Banished: The Churchman Who Spruiked Weddings And Whiskas
Sydney Morning Herald
Saturday March 21, 1998
"I just got tired of fighting them." So said the Rev Dr Frederick Lambert-Carter, the feisty 79-year-old Congregational "bishop" of Balmain, confirming his retirement yesterday after an extraordinary civil war which had split his church.
For eight months, accusations of financial fraud, heresy, congregation-stacking and other ungodly practices have echoed around the sandstone walls of the National Trust-classified St Andrew's church, a landmark on the peninsula for 143 years.
Two Sundays ago it came to a climax when, says Dr Lambert-Carter, the church's treasurer, Mr Keith Lyons, took him aside in the vestry and told him that unless he resigned several women were prepared to allege he had subjected them to sexual harassment. "It is nonsense, of course," said Dr Lambert-Carter, "but I had had enough of Lyons and his clique."
So he walked into the church where he has preached for what is believed to be an Australian record of 36 years, and told his astonished congregation that he would deliver his final sermon on the last Sunday in March.
It ends one of Sydney's most colourful ecclesiastical careers. A distinguished figure in the black, white and purple vestments and gold pectoral cross that led to the comparison with a bishop, Dr Lambert-Carter pioneered the Japanese wedding business, performing up to 200 ceremonies a year at $110 to $150 a time.
His other commercial ventures also raised eyebrows. He starred in a Garuda airline poster ("A Heaven-sent opportunity to fly to Bali free") and he was the minister with the Yorkshire brogue in the television advertisement in the early 1990s for Whiskas cat food.
"I am terribly distressed at being kicked out in this way," he said. "The church was nothing when I came here 36 years ago - it was me who saved it and built it up."
He has been given 60 days to vacate the manse, a terrace near the church which has been his home for a third of a century. In spite of his superannuation, he says he will need the pension when his stipend stops.
Mr Lyons said he hoped the minister's resignation would bring peace to the church, but refused to discuss it further.
"I have had eight months under stress, and I am not going to take any more of it," he said, before hanging up. What began as a campaign by Mr Lyons and some of the church's original 11 deacons to oust the minister, because of his age, escalated into an argument about money. Almost uniquely for a church, St Andrew's has an embarrassment of riches, despite having a congregation of only 40 to 50. The bustling Saturday flea-market Dr Lambert-Carter began in its grounds brings in $230,000 a year.
As treasurer, Mr Lyons has defended himself in a 38-page document against "slanderous and libellous statements made in order to discredit me". He told the Herald four months ago that he had been falsely accused of misappropriating $1 million.
He retaliated by writing to Dr Lambert-Carter, accusing him of committing heresy and establishing a cult. Dr Lambert-Carter wrote back: "In my lifetime of devotion to the ministry of the Lord Jesus Christ I have never received such a blasphemous, inaccurate, distasteful and evil-inspired letter . . . may God have mercy on you."
St Andrew's is no longer part of any mainstream denomination. In 1990, it pulled out of the 32-church NSW Congregational Fellowship after its officials accused Dr Lambert-Carter of "inviting Satan into the house of God" by embracing Eastern meditation and allowing tarot-card readings at the market.
© 1998 Sydney Morning Herald