sexual abuse scandal, and the western world’s drift away from Christianity over the past 50 years, in no way compromises the future of a faith founded 2000 years ago.

A keen participant in the Queensland Faith Communities Council, he believes religious figures should do more to discuss what brings them together rather than what divides.

“I think those conversations are very important, partly because we learn from each other but at the same times they also remind me why I am a Christian.’’

More specifically, he also uses the interfaith dialogue to better understand why he is an Anglican.

”I can think, ‘that is why I am not that, I am this.’’

He also questions, (as does, he notes, the Dalai Lama) why westerners embracing eastern religions such as Buddhism don’t dig a little further into Christianity which evolved within their own culture, and try to find meaning in the ancient messages which it offers.

“”I suppose our confidence has been shaken, but we need to regain the confidence to tell our own story.’’

As he told his congregation on Wednesday, Christmas springs, in an odd way, out of disappointment, largely because it paints a picture of how good the world could be contrasted with our disappointment and dissatisfaction with how it actually is.

Yet this message of hope continues to arrive annually, and continues to inspire millions of people in the same manner it has done across the centuries.

“Christmas might just provide us with enough hope and inspiration to bring to life the vision and dreams that sit at the heart of the kingdom of which we are given a glimpse in a small baby born 2000 years ago.’’

Originally published as Anglican Archbishop Jeremy Greaves reveals wild ride to senior position