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TRADITIONAL worshippers complain “happy clappers” are taking over Tasmania’s Anglican Church.

“Happy clappers” are people who froth at the mouth and speak in strange tongues.

Traditionalists blame Tasmania’s Anglican Bishop John Harrower, who they say has championed an evangelical style of worship and made traditional churchgoers feel “second-class” and “oppressed”.

But Bishop Harrower said the church had to offer contemporary services to stay relevant.

“We have been adding contemporary services to our mix to reach a contemporary world and older people struggle with that,” he said.

“We are a democratic organisation and of course a minority who don’t support the change may not be happy.”

Bishop Harrower has closed more than 20 historic churches during his decade-long reign.

The most controversial was the closure and sale of North Hobart’s Holy Trinity and its numerous properties in Church St, which raised up to $5 million for the church.

Significant amounts of this money are believed to be earmarked for a new auditorium in Sandy Bay to house the Wellspring congregation, or according to critics “the happy clappers”.

The most vocal criticism of Bishop Harrower is from churchgoers such as Paul Fenton and Christian Garland, who tried to save Holy Trinity.

Dr Garland said the bishop’s evangelical bent had made hundreds of old Christians feel discarded.

“It’s terribly upset people,” he said.

“They prefer the traditional style which is more reflective, rather than the happy slappy stuff and frothing at the mouth and speaking in strange tongues.

“They all sit there and stand up and go ga-ga.”

Mr Fenton, 68, said happy clappers “acted as if they were the only ones close to God”.

“The bishop pushes it, it is the favoured stance.”

Dr Garland said Bishop Harrower and his senior colleagues were as uncaring as “Viking warriors” when they shut churches.

“They just cut through the old churches and old Christians to promote their own ideology,” he said.

Former Murdoch University vice-chancellor Peter Boyce, who is writing a history of St David’s Cathedral, said there had been a “power shift” to the evangelicals and the concern was felt more widely than just former members of Holy Trinity.

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