Zachary BARRY

BARRY, ZACHARY (b. Shandon, Cork, Ireland, 1 Feb 1827; d. Glebe, Sydney, Australia, 4 Oct 1898). Anglican clergyman and publicist.

Son of David Barry, physician and Mary, daughter of Archdeacon Zachary Cooke-Collis, Zachary Barry was privately educated and went on to Trinity College Dublin (BA 1849, LLB and LLD 1868). Like other young Irishmen seeking an ecclesiastical career, he crossed over to England to be ordained in 1850-1 by the bp of Chester. As curate at Edge Hill, Liverpool, he learned his craft from Frederic Barker (q.v.), soon to be bp of Sydney, and found himself in the company of a number of enthusiastic Irish evangelical clergy.

After marrying Elizabeth Struan Robertson, by whom he was to have ten children, in 1852 Barry went to WA. He did well as government chaplain at Fremantle but so remote a colony could not contain his energy and range of interests. Concerned about incipient deafness (which did not worsen), he returned in 1861 to work for the Irish Church Home Missions. From there, Barker recruited him for Sydney.

Arriving in 1865, Barry eventually established himself in the developing suburban parish of Paddington. He was an effective and popular minister and was soon able to take a wider role. In Sydney, where the evangelical party was predominant, public education and sectarian relations were major issues. Barry entered with gush, into both. With a Presbyterian minister, he founded the Protestant Standard, and, in his columns and in a series of pamphlets, became a hammer of Rome. Barry's anti-Catholicism was a forcible version of his bishop's but he broke with Barker over education. As a promoter of the Public Schools League, Barry campaigned for government schools which would be free and compulsory and would retain a strong religious component. Barker agreed but resisted Barry's strong pleas to abolish state aid for denominational schools. Their disagreement was expressed in Synod debates, a medium where the eloquent Barry excelled. Parkes' Public Instruction Act (1880) vindicated Barry's position in that generation, though the 1960s brought different perspectives on state aid for non-government schools.

A visit to Britain for medical treatment of a throat ailment made Barry aware of the seriousness of the science and religion and biblical criticism debates. Two years earlier, in 1876, he had begun popular lectures on these matters. In the 1880s, the intellectual defence of Christianity became a major occupation. Barry's position was conservative, more so than that of his new bishop, Alfred Barry, a liberal low churchman. But both were vigorous and dedicated in upholding the claims of Christianity in a scholarly manner and this unity mitigated their differences in other fields, especially the growth of Anglo-Catholicism; the bishop tolerated it; Barry lambasted every sign of ritualism.

Barry retired in 1893, happy that a new evangelical bishop had arrived, with his strong support in the election process. He was buried in the cemetery of St Jude's, Randwick, where he had ministered on his arrival in the colony. He had moved because St Jude's was near the episcopal residence and, independent Irishman that he was, he wanted to work well away from the bishop.

ADB 3; W Phillips, Defending 'a Christian Country' (St Lucia, 1981); S Judd and K Cable, Sydney Anglicans, (Sydney, 1987)

K J CABLE