The Anglican Church of Australia, originally known as the Church of England in Australia and Tasmania, is a Christian church in Australia and an autonomous church of the worldwide Anglican Communion. In 2016, responding to a peer-reviewed study published in the Journal of Anglican Studies by Cambridge University Press, the Anglican Church of Australia reported that it had 4,865,328 total baptised members. In 2017, Growth and Decline in the Anglican Communion: 1980 to the Present, published by Routledge, collected research reporting there were 3.8 million members of the church. In reporting to the World Council of Churches, the church claimed 3,881,000 total members. The Church of England Yearbook 2024 reported 3,679,688 members. According to the 2021 Census, 2.5 million Australians (9.8% of the population) self-identified as Anglicans. It is the second largest church in Australia after the Roman Catholic Church.
For much of Australian history since the arrival of the First Fleet in January 1788, the church was the largest religious denomination. In recent times, however, Anglicanism in Australia has mirrored the steep decline in church membership and attendance experienced in many first-world nations.
