Discussions on human sexuality have been at the forefront of church deliberations for many years. On the third full day of General Synod 2010, representatives from committees and commissions that have done considerable work in this area, along with Archbishop Fred Hiltz, shared with the members of General Synod an overview of discussions, actions and statements on this topic which have taken place since General Synod 2007.

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Declining revenue from dioceses and decisions made by the Council of General Synod (CoGS), will result in a cut of about $1.1 million in 2011 from the Church’s current $10 million budget.

This message was delivered to General Synod delegates on Sat. Jun. 5 by Michele George, treasurer of the Anglican Church of Canada. Monica Patten, chair of the financial management and development committee (FMDC), and George briefed General Synod delegates on the current state of planning for the 2011 budget.

The cuts will affect programs and staff at the church’s national office in Toronto. Fixed costs for running the national office (“Church House”) as well as grants to the Council of the North, which total approximately $3 million annually, will not be touched. All cuts will come out of the $7 million operating budget remaining, explained George.

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Another major topic before the Synod is the Anglican Communion Covenant. We are one of the first provinces to consider the final text. We are blessed to have had an Anglican Communion Working Group guiding our study of the drafts of the Covenant and inviting our input by way of critique and revision. And I know that those comments from our Church have been viewed by many within the Communion as constructive and helpful.

Section IV, Our Covenanted Life Together, continues to be challenging for many in the Communion. On the one hand it speaks of respect for the autonomy and integrity of each province in making decisions according to the polity reflected in its Constitution and Canons. On the other, it speaks of relational consequences for a Church should it make decisions deemed incompatible with the Covenant. These consequences could range from limited participation to suspension from dialogues, commissions and councils within the Communion. In my opinion, they reflect principles of exclusion with which many in the Communion are very uneasy. For if one is excluded from a table, how can one be part of a conversation? How can our voice be heard, how can we hear the voices of others, how can we struggle together to hear the voice of the Spirit? How can we hope to restore communion in our relationships if any one of us cannot or will not be heard?
In his 2010 Pentecost letter, the Archbishop of Canterbury speaks of “particular provinces being contacted about the outworking of these relational consequences.” To date we cannot be identified as “a Province that has formally through their Synod or House of Bishops adopted policies that breach any of the moratoria requested by the Instruments of Communion and recently affirmed by the Standing Committee and the Inter-Anglican Standing Commission on Unity, Faith, and Order”. However the Archbishop’s letter also refers to “some provinces that have within them dioceses that are committed to policies that neither the province as a whole nor The Communion has sanctioned”. One is left wondering if provinces whose Primates continue to interfere in the internal life of other provinces and extend their pastoral jurisdiction through cross-border interventions will be contacted. To date I have seen no real measure to address that concern within The Communion. I maintain and have publicly declared my belief that those interventions have created more havoc in the Church, resulting in schism, than any honest and transparent theological dialogue on issues of sexuality through due synodical process in dioceses and in the General Synod. I also wonder when I see the word “formally” italicized in the Archbishop’s letter. It leaves me wondering about places where the moratoria on the blessing of same sex unions is in fact ignored. The blessings happen but not “formally”. As you will have detected I have some significant concerns about imposing discipline consistent with provisions in the Covenant before it is even adopted; and about consistency in the exercise of discipline throughout one Communion. There are also lingering concerns in Section IV on monitoring discipline and procedures for restoring membership in our covenanted life together.

All that being said, I have every hope that our Church will embrace the request to consider the Covenant. Our Anglican Communion Working Group is committed to providing educational resources to aid our study. Bishop George Bruce will give us a brief overview of those materials in the course of Synod. I have every confidence we will use them faithfully and that we will offer valuable comments in response to the request for a Communion-wide Progress Report on the Covenant at the next meeting of the Anglican Consultative Council in 2012.

Read it carefully and read it all.

The head of Canada’s Anglican Church appealed Friday to hundreds of bishops, priests and laypeople that they not let talks on the thorny issue of same-sex unions further divide the church or take on the rancour of the past.

Rev. Fred Hiltz said at the opening of the General Synod that there are still varying opinions in the church about homosexuality, but that a new, more conciliatory approach might dull the passions around it.

“My hope clearly is that we will be able to continue this conversation, live with some difference and to do it with a degree of grace,” he said at the triennial gathering in Halifax.

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The Anglican Church of Canada has agreed to disagree when it comes to the fractious debate over gay marriage.

When priests, bishops and laypersons gather Friday for nine days of debate and discussion as part of the church’s tri-annual General Synod in Halifax, the approach will be much different than three years ago, Archdeacon Paul Feheley said.

“This synod, we’re approaching it not so much from the form of a winner-takes-all resolution,” he said. “We’re approaching it from a kind of conversational route and hoping by the end of synod, after numerous conversations and meetings . . . that the synod may come up with a statement on where the church is on this matter.”

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Take a careful look at this meeting which occurs beginning this week.

Update: You may find a list of proposed resolutions here.

It’s time for the Anglican Church of Canada to get innovative about the ways in which it engages the rest of the world, says Archbishop Fred Hiltz, primate. Delegates to General Synod 2010 can expect to be “challenged to stop looking inward,” according to Archbishop Hiltz. “We’re focusing on mission,” he told the Anglican Journal.

Archbishop Hiltz explained that the church needs to “start looking out to the world in very courageous ways”¦the Gospel calls us to be the church in the world.” About 500 delegates, international partners, visitors and staff will gather for the triennial meeting of the church’s governing body on June 3 to 11 at St. Mary’s University in Halifax.

The issue of homosexuality and same-sex blessings, a hot-bed of controversy that has dominated synods in the past, has been relegated to the back burner. Instead, delegates to General Synod 2010 will determine a new process for debating the issue. Period. Archbishop Hiltz said that he feels “optimistic that the capacity of our church to live with differences is growing.”

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In the work that bears his name, Gilbert and Sullivan’s wonderfully imagined Mikado purports “To let the punishment fit the crime, the punishment fit the crime.” In their guest opinion column in the Anglican Journal (May 2010, p. 5), Catherine Sider-Hamilton and Dean Mercer have, on the other hand, already decided the punishment”“ “a second-tier status in the larger Anglican Communion.” It remains only to conjure up the requisite crime….

…the writers imply that the current conflict pits those who love and faithfully receive scripture against those who despise it, who find its teaching “oppressive and outdated.” But we know that those who support the blessing of committed monogamous same-sex relationships include many who know and love the Bible as living witness to the living God. And we know that as we receive and interpret scripture, the truth that emerges is often contested truth”“as for example, we come to divergent conclusions about the response that the God revealed in scripture invites to a question of sexual ethics and Kingdom ethos in the 21st century. Conflict and contested truth are not unfamiliar to Jesus’ disciples, and need not tear apart the foundational covenant of our common baptism into one body. We could renew a healthier and more faithful discourse by acknowledging contested truth and engaging in honest and charitable conversation about the practices, values and contextual realities that shape our reception and interpretation of scripture.

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Anglicans in the Yukon have elected the Right Rev. Larry Robertson as their new bishop over the weekend.

Robertson, who is currently an assistant bishop of the Anglican Diocese of the Arctic in Yellowknife, was chosen over three other candidates at the Yukon diocese’s synod Saturday in Whitehorse.

“Somebody came and asked me if I would run, and we prayed about it for a long time,” Robertson told CBC News after his election.

“I have a lot of connections with the diocese already, and so we felt it was good to let our names stand.”

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The Anglican Church of Canada has been using online qualitative research to find out how it can remain relevant to Anglicans over the next decade.

The church set up a website where Anglicans could submit their responses to two questions they had been asked by the organisation: “Where is your church now and where do you want the Anglican Church of Canada to be in 2019?” More than 1,000 responses were received via video, audio recordings, emails, faxes and phone messages.

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In the past the Archbishop of Canterbury has acknowledged indirectly that he has this authority. When he wrote the Primates in December 2006 concerning the upcoming meeting in Dar es Salaam, Archbishop Williams advised them that: “I have decided not to withhold an invitation to Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori as the elected Primate of the Episcopal Church to attend the forthcoming meeting. I believe it is important that she be given a chance both to hear and to speak and to discuss face to face the problems we are confronting together.” He indicated in this letter that this was his decision based on open questions about TEC’s response to the Windsor Report. Those questions have now been conclusively answered by TEC, and a different decision is now required if the Communion is to survive.

Separately, when Ian Douglas was consecrated bishop he was disqualified from membership in the ACC (and its standing committee) since that would give TEC two bishops among its three members, which is not permitted under the ACC constitution. As The Church of England Newspaper reports, both TEC and Douglas take the position that he can be elected in June to the episcopal seat of the retiring Catharine Roskam (who continues to serve under ACC rules until just before the next meeting) and thereby remain on the ACC standing committee. But this result would violate ACC rules, and this position entails in any event the recognition that his current clerical seat has been relinquished by his consecration to the episcopacy. In other words, his seat on the ACC standing committee is already vacant, and he cannot resume that seat if he is elected to Roskam’s seat, which would not take effect until the next ACC meeting in any event under ACC rules (Resolution 4:28). Under the ACC bylaws (Article 7) the standing committee is now required to appoint a clerical member to fill the seat on the standing committee formerly held by Douglas.

Indeed, there is a precisely analogous situation in Canada to that of Douglas and TEC. Stephen Andrews, like Douglas, went to ACC-14 in Jamaica as a clergy member for his first meeting. After ACC-14, Andrews was consecrated bishop by the Anglican Church of Canada. Canada understands that Andrews ceased to be a member of the ACC upon his consecration and therefore that he has now been replaced by his clerical alternate. Indeed, Andrews was elected bishop before ACC-14, but his consecration delayed until after the meeting in Jamaica (we are told) precisely because Canada understood the ACC implications of his consecration. If TEC is permitted to circumvent the ACC rules to keep Douglas on the ACC and its standing committee, especially after the decision to disqualify Uganda’s chosen ACC representative at Jamaica, any remaining trust in the ACC will be lost forever.

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“It far exceeded my expectations,” said Bishop Ordinary to the Canadian Forces Peter Coffin, when asked his thoughts about a recent tour of a nearby Canadian Forces Base by members of the Anglican regional clericus.

The tour was sponsored by the 17 Wing’s flight line chaplain, Captain (The Rev.) Gordon Mintz. On the tour, Anglican clergy had the opportunity to receive a ”˜behind the fence line’ insight into how military chaplains deal with the challenges of ministering to such a diverse and dynamic entity.

“The local (Anglican) clergy was very appreciative of learning first-hand the stresses on military families that they see in their congregations and learning more of the role of chaplains in supporting our military families,” said Padre Mintz.

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General Synod 2010 will consider the Covenant. The question is whether or not the Anglican Church of Canada should approve or adopt the Covenant. We suggest that the church, given its present practice with regard to same-sex blessings, cannot in good faith adopt or approve the Covenant.

Indeed, the Covenant offers the Anglican Church of Canada an opportunity to be honest before the world about its commitment to same-sex blessings and its willingness, in the name of its own standards of justice, to walk apart from the universal church.ӬWhy can the church not adopt the Covenant? It cannot because the Covenant insists on a primary commitment to the universal and apostolic church, a commitment that the movement for same-sex blessings rejects as opposing its standards of justice.

To approve the Covenant is to approve its insistence on the wider voice of the church in our own deliberations about same-sex blessings in Canada. It is to take seriously the inherited teaching of the church on scripture, in this case with regard to marriage. To approve the Covenant is therefore to refuse to proceed unilaterally with same-sex blessings.

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“We are all called to ministry,” affirms Rt. Rev. David Irving, “some to lay ministry, some to ordained ministry.”

The recently installed 12th bishop of the Anglican Diocese of Saskatoon felt that call early in life. “I knew from the time I was a young teen that I was being called to ordained ministry.”

Born in Carlisle, Cumbria, Irving completed his senior education and theological training in England, where he worked for a number of years before emigrating to Canada.

His father, an Anglican priest, was by this time working in the Diocese of Edmonton, and Irving and his wife Joan paid their first visit to Canada to visit his parents and go skiing.

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It wasn’t my intention to further divide Anglicans when I wrote about the historic importance of little St. Stephen’s Church, founded in 1862 on Vancouver Island.

But claims to local bragging rights as the oldest Anglican Church in British Columbia have been coming in following St. Stephen’s assertion that it’s the oldest in continuous use.

Read it all from the Vancouver Sun.

Bishop Philip Poole is hoping that churches in the diocese will be able to repeat the success of Back to Church Sunday, which saw about 2,600 people accepting an invitation to come to church last September.

“We know with confidence that over 320 people who accepted the invitation to come to church have stayed,” wrote Bishop Poole in a letter to clergy in January. “People throughout the diocese gained a sense of excitement in this initiative and more than 70 per cent of our churches participated.”

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The Anglican Church of Canada is inviting corporate sponsorship of its national convention this year, selling space for brand logos on delegate documents, advertising signs in its meeting spaces and a private lunch for executives with the church’s senior archbishop.

It’s the first time in its 117-year history that the Canadian church made its governing synod available for a mess of pottage – to use the language of the Bible’s Old Testament allusion to Esau selling his birthright for a lentil stew. For that matter, no other Canadian church is known to have sold advertising at its formal gatherings and access to its leaders.

The synod will be held June 3-11 at St. Mary’s University in Halifax.

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Ven. Thomas A. Corston was chosen as the bishop of the Anglican Diocese of Moosonee at an electoral synod held April 10.

Corston, who ministered in Fredericton in the 1980s, was elected on the fifth ballot from amongst seven candidates. He succeeds Most Rev. Caleb Lawrence, who had served as Bishop of Moosonee for the past 30 years before retiring in January.

The Diocese of Moosonee encompasses 350,000 square miles in northern Ontario and western Quebec and is home to about 8,700 Anglicans. The diocese is a member of the Council of the North.

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The Diocesan Council of the Anglican Diocese of Montreal expresses its grave concern about Bill 94, recently introduced by the Government of Quebec to prohibit the wearing of the niqab or other face-covering religious garb by members of the public who are seeking government services.

The Bill represents an erosion of the human rights guaranteed by both the Quebec and Canadian Charters of Rights and by the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

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A bizarre act of property damage at the old Anglican church in this town outside St. John’s Wednesday morning has left parishioners and townspeople stunned and angered.

A heated debate over the future of the 116-year-old church, which has been vacant for several years, entered a new dimension just after 8 a.m. when several people went to great lengths to rip the iconic steeple from its roof.

Several of the wooden supports for the five-metre high steeple appeared to be cut with a power tool, which was then violently pried from its perch, a drop of about 10 metres to the ground. The remains of a thick blue nylon rope was found still attached to a beam inside the steeple, and observers believe whoever carried out the act used a heavy vehicle to pull it down.

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The council is allowing the Church By The Sea Committee enough time to develop its plan to turn the former church into a museum.

“I’m disappointed at how the vote went,” said Rev. Edward Keeping, the rector of the community’s church, who blamed some members of council for having made up their minds before the matter was debated Tuesday night.

He said he would file a complaint with the provincial Department of Municipal Affairs about the conduct of some councillors, and insisted the decision goes against the vast majority of congregation members who voted in favour of demolition at an annual meeting three weeks ago.

“We cannot afford it. We don’t have the money,” Keeping said.

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I believe in God, I guess

well no. I am pretty sure.

I do believe in God.

I don’t know

who God is

or

what God is

or

how God is

but

I believe in God.

I guess.

Read it all.

From here:

Diocesan Staff Layoffs

Dear Sisters and Brothers in Christ:

As I mentioned in my Charge to Synod, “budgetary realities are among the realities that require that we change our way of doing things as a Diocese” and that this means “there will have to be a major downsizing and re-alignment of the Diocesan Staff”.

After consultation with the Officers of Synod, and after much personal prayer and reflection, I have decided that, as part of this downsizing and restructuring, to eliminate three full-time positions and four part-time positions at the Diocesan Office. Today, March 15, I have given all of the individuals in these positions working notice. As well, I have given working notice to an individual in a position in a parish that is fully funded through the diocesan budget.
These cuts directly affect a range of ministries: congregational development, finance, administrative support, the diocesan archives, financial development and planned giving, the Diocesan Post, and Urban First Nations Ministry. Because of these cuts the remaining members of the diocesan staff, as well as the diocesan leadership as a whole, will be restructuring in order to carry out essential services and to support these ministries in new ways. That being said, it is clear that these cuts will inevitably result in a reduction of service that can be provided by the Diocesan Office, and our diocesan support of certain ministries.

While this downsizing directly affects certain individuals, it is also a decision which affects every one of us in the Diocese of British Columbia. I ask that you pray for those staff who have been laid off, and for all the Diocesan Office staff. Please pray for the leadership of the Diocese as it seeks to carry out gospel ministry with diminished resources. Please pray for the whole Diocese as it follows in the way of Christ.

Yours sincerely,

–(The Rt. Rev.) James Cowan

St. Stephen’s Anglican Church, at 10909 96th St., was scheduled to be knocked down this past Wednesday. The Anglican diocese wants to clear the property and sell the 6,600-square-foot double lot as a building site. It’s asking $475,000 for the land, which is currently zoned for a duplex.

Late Tuesday, hours before demolition was to start, the diocese agreed to give McCauley activists and heritage buffs a two-week reprieve. They now have until Easter to find a buyer with the will and means to effect the building’s resurrection.

The little red brick church, with its Tudor-style wood beam accents, was built in 1914, which makes it the second-oldest Anglican church in the city. For years, it served the diocese’s Anglo-Catholic community, but the congregation had dwindled to only some 50 members. The diocese says the building’s original brick foundation has badly deteriorated, as has the exterior mortar.

Diocese executive officer David Connell says it didn’t make sense to pay for the expensive repairs the building requires. Connell is “ambivalent” about knocking down the church, but his big regret is that it wasn’t demolished in November, as originally planned.

Read it all.

CoGS members heard a report on the Anglican Communion Covenant from two members of the Covenant Design Group: Dr. Eileen Scully, interim director of the Faith, Worship and Ministry department at the national office of the Anglican Church of Canada; and Dr. Katherine Grieb from the Virginia Theological Seminary. The Covenant has been proposed as an agreement among all the provinces of the Communion on their shared faith, mission and interdependence and as a mechanism to help resolve conflict over issues of sexuality

The fourth section of the covenant looks at how the provinces relate to one another and resolve disputes. Although this section has been approved by the Standing Committee of the Anglican Consultative Council and sent out to the provinces for consideration, it has raised concerns for some.

Bishop Michael Ingham of the diocese of New Westminster gave notice that his diocese, where some churches have been authorized to bless same-sex unions since 2003, “will not assist the churches to grow together in unity.” Specifically, he said his diocesan council expressed concern that the Covenant could be used in a punitive way against member churches who have taken actions to which other provinces object.

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CoGS members heard a report on the Anglican Communion Covenant from two members of the Covenant Design Group: Dr. Eileen Scully, interim director of the Faith, Worship and Ministry department at the national office of the Anglican Church of Canada; and Dr. Katherine Grieb from the Virginia Theological Seminary. The Covenant has been proposed as an agreement among all the provinces of the Communion on their shared faith, mission and interdependence and as a mechanism to help resolve conflict over issues of sexuality

The fourth section of the covenant looks at how the provinces relate to one another and resolve disputes. Although this section has been approved by the Standing Committee of the Anglican Consultative Council and sent out to the provinces for consideration, it has raised concerns for some.

Bishop Michael Ingham of the diocese of New Westminster gave notice that his diocese, where some churches have been authorized to bless same-sex unions since 2003, “will not assist the churches to grow together in unity.” Specifically, he said his diocesan council expressed concern that the Covenant could be used in a punitive way against member churches who have taken actions to which other provinces object.

Read it all.

A new strategic plan for the Anglican Church of Canada’s next nine years is now being readied for delegates of General Synod 2010 to consider when they meet in Halifax in June. Council of General Synod (CoGS) reviewed the Vision 2019 report when it met in Mississauga from March 11 to 14 and voted to recommend it for adoption by General Synod 2010.

Under the banner vision statement, “A people seeking to know, love and follow Jesus in serving God’s mission,” the report identified priorities. They include:

Ӣ developing leadership education for mission and ministry

Ӣ supporting the Council of the North

Ӣ journeying with indigenous peoples

Ӣ working for peace and justice

Ӣ engaging with young people

Ӣ enlivening worship, and

Ӣ becoming leaders in the Anglican Communion and in ecumenical actions.

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A new strategic plan for the Anglican Church of Canada’s next nine years is now being readied for delegates of General Synod 2010 to consider when they meet in Halifax in June. Council of General Synod (CoGS) reviewed the Vision 2019 report when it met in Mississauga from March 11 to 14 and voted to recommend it for adoption by General Synod 2010.

Under the banner vision statement, “A people seeking to know, love and follow Jesus in serving God’s mission,” the report identified priorities. They include:

Ӣ developing leadership education for mission and ministry

Ӣ supporting the Council of the North

Ӣ journeying with indigenous peoples

Ӣ working for peace and justice

Ӣ engaging with young people

Ӣ enlivening worship, and

Ӣ becoming leaders in the Anglican Communion and in ecumenical actions.

Read it all.

Ms. [Janet] Marshall gave a brief history of FWMC’s work on human sexuality this past triennium. She reminded COGS that they had already stated their preference for a dialogue-focused General Synod that upheld the value of local, national, and international relationships.

Ms. Marshall then walked COGS through FWMC’s proposed process for discussing issues of human sexuality at General Synod. In the proposed format, General Synod would begin by “faithful reporting” of FWMC’s work in plenary, then break out into smaller discussion groups. Feedback from these groups would be collated and shared in plenary. The smaller groups would meet again for the same process of synthesis and shared plenary feedback. Finally a resolution would be shaped out of this feedback, and General Synod would vote on it.

COGS members discussed the proposed process. Some responded very positively. Others asked for clarification on who would draft the final resolution and whether there would be enough time for this process on the General Synod agenda.

One council member proposed that a motion-affirming the local option for dioceses to approve same-sex blessings-be brought to General Synod. COGS discussed this motion, but ultimately decided not to forward it to General Synod.

Read it all.