The Sydney Family Album 8 — Howard Mowll

Posted on August 23, 2026 
Filed under History, People, Sydney Diocese

In 2011, Mark Thompson, now Principal of Moore College, published a series of posts, entitled “The Sydney Family Album”, for his website, Theological Theology.

We felt they merit wider distribution, so, with Mark’s kind permission, we are re-posting them on the ACL website, at the rate of one a week.

Here’s the eighth in the series, on Howard Mowll, Archbishop of Sydney, 1934 – 1958.

It really is rather hard to overplay the contribution of Howard Mowll to the shape and character of the contemporary Anglican Diocese of Sydney.

His election as Archbishop in April 1933 was a critical moment in the diocese’s history, a decision for its evangelical heritage rather than the more eclectic theology others were advocating at the time. His tenure of the office during World War II and the equally critical post-war years set directions, embedded principles and fostered a new generation of leaders who enabled Sydney Anglicanism to remain unambiguously Protestant and evangelical while engaging seriously with the challenges of a new era.

Among so many other things gifts to the diocese, he was the driving force behind the invitation to Billy Graham to come to Sydney in 1959, though Mowll died six months before the Crusade began.

Other posts in the The Sydney Family Album series (as we add them) are in our Resources section. There is still one more to go!

Photo: Archbishop Howard Mowll, from his biography by Marcus Loane.