And on the first day, barely a dozen of the breakaway Anglican faithful showed up.
Far from being disappointed, Brian DeVisser said he considered yesterday’s service a historic and successful occasion that bodes well for Ottawa’s conservative-minded Anglicans.
“It went really well,” said Mr. DeVisser, shortly after completing the first service of the Kanata Lakes Fellowship at the neighbourhood’s tiny, but venerable Old Schoolhouse.
Canadian church leaders have appealed to the Archbishop of Canterbury to address moves by dissidents to join a South American church and minister illegitimately in Canada.
In a pastoral statement dated Nov. 29, a week after the Anglican Network met, Archbishop Fred Hiltz, primate (national bishop) of the Anglican Church of Canada, said he deplored “recent actions on the part of the primate and General Synod of the Province of the Southern Cone to extend its jurisdiction in Canada.” The statement was also signed by the church’s four metropolitans, or regional archbishops.
Referring to Bishop Don Harvey and Bishop Malcolm Harding’s intent to minister to disaffected churches in Canada, Archbishop Hiltz said such ministry is “inappropriate, unwelcome and invalid.”
Since the Anglican Network in Canada held a conference in late November to announce a new church structure for parishes conservative on the subject of homosexuality, several bishops have called clergy in for clarification of their intentions, but no priests have been disciplined.
Three dioceses ”“ Ottawa, Montreal and Hamilton, Ont.-based Niagara ”“ last fall voted to permit church blessing ceremonies for same-sex couples, moves that some Anglicans oppose.
At the conference, held Nov. 22-23, leaders of the network announced that the Anglican church in South America, called the Province of the Southern Cone, would accept as members parishes that wish to leave the Anglican Church of Canada. The network moderator, Bishop Don Harvey, announced that Canon Charles Masters had been named archdeacon of the network and Rev. George Sinclair prolocutor.
Then it’s no secret that some Anglicans within four parishes who continue to protest the actions of the 2002 Diocesan Synod, but have stayed within the diocese, may leave the Anglican Church of Canada. We hope not. We don’t think it’s necessary. Both we and they would be impoverished by a departure. But again, change seems likely.
Churches seldom find change easy. But it seems that change they must to remain vital and alive in this world. The hard part is determining what things should be changed-and what must remain the changeless core of our faith. May God help us as we continue to try to discern the one from the other.
“Blessed Lord, who hast caused all holy Scriptures to be written for our learning: grant that we may in such wise hear them, read, mark, learn and inwardly digest them ”¦” These familiar words belong to the Collect which Archbishop Thomas Cranmer composed for The Second Sunday in Advent. Taken from the Scriptures, in this case Paul’s Letter to the Romans, the prayer captures an entire pattern of theological understanding that is at once formative and foundational for Anglican doctrine and devotion. Diarmaid MacCulloch, commenting on Gerlach Flicke’s 1545 portrait of Cranmer, which depicts him holding The Epistles of Paul but also with Augustine’s book De Fide et Operibus (“Of Faith and Works”), suggests that this signals Cranmer’s theological enterprise, namely, the recovery of the Scriptures understood through the best of the Fathers, principally Augustine.
The creedal or doctrinal understanding of the Scriptures is a distinctive feature of the Anglican Common Prayer tradition. The rich interplay of Scripture and Creed(s), for example, shapes the worship and liturgy of the Church. The Articles of Religion and the ordination vows of the clergy testify to the centrality of the Scriptures for the teaching and praying life of the Church and express a remarkably sophisticated approach to the reading of the Scriptures in the life of the Church. We place ourselves under the authority of God’s Word Written. But that means that we have to think the Scriptures. “What do the Scriptures say?” (Romans 10.8). Or, as Christ asks, “how do you read?” (Lk.10.26). There is a necessary engagement between God and our humanity through the witness of the Scriptures. Revelation is mediation and requires the fullest engagement of our minds with what the Scriptures proclaim.
The reformed principle of sola scriptura, “scripture alone”, admits of a range of applications but its most basic sense for Anglicans is the primacy of Scripture in determining doctrine, devotion and discipline. “Holy Scripture containeth all things necessary to salvation: so that whatsoever is not read therein, nor may be proven thereby, is not to be required of any man, that it should be believed as an article of the Faith,” as Article VI puts it. The same idea is required of the teaching of the clergy. What are the things necessary to salvation? Those things which belong to the articles of the Faith; in short, the Creeds, which are the distillation of the Scriptures, and which speak to the nature of our spiritual identity with God in his self-relation as Trinity and in his relation to us as Creator, Redeemer and Sanctifier. Creedal and doctrinal principles exercise more than a merely formal role; they exercise a formative role in the life of the Church. They should have a definitive voice in the debates and issues of the day.
How? Do creedal and doctrinal principles as derived from Scripture have anything to say on matters of morality and polity? And, if so, in what way and to what extent? To begin to consider those questions will necessarily mean becoming more aware of the essentials of the Faith and the ways in which those principles are brought to bear upon our lives and the life of the Church. At issue in the present controversies is whether the principles of the Faith have an integrity which should direct our thinking or whether they can be changed and altered; in short, whether they are subject to our thinking.
Some see everything – God, humanity, the Church – as endlessly negotiable and celebrate the secular culture as providing the context that determines the content of the Faith. In this view, the principle is our human experience which determines all else and seeks the re-imaging of God, humanity and Church in our own image. But who is it that claims to speak on behalf of our human experience and what happens when such claims collide with principles of doctrine? For Anglicans, synodical consensus does not extend to matters of doctrine and worship; in fact, such things are intentionally precluded by the self-limiting nature of The Solemn Declaration of 1893 which commits the Anglican Church of Canada to being “an integral portion” of the “One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church, hold[ing] the One Faith revealed in Holy Writ, and defined in the Creeds” by being “in full communion with the Church of England throughout the world.” Some things, the Archbishop of Canterbury, remarks, with respect to the scene in North America, cannot be negotiated. We are not simply our own independent agents. We are part of the body of Christ.
To walk apart from the Anglican Communion would be to forsake the catholicity and apostolicity of the Church and to become merely another sect in the sea of sectarian confusions belonging to the landscape of North American religion.
The appeal to the Scripture is not to an arbitrary authority but to the principles which the Scriptures present, the principles which govern and measure human lives and human activity. At issue, in the present controversy, is the place of the sexual in the understanding of our humanity and moral behaviour. What is homosexuality? Neither a category of creation nor of biology, it is, properly speaking and on its own terms, a social and psychological construct. There are many, many different social constructs ranging from biker gangs to the red hat ladies, from hobby groups to sex clubs. It doesn’t mean that special liturgies should be created for each and every social construct or that each and every social construct is something that should be celebrated as morally consistent with Christian doctrine. What is the relation of the sociological to the theological?
From the standpoint of Christian morality, the theological determinants of social and moral order are the revealed doctrines of creation, redemption and sanctification seen in engagement with the order of nature rationally understood. Scripture does not speak of sexual orientation as something ontologically given or created. Christian Marriage, too, is not understood simply as a social construct ”“ something invented by us ”“ but rather as divinely “instituted of God in the time of man’s innocency,” recalling the order of creation, “an honourable estate, signifying unto us the mystical union betwixt Christ and his Church,” recalling the order of redemption, “an holy estate ”¦ adorned and beautified” by Christ “with his presence, and first miracle that he wrought,” recalling the order of sanctification. We are not our own and marriage is one way in which we live to and for Christ in the life of his body, the Church.
One way. Not the only way. Friendship in all of its varied and many forms is a significant part of our life in Faith. We belong to a fellowship of faithful believers who, whether married or single, are committed to one another in the body, in the Church. Friendship is not the same thing as marriage, however, and excludes the sexual. This is the sticking-point for our contemporary technologically fixated culture. In condoms we trust, too much, I fear, and are the victims of our own technological idolatry which wreaks such havoc upon all our lives.
We began with a reference to an Advent prayer. We end with a prayer of the Epiphany. Both are seasons of teaching, each of which engages contemporary culture in different ways. Advent looks to the light of God in Christ coming into our world and day, a light that is judgment from above. Epiphany celebrates the light of God in Christ in our midst, engaging the cultures of the world from within the world. A light from above and a light from within “that we may both perceive and know what things we ought to do, also may have grace and power faithfully to fulfill the same.” The doctrine of revelation offers healing and health, salvation and grace, to a world that is weary and worn. The question is whether we will “read, mark, learn and inwardly digest” what the Scriptures are saying to us in the integrity of their doctrinal and creedal understanding.
–The Rev. David Curry serves at Christ Church, Windsor, Nova Scotia
Many claim that the issue which has brought the Anglican Church to this crisis is homosexuality. That is not entirely true; homosexuality is simply the attention-grabbing issue that sells newspapers and secures political and public support. The real issue is hermeneutics, how Scripture is rightly interpreted. All the other divisive issues arise from that one underlying question.
Many media reports suggest that the group in Canada and the U.S. which is now under the ecclesiastical jurisdiction of the Primate of the Southern Cone (lower South America) is “breaking away” from the Anglican Church. That is totally inaccurate. Actually, it is the Anglican Church of Canada that has “broken away” from the worldwide Anglican Communion and “departed” from its own founding constitution through a series of political decisions which are contrary to the repeatedly stated standards of Anglican belief and practice. The Communion, through its National Archbishops (called Primates) and its various Councils, has repeatedly stated its position. It has asked that Canada withdraw from full participation in the Communion’s governing bodies because we acted inappropriately. Canadian Anglicans who wish to remain faithful to the historic standards of belief and practice in the worldwide Anglican Communion were forced by events in Canada to appeal to the worldwide Communion for pastoral care and oversight.
As you know from the media, the Essentials Network met last week in Burlington to prepare for a formal separation from the Anglican Church of Canada. Please note that this is the “Network” branch of Essentials, and it is clear to me that it is not the intention or desire of the majority of those who are involved in the mainstream of the Essentials movement itself. (ed: divide and conquer?)
I am saddened but not surprised by this development. I do understand that some people may choose to leave their denominational tradition because they feel led to a different path. I, myself, left the denomination of my birth and early development to become an Anglican ”“ and I have never regretted that decision. What I cannot countenance is a primate and province of the Anglican Communion in another part of the world claiming missionary jurisdiction here, not as another denomination but in competition as the “real” Anglican Church. A few clergy who have relinquished voluntarily their orders in the Anglican Church of Canada, or will soon do so, are actively engaged in this. This is not acceptable.
It is our standard practice, and it is clearly set out in canon law, that no cleric who voluntarily relinquishes the exercise of ministry, for whatever reason, can function in any capacity until restored by the diocesan bishop to whom he or she relinquished. No bishop, priest or deacon who is not canonically resident in this diocese is permitted to function within the Diocese without both the invitation of the parish incumbent and either my licence or informal permission.
In 2003, after TEC’s General Convention gave consent to Gene Robinson’s episcopal election, some conservatives began to use the term “realignment” with respect to the Anglican Communion. At the time, it seemed to refer to a movement ”“ not yet fully en route ”“ to forge a common witness to the Scriptural commitments of Anglicanism, that would draw together the Communion’s organs of discipline and mission in a newly integrated manner. This would, some hoped, isolate the Episcopal Church’s own wayward developments from the rest of the Communion, offer godly pressures for reform, and provide conservative Episcopalians with a clearly defined Communion basis for their own local witness. “Realignment” was, in what seems to have been the Archbishop of Canterbury’s suggestive understanding, a “confessional” movement within the Communion.
The term “realignment” has taken on a new meaning, however, over the past few years. It now seems to denote for many the erection of new hierarchical structures among Anglicans, separate from, independent of accountability to, and out of communion with a range of other existing Communion entities and persons. Instead, these structures claim a more local or individualized form of accountability, as in a congregational polity now lifted into an ”˜episcopal’ frame of reference. These new structures of “realignment” are ones through which provincial, episcopal, and local oversight is offered, through which ministry is ordered, through which discipline is effected, and through which resources are shared, apart from the Anglican Communion’s already established organs of ecclesial life, including, in some cases. Some have called this “realignment” a “new Reformation”; others (rather contradictorily) have seen it as a step to reunion with Rome; others have stressed its provisional nature (though without explaining how the erection of new orders of ministry and discipline can, in the nature of the case, be provisional).
We can argue as to the wisdom and the theological and moral appropriateness of this new reading of “realignment” and its practical outworking. Indeed, the argument has been going on for several years already. But it is worth noting, apart from such debate and purely as a factual matter, that the new understanding of Anglican realignment has yet to be accepted by many who are its purported objects of concern. The factual matter of observation may also, of course, inform substantive questions themselves.
There has been, for instance, a grand announcement made recently that the Anglican Church in Canada was itself in the process of becoming a part of this new “realignment”. Two retired Canadian Anglican bishops were “received” by the Province of the Southern Cone (in South America), and this South American-based province invited Canadian Anglican congregations to leave the Canadian church and join them. Ordinations in Canada are planned, and new structures being set up to provide this South American-Canadian alternative Anglican church to function alongside the current Anglican Church of Canada. All of this, indeed, follows the multiple models of “realignment” already set up the United States, where several African Anglican Provinces (Rwanda, Nigeria, Uganda, and Kenya) have their own hierarchical and disciplinary structures in place within America, ordering the life of American Anglican congregations and clergy, supervising the flow of resources, and engaged, from afar, in disciplinary and legal matters.
Despite the much-publicized announcement of this Canadian “realignment”, however, to this point only two congregations, both of them not members of the Anglican Church of Canada, have agreed to participate. The Canadian “Network” of conservative Anglican congregations who have expressed a willingness to listen to this invitation numbers 16 congregations, half of whom come from a single conflicted diocese (New Westminster), and none of whom as yet have agreed to “realign”.
There are, of course, Canadian Anglicans who may be interested in this realignment; some of them may be waiting for the next set of plans to unfold; some are reflecting; some are getting ready to move. Perhaps soon. We may well see several more congregations join up. But we will not see a large proportional number, despite the fact that, in Canada, even longer than in the US, conservative Anglicans have been struggling with the challenge of bishops, synods, teachings, and disciplinary practices that they believe to be seriously at odds with the Gospel. And why is that?
It is not because the evangelical stakes are not as high in Canada as in the United States. It is not because Canadian Anglicans who love the Scriptures and the Lord of the Scriptures and the Church of this Lord, are not as astute as their American counterparts, or as brave, or as faithful. It is not because they do not realize that leaders and synods within their church have, in fact, crossed the line of Communion teaching and commitment. One may wish to judge the value of the differences in question; but even refraining from such judgment one can and ought to point out that Canada is not the United States, within Anglicanism as much as in anything.
 Canadian Anglicans have long lived in a rapidly secularizing culture. They recognize the dangers of meeting the atheism and hopelessness of a secular and fracturing social and moral environment through the witness of Christian fragmentation.
 Canadian Anglicans are already bound by the habits of “commonwealth”, and the virtues of “communion”, understood in this historically-informed Anglican fashion are well-rooted in their practice.
 Canadian Anglicans are schooled, if not in a religious way nonetheless in a real way, in the life of loyalty.
 Canadian Anglicans already know the tremendous cost of legal battles, having endured and suffered from the Residential School litigation and settlements, and they don’t have as much money available for such battles as their U.S. counterparts. They also know, from this and other experiences, the heart of moral hypocrisy that so evidently and powerfully lurks within the lives of institutions and their reformers both.
 Canadian Anglicans are aware that their identity as a national church is fragile due to Canada’s vast geography and tendency to regionalism, their small numbers as a church, and far fewer material resources than their neighboring Episcopal Church. Many of their parishes are small and scattered throughout Canada’s large rural areas. To leave the larger Canadian church is a luxury that only a very few urban parishes could afford. For most conservative Anglicans, realignment means isolation.
If Anglican “realignment” has a positive meaning for conservative Canadian Anglicans, it will probably be in terms of its earlier meaning. Realignment, then, will probably be embraced in terms of the confessional witness that sows its seed, maintains its integrity, suffers its resistance, and gives of itself within the bonds of common life as they can best be lived within the conscience of charity and truth that Christ’s Spirit has so long afforded His Church among those who earnestly seek it. This will not come easily, to be sure. It will require greater explicit organization and commitment. Individuals who have stood in the shadows will be called to step forward. The endurance of hard words will need to be borne. There is the threat of discouragement, of lagging energies, of disaffection even.
There is also a very special concern in the cultural context unique to Canada. In Canada, the particular danger must be faced that the conservative immigrant, ethnic, and Native Anglican congregations and their leaders will be affected more than anyone (a problem the more homogeneous U.S. church has not had to face.) Yet whatever the new structures and provinces and bishops and clergy and discipline that are established within Canada by Anglicans from elsewhere in the world, it is fair to say that the vast majority of faithful Canadian Anglicans will choose a different path.
All this represents straightforward observation. It may prove inaccurate as time moves forward, or it may prove a point of permanent distinction. God alone knows. The fact that Canada is not the United States, however, has enormous implications in the struggle for the witness of global Anglicanism. Indeed, only the United States is the United States ”“ and even there, many widespread assumptions are not what they seem. Understanding the distinctions, especially where the Gospel is concerned, will do much to protect other parts of the Communion from the distinctive morass of American turmoil, whose realignments have, as yet, proved easier to multiply than to order.
After centuries of rather tense coexistence, serious trouble developed in the last half-century. North American liberal Anglicans proved to be adept at church politics, gained control of the church hierarchy, and promoted a steady stream of theological innovations that assaulted the core beliefs of the conservatives.
Bishop Ingham, for example, has suggested that we should “stop thinking of ourselves as created beings” and stop thinking of Easter as “something understandable.” Perhaps not coincidentally, Anglican membership has declined steadily in North America.
In contrast, the dominantly conservative “Global South” Anglican churches have been growing explosively. More than two-thirds of all Anglicans now come from Africa, Asia or South America. And they are now tasked with mediating the divorce of the North American church.
Can we assign blame in this ecclesiastical divorce? Was one of the parties “unfaithful” (pun unavoidable)? Liberal Anglican spokesman Neale Adams summarizes the liberal vision as: “a big-tent church . . . open to a wide variety of theologies, and we think that’s good.” To my ear, this is a bit like the cheating husband saying, “Ours is an open relationship, embracing a wide variety of extra-marital affairs.”
The liberals seem to be genuinely astonished that anyone would have a problem with this — saying, in effect, “You can teach that Jesus rose from the dead, if you like, but don’t hassle us if we teach that he didn’t.”
Paul Feheley, Archbishop Hiltz’s principal secretary, defended the pastoral letter by stating that the Anglican Church of Canada (ACC) understands that SSBs performed in Bp Ingham’s diocese are permissible under the Windsor Report.
He said the Canadian Church’s interpretation of the Windsor report was the moratorium forbid [sic] any bishop from giving any additional parishes the right to perform same-sex blessings.
In New Westminster, eight parishes were given permission by the diocese, but after the report was released in 2004 no additional parishes were given that authority. Those original eight churches continue to perform the rite.
That defence is difficult to accept for two reasons. First, even if it were true that the Windsor Report (TWR) allows SSBs in New Westminster to continue, why did Primate Hiltz not speak up when the synods of Ottawa, Montreal, and Niagara passed motions calling for SSBs in their dioceses? Why didn’t he say, “Sorry, old chaps, TWR doesn’t allow you to go through with that” (or words to that effect)? If he had, we might be able to give credence to Mr Feheley’s claim that the ACC actually desires to respect TWR.
Furthermore, TWR does not countenance SSBs anywhere in the Anglican Communion. If, for some reason, ACC leaders think that unclear from the text of TWR itself, the primates removed all uncertainty in the Dar es Salaam Communiqué.
Canadian Anglican leaders are practicing “either denial or hypocrisy” when they criticize bishops who want to cross national and diocesan jurisdictions to minister to congregations that are conservative on the issue of homosexuality, said Archbishop Gregory Venables, primate, or national archbishop, of the South American Province of the Southern Cone.
“They have broken historic agreements ”“ the Lambeth Conference agreement and the Windsor Report ”“ to go ahead with blessing same-sex relationships. To use that argument against us is a bit odd, to say the least,” said Archbishop Venables in a telephone interview with the Anglican Journal.
On Nov. 29, Canada’s primate, Archbishop Fred Hiltz, and four regional archbishops, released a statement that said “we deplore recent actions on the part of the primate and General Synod of the Province of the Southern Cone to extend its jurisdiction into Canada through the Essentials Network Conference. This action breaks fellowship within the Anglican Church of Canada and the Anglican Communion.”
The statement from Archbishop Hiltz also notes that the invitation from the Southern Cone is unnecessary because the Canadian church has already made “adequate and appropriate provision for the pastoral care and episcopal support” of those who are in disagreement with their diocese or national church.
Archbishop Venables said the dissenting churches obviously don’t consider the provisions adequate or they would not have petitioned his province for alternate primatial oversight.
“The sexuality issue is the presenting issue,” he said, “but there are things about scripture, about who Jesus is. The creeds have seen Jesus Christ as the Son of God and the one way to God the Father.”
The Province of the Southern Cone, the Anglican Church of Canada, and The Episcopal Church are among the 38 provinces in communion with the See of Canterbury. Archbishop Venables said the invitation was made in order to provide a way for members who would otherwise be unable to remain Anglican.
Yesterday’s pastoral letter from the Primate and Metropolitans of the Anglican Church of Canada is cause for further disappointment. Rather than honestly acknowledging the irreconcilable differences and seeking to find amicable solutions, the Primate and Metropolitans have chosen to issue a statement that will only further confuse the Canadian church.
The Pastoral Statement fails to acknowledge the true cause of the crisis identified by the Windsor Report and the unanimous Communiqués of the Primates (including the Archbishop of Canterbury) from 2003 (Lambeth), 2005 (Dromantine) and 2007 (Dar es Salaam). These documents affirmed the Anglican Communion’s doctrinal position on human sexuality as articulated in the 1998 Lambeth Resolution 1.10 and appealed to the ACC and the US Episcopal Church (TEC) to not further “tear the fabric of the Communion at its deepest level”, and to not “walk apart” from the Communion by violating the Communion’s doctrinal standard.
The Pastoral Statement also fails to mention that those Communion documents clearly identified the actions of the ACC (and TEC) and the diocese of New Westminster as the real cause of the divisions in the church. The Windsor Report and the Primates’ Communiqués warned that these actions would lead to further division in the church. Unfortunately, rather than heeding the Primates warnings, the dioceses of Ottawa, Montreal and Niagara have followed New Westminster’s lead.
Rather than being the cause of broken fellowship, the provision of Primatial oversight from Archbishop Venables is, in fact, a response to the existing broken fellowship – both within Canada and between Canada and much of the rest of the Communion.
3. Regarding the contravening of agreements by interventions:
“In the Dar es Salaam communiqué we said, “Furthermore, those Primates who have undertaken interventions do not feel that it is right to end those interventions until it becomes clear that sufficient provision has been made for the life of those persons.”
On the other hand the bishop of New Westminster within the ACOC a few hours after the appearance of the Primates’ letter from Brazil in 2003 went ahead with the very action the letter had pleaded should not be taken. It also went against the Bible and the consensus of 2000 years of Christianity.
The implication of this violation and the resulting crisis was ignored.
Since then there have been egregious examples in clear rejection of Lambeth 1 10, Windsor and the requests of the Communion leadership. Once again nothing has been said even though this has meant the tearing apart of the Anglican Communion and an exodus from the church.
Now suddenly those who seek to take care of those who side with historic, biblical Christianity and the Anglican Communion are accused of the very lapse that has produced the crisis.
Is it possible in the real world to use the very agreements that one is contravening to protect oneself”.
Read it all (note it is apended at the bottom of the first letter).
The Anglican Church of Canada is striking back at its orthodox critics.
In a statement to be read out in Anglican churches across the country on Sunday, Primate Fred Hiltz condemns the actions of breakaway members as “inappropriate, unwelcome and invalid” and “deplores” efforts by a South American archbishop to extend his influence into Canada.
“We deplore recent actions on the part of the primate and general synod of the Province of the Southern Cone to extend its jurisdiction into Canada,” says the pastoral statement, also signed by four regional archbishops.
Last week, Archbishop Gregory Venables extended an invitation to conservative Canadian Anglicans to switch their allegiance from the Anglican Church of Canada to his 27,000-member church representing Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Paraguay, Peru and Uruguay.
The church has been pushed to the brink of schism over the issues of same-sex marriage blessings and gay clergy. Conservative Anglicans in Canada and the U.S. hope to set up a parallel church in North America along theological lines, saying they no longer feel welcome in the liberal national churches.
“[We] deplore recent actions on the part of the Primate and General Synod of the Province of the Southern Cone to extend its jurisdiction into Canada,” the letter said. “This action breaks fellowship within the Anglican Church of Canada and the Anglican Communion.”
The [Archbishop’s] letter goes on to say that the actions of Southern Cone Archbishop Gregory Venables contravene various church agreements, including those in the 2004 Windsor Report, that forbid a primate from one Anglican region interfering in another region.
But critics said the Windsor report also placed a strict moratorium on same-sex blessings, a practice that continues in the Diocese of New Westminster, B.C.
“There is a real study in denial here,” said George Eger-ton, a history professor at the University of British Columbia and a member of the Anglican Network of Canada, which is forming the basis of a parallel conservative Canadian church. “The Windsor Report is only mentioned very briefly in passing and that is with regard to forbidding cross-border [issues]. That’s the only clue that you have that anything larger is happening in the worldwide Anglican communion. You’re in denial here that this is a major crisis that the Church is facing [over the issue].”
The actions by the Primate of the Southern Cone are not necessary. Our bishops have made adequate and appropriate provision for the pastoral care and episcopal support of all members of the Anglican Church of Canada, including those who find themselves in conscientious disagreement with the view of their bishop and synod over the blessing of same-sex unions. These provisions, contained in the document known as Shared Episcopal Ministry, were adopted by the House of Bishops and commended by the panel of reference appointed by the Archbishop of Canterbury.
The actions by the Primate of the Southern Cone are also inappropriate. They contravene ancient canons of the Church going as far back as the 4th century, as well as statements of the Lambeth Conference, the Windsor report and the Communiqué from the Primates’ Meeting earlier this year. Furthermore these actions violate Canon XVII of the Anglican Church of Canada which states that “No Bishop priest or deacon shall exercise ordained ministry in a diocese without the license or temporary permission of the Diocesan Bishop.”
Any ministry exercised in Canada by those received into the Province of the Southern Cone after voluntarily relinquishing the exercise of their ministry in the Anglican Church of Canada is inappropriate, unwelcome and invalid. We are aware that some bishops have, or will be making statements to that effect in their own dioceses.
In the meantime we rejoice in this season of Advent in which we once again begin that great journey of tracing the steps of our Lord’s most holy life through the liturgy of a new year.
Revolutionary movements in Eastern Europe in the 1980s and 1990s headed for the TV stations. In the revolution in the Anglican Communion last week, the Anglican Network in Canada launched its parallel Anglican entity in a TV Station in Burlington, Ontario.
260 leaders of congregations across Canada gathered at short notice. Nothing could be finalised until the Province of Southern Cone synod on 5-7 November had re-elected Gregory Venables as Presiding Bishop and permitted North American churches to affiliate with the Province.
Bishop Don Harvey, retired Bishop of Eastern Newfoundland and Labrador who takes his retreats at Mirfield, led from the front. He resigned his orders in the Anglican Church of Canada (ACC) on November 15, and one minute later was licensed as a Bishop in the Province of the Southern Cone. He spoke of sorrow, not regret: “The most hurtful thing was to hear the letter (from the Primate of Canada) read in church last Sunday (November 18) which declared that my basic right to celebrate the Holy Communion has been stripped from me. There was no “ I regret to have to do this” in the letter. Will all the Southern Cone bishops will be ostracised in Canada as well? ”
Bishop Harvey declared the revolution in his Pastoral Charge to the newly launched Church: “There is no reference in the Bible to a diocese, border, or boundary. I have heard ”˜Go ye into all the world and preach the gospel’. We have lawyers and doctors and engineers without borders. We are launching bishops without borders.”
Bishop Venables addressed the gathering by video and letter. “The division which has led to these moves is a severance resulting from a determined abandoning of the one true historic faith delivered to the saints.”
“Schism is a sinful parting over secondary issues. This separation is basic and fundamental and means that we are divided at the most essential point of the Christian faith. The sin here is not one of schism but of false teaching which is not at its root about human sexuality but about the very nature of truth itself.”
Dr James Packer, now 82, underlined that this was not schism, despite the protestations of his own (former) Bishop Ingham of New Westminster in the press.
Dr Packer said “Schism means unjustifiable dividing of organized church bodies, by the separating of one group within the structure from the rest of the membership. Schism is sin, for it is a needless and indefensible breach of visible unity. But withdrawal from a unitary set-up that has become unorthodox and distorts the gospel in a major way and will not put its house in order as for instance when the English church withdrew from the Church of Rome in the sixteenth century, should be called not schism but realignment, doubly so when the withdrawal leads to links with a set-up that is faithful to the truth, as in the sixteenth century the Church of England entered into fellowship with the Lutheran and Reformed churches of Europe, and as now we propose gratefully to accept the offer of full fellowship with the Province of the Southern Cone. Any who call such a move schism should be told that they do not know what schism is.”
“The present project is precisely not to abandon Anglicanism but to realign within it, so as to be able to maintain it in its fullness and authenticity”
Dr Packer set out the identity of Anglican Network in Canada:
“We are a community of conscience, – committed to the Anglican convictions – those defined in our foundation documents and expressed in our Prayer Book.
The historic Anglican conviction about homosexual behaviour contains three points:
It violates the order of creation. God made the two sexes to mate and procreate, with pleasure and bonding; but homosexual intercourse, apart from being, at least among men, awkward and unhealthy, is barren.
It defies the gospel call to repent and abstain from it, as from sin. This call is most clearly perhaps expressed in 1Cor. 6: 9-11, where the power of the Holy Spirit to keep believers clear of this and other lapses is celebrated.
The heart of true pastoral care for homosexual persons is helping them in friendship not to yield to their besetting temptation. We are to love the sinner, though we do not love the sin.
Second, we are a community of church people, committed to the Anglican Communion.
More than 90% of worshipping Anglicans worldwide outside the Old West are solidly loyal to the Christian heritage as Anglicanism has received it, and we see our realignment as enhancing our solidarity with them. We are not leaving Anglicanism behind.
Third, we are a community of consecration, committed to the Anglican calling of worship and mission, doxology and discipling. Church planting will be central to our vision of what we are being called to do.
Fourth, we are a community of courage, heading out into unknown waters but committed to the Anglican confidence that God is faithful to those who are faithful to him.”
By contrast “Liberal theology as such knows nothing about a God who uses written language to tell us things, or about the reality of sin in the human system, which makes redemption necessary and new birth urgent. Liberal theology posits, rather, a natural religiosity in man (reverance, that is, for a higher power) and a natural capacity for goodwill towards others, and sees Christianity as a force for cherishing and developing these qualities. They are to be fanned into flame and kept burning in the church, which in each generation must articulate itself by concessive dialogue with the cultural pressures, processes and prejudices that surround it. The church must ever play catch-up to the culture, taking on board whatever is the “in thing” at the moment; otherwise, so it is thought, Christianity will lose all relevance to life.
In an interview with 100 Huntley Street, a TV station, Dr Packer elaborated:
“The basic liberal attitude to human wisdom and liberal theology is poison. Poison is a vivid word. It shocks people awake. Poison takes the strength and life out of a system and if not contained is terminal. Liberal theology takes people away from the real knowledge of the real God to imaginary knowledge of an imaginary God. Their imaginary God is dumb. He does not speak. This is a different God. Liberal theology leads people astray and undermines their health. The real God is not taken seriously and is kept out of the picture.”
Bishop Malcolm Harding, who after retirement led Anglican Renewal Ministries in Canada, was appointed a second Bishop of the Southern Cone for Canada. Rev Canon Charlie Masters, the Director of Anglican Essentials Canada was appointed Archdeacon and Mrs Cheryl Chang from Vancouver as Chancellor. Bishop Harvey’s pastoral charge affirmed that “Women have the same status as men in all ministries in ANiC. We have adopted the same rule and policy as Common Cause. There is no second class citizen. We are all one in Christ Jesus.”
Two congregations not currently part of the Anglican Church of Canada, St John’s Richmond and the Church of the Resurrection, Hope, both in British Columbia, were received into the ANiC. Congregations which belong to ACC have to vote as congregations to transfer. Ownership of the properties has yet to be tested in law. But 8 clergy have already been summoned to appear before their bishops, and the Rev Charlie Masters, the Director of Essentials, expects to be deposed this week.
On Saturday December 2 ordinations have been arranged in Vancouver. Dr. Ingham has sent threatening letters to Bishop Donald Harvey, not to ordain priests for conservative parishes in New Westminster, to the potential ordinands (asserting that only his ordinations are recognized in the Anglican Church of Canada and, speaking imperially, the world-wide Anglican Communion), and to conservative priests in his Diocese (not to support any irregular ordinations). The official launch of the Church will be April 25-27 in Vancouver and the first Synod will be held in November 2008.
Revolutions are legitimized through recognition by others. Supportive greetings and recognition were sent to Bishop Harvey and the new entity by the Primates of Uganda, West Africa, Kenya, Central Africa, the Indian Ocean, South East Asia, and by Bishop Mouneer Anis (Egypt), Archbishop Peter Jensen (Sydney), Bishop Robinson Cavalcanti (Recife) and from Bishop Bob Duncan (Pittsburgh), Bishop John Guernsey (Uganda) and Bishop Martyn Minns (CANA) from the USA.
From England greetings were sent from Bishop Michael Nazir Ali (Rochester) and by Bishop Wallace Benn, Bishop of Lewes & President of Church of England Evangelical Council (CEEC) and leaders from CEEC, Reform, New Wine, Church Society, Anglican Mainstream, Forward in Faith, the Covenant Group for the Church of England, Crosslinks and the 1990 Group of General Synod. (See letters page).
The Conference Presentations on Church Planting, Governance, Structure, and Media Relationships can be found at http://www.anglicannetwork.ca/events.htm
–This article sppears in the Church of England Newspaper, November 30, 2007, on page 12
Canada’s breakaway conservative Anglicans have a million-dollar war chest to fight pending legal battles over church property and have hired a Bay Street law firm, documents from the groups’ recent meeting in Burlington reveal.
“It is possible that we could lose church properties at the end of the day,” reads one of the documents, released this week by Anglican Essentials Canada. “However, that day could be very long coming.”
The document is from a session on the legal implications of separating from the Anglican Church of Canada that was closed to the media. In it, lawyer Cheryl Chang says the group is confident it has sufficient resources to fight any legal battle.
“We feel we have a very good legal case to make and have a substantial commitment for a legal fund in the amount of $1 million,” the document reads.
Can non-aboriginals handle the truth about the abuses that happened in Canada’s Indian residential schools?
That is a concern of Robert Watts, named early this year as the interim director of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, part of the $4-billion settlement agreement reached between the federal government, the churches involved in running the schools and the Assembly of First Nations.
One of the factors affecting healing and reconciliation between residential school survivors and the rest of the country will be the “receptivity of the country to the truth,” said Mr. Watts, the former chief of staff to Phil Fontaine, national chief of the Assembly of First Nations. “We can have all the truth in the world, but if people aren’t listening ”¦ in terms of building for the future, we will miss an opportunity.”
For what should we think of global Anglicanism today? It has often been said during the past few years that the Anglican Communion is like a torn net, due to denials by some of things that the rest believe to be integral to the gospel and affirmation, mainly by the same people, of behaviour that the rest believe the gospel absolutely rules out. In certain cases communion with a small “c” – that is, full and free welcome and interchange of clergy and communicants at the Lord’s Table – has been suspended. How, we ask, has this come about? In brief, it is the bitter fruit of liberal theology, which has become increasingly dominant in seminaries and among leaders in what we may call the Anglican Old West – that is, North America in the lead, with Britain and Australasia coming along behind.
This has been the story over the past two generations, since Anglo-Catholic leadership began to flag. Let me explain. Liberal theology as such knows nothing about a God who uses written language to tell us things, or about the reality of sin in the human system, which makes redemption necessary and new birth urgent. Liberal theology posits, rather, a natural religiosity in man (reverance, that is, for a higher power) and a natural capacity for goodwill towards others, and sees Christianity as a force for cherishing and developing these qualities. They are to be fanned into flame and kept burning in the church, which in each generation must articulate itself by concessive dialogue with the cultural pressures, processes and prejudices that surround it. In other words, the church must ever play catch-up to the culture, taking on board whatever is the “in thing” at the moment; otherwise, so it is thought, Christianity will lose all relevance to life. The intrinsic goodness of each “in thing” is taken for granted. In following this agenda the church will inevitably leave the Bible behind at point after point, but since on this view the Bible is the word of fallible men rather than of the infallible God, leaving it behind is no great loss.
Well now; with liberal leaders thinking and teaching in these terms, a collision with conservatives – that is, with upholders of the historic biblical and Anglican faith – was bound to come. It came over gay unions, which liberals wish to bless as a form of holiness, a quasimarriage.
As part of its current agenda of affirming minority rights (that is the “in thing” these days), western culture has for the past generation accepted gay partnerships as a feature of normal life. Despite the pronouncement of the 1998 Lambeth Conference in favour of the old paths, New Westminster diocese began in 2002 to bless gay couples, and others followed suit.
The Windsor Report called for a moratorium on this, which was not forthcoming. The St. Michael’s report said that the issue, though theological, was not against Anglican core doctrine so was not a matter over which to divide the church. On a side wind and by a stopgap motion, the General Synod of 2004 declared gay unions to be marked by “integrity and sanctity”. The 2007 General Synod affirmed the St. Michael’s position. So here we are now, the Anglican Network in Canada, accepting the invitation to realign in order to uphold historic Anglican standards, not only regarding gay unions but across the board, as those standards were formulated in our church’s foundation documents and reformulated in the Montreal Declaration of 1994.
From all sorts of sources, especially email, but also the blogosphere, as for example there–KSH.
To: All Diocesan Clergy
From: Bishop Michael Ingham
Date: November 23, 2007
Subject: Individuals and Groups Leaving the Anglican Church of Canada
Dear Friends in Christ:
By now you will have heard the announcement from Burlington, Ontario, by the Essentials Network of a formal separation from the Canadian Church. You may well be asked about it this on Sunday and for some time to come, so I thought I would offer you my own preliminary reflections on what should be our principal responses.
First, this development, while not unexpected (the signs have been there for several years, see below) is both unwelcome and unnecessary. Unwelcome because it violates both the ancient traditions of our church and also the consistent urgings of Scripture for unity among Christians. Unnecessary because no Canadian Anglican is being compelled to act against their conscience in matters of doctrine or ethics, and so there is no need for ”˜safety’ from ecclesiastical oppression.
Second, Anglicans in this country do not want to see their church at war with itself. The prospect of costly and bitter litigation will rightly be regarded as a waste of the church’s precious resources given for mission. Further, our efforts at evangelism and outreach will be hampered by the media’s coverage of our organization in conflict. People searching for a spiritual home will be wary of involving themselves in a place of turmoil. Sadly, these consequences will be increased by the Network’s announcement.
Third, it has been the cry of every breakaway group that “we haven’t left them ”“ they’ve left us.” Apart from the tiredness of the cliché, it is an attempt to avoid responsibility for personal choices. Every effort has been made, both in New Westminster and across the Anglican Church of Canada, to provide space for genuine differences of conviction on non-essential matters of faith. We have recognized the difficult place in which those of minority opinion find themselves (and there are several minorities, not just one) and have sought to foster mutual respect and mutual support. The vast majority of conservative and traditional Anglicans in Canada understand and accept this, and will stay with their church. This is not, therefore, a conservative breakaway. It is a decision to leave by those who feel uncomfortable with reasonable accommodation within the Body of Christ.
Fourth, the Network blames the church for its own decisions. Let us remember a brief chronology. It was ten years ago in 1997 that we first heard the term ”˜global south.’ This was from the Kuala Lumpur meeting of certain bishops prior to the Lambeth Conference the following year. They issued the “Second Trumpet From the South” stating their intention to be in communion only with those who held their view of human sexuality. At the 1998 Lambeth Conference a well financed and organized lobby succeeded in raising this position to the level of Resolution 1:10, effectively marginalizing a careful statement prepared during the Conference by a broad spectrum of bishops.
We saw the development in North America of groups called the ”˜Anglican Mission in America” and the “American Anglican Council” and the irregular and provocative consecrations, in Singapore in 2000 and Denver in 2001, of ”˜missionary’ bishops to serve in the United States against the wishes of the Episcopal Church. During this time, congregations in the US and Canada were being urged by these groups to withhold financial contributions from the church.
Thus the seeds of this breakaway movement were laid long before same-sex blessings were authorized in New Westminster or a partnered gay bishop was elected in New Hampshire. The attempt now to lay blame for this development on events that took place in our diocese in 2002 and in the US in 2003 is in my view both a denial of history and an avoidance of responsibility.
Lastly, I think we need to respond to the Network’s announcement in several ways.
1. Pray for the unity of Christians, for a spirit of charity towards those with whom we may disagree, and for God’s forgiveness of our mutual failure to honour the prayer of Christ in St. John’s Gospel “that they may be one.”
2. Give particular support to those conservative and traditional Christians who remain with their church and grieve the departure of friends.
3. Teach our members about the genius of Anglicanism and its balance of Scripture, reason and tradition within the boundaries of common prayer.
4. Emphasize in our preaching and leadership the centrality of mission and its priority over ecclesiastical politics.
5. Challenge the false stereotypes that foster polarization ”“ e.g. the ”˜heartless conservative’ or the ”˜unbiblical liberal.’
6. Give thanks that our church, for all its messiness, is honestly and openly facing issues some other bodies cannot.
7. Press forward in ministry and evangelism at the local level.
8. Deepen our study and immersion in Scripture. Place ourselves under the authority of the Christ it reveals. Avoid both an empty relativism and a harsh literalism.
9. Encourage both local media and the non-churchgoing public to understand the deeper roots of this development.
10. Take the ”˜long view’ ”“ i.e. remember the consistent triumph of the Gospel over the historic fragmentation of the church, and the persistence of faith through the failures of human discipleship.
Please remember our diocesan and national leaders in your prayers too. And above all, let’s get on with the normal work of being the church.
Kindest regards,
The Right Reverend Michael Ingham
Bishop
It starts about 6 minutes and 30 seconds in and features an extended interview with Charlie Masters.
The first Canadian Anglican churches have been welcomed to the episcopal care of Bishop Donald Harvey under the Primatial authority of Archbishop Gregory Venables and the Province of the Southern Cone. Neither St John’s Richmond (BC) nor Church of the Resurrection (Hope, BC) was an Anglican Church of Canada (ACC) congregation at the time they joined, although both had their roots in the ACC.
“We are sending these churches out to minister, share the good news of Jesus Christ, and help rebuild an orthodox Anglican witness in Canada,” said Bishop Donald Harvey.
St John’s Richmond is a young vibrant congregation of 80 that meets in a Baptist church building. It started in 2005 as a Bible study group of members from St John’s (Shaughnessy) and has grown rapidly since. They have been an independent church in full communion with ANiC parishes.
”˜We’re very thankful that this allows us to be in full communion with Anglicans worldwide,” said the Rev Sean Love, rector of St John’s Richmond. “We look forward to Bishop Don’s episcopal ministry and are excited about continuing gospel mission and ministry in a growing urban centre.”
Church of the Resurrection began in 2006 as well but under very different circumstances. It was planted by the biblically orthodox majority of the former congregation of Christ Church Hope after their priest, the Rev Dr Archie Pell, was summarily fired by Bishop Michael Ingham following a parish vote to affiliate with the Anglican Network in Canada. The bishop then appointed a minister with a more liberal theology. The Rev Pell teaches at Regent College in Vancouver as a professor of Anglican Studies. Until recently, his wife, Dr Barbara Pell, taught English Literature at Trinity Western University.
“When the Diocese of New Westminster dismissed me and appointed a priest sympathetic to the bishop’s position, the Anglican Network in Canada and Bishop Harvey gave us support, both legally and spiritually,” said the Rev Pell. “Now, we are thrilled to be embraced by a God-fearing Province that allows us to remain fully Anglican and in fully communion with the worldwide Anglican Church. We no longer have to feel alone.”
The Anglican Province of the Southern Cone (Iglesia Anglicana del Cono Sur de America) is one of 38 Provinces that make up the global Anglican Communion. It encompasses much of South America and includes Bolivia, Chile, Paraguay, Peru, and Uruguay and Argentina.
The Anglican Network in Canada (the Network) is committed to remaining faithful to Holy Scripture and established Anglican doctrine and to ensuring that orthodox Canadian Anglicans are able to remain in full communion with their spiritual brothers and sisters around the world. The Network will have members who are under the jurisdiction of the Anglican Province of the Southern Cone as well members who are in the Anglican Church of Canada during a transitional period.
The Network just concluded its national conference in Burlington, Ontario at which it outlined details of the church structure and relationship to the Province of the Southern Cone ”“ now available to biblically faithful Canadian Anglicans who are in “serious theological dispute” with the Anglican Church of Canada and want to be recognized as “fully Anglican” and in the mainstream of global Anglicanism.
The schism in Canadian Anglicanism turned ugly at week’s end with threatened fights over ownership of church buildings, hints of swift punishment for rebellious priests and the uncrating of an alternative church structure for clergy and laity who reject openness toward homosexuals.
As conservative denomination members attending a two-day conference in Burlington, Ont., heard plans for the orthodox Anglican Church in South America to establish a parallel jurisdiction in Canada, the primate of the Canadian church announced he would issue a letter next week to be read in all Anglican parishes.
Archbishop Fred Hiltz’s letter is expected to be temperate, but to explain that the head of what is known as the Anglican Province of the Southern Cone of America, Archbishop Gregory Venables, has committed an outrageous wrong by trying to extend his authority into another church jurisdiction.
Archbishop Hiltz is also expected to make clear that congregations that vote to leave the Canadian church wouldn’t be taking their buildings with them, a subject much discussed at the Burlington conference.
To our Dear Canadian Brothers and Sisters in Christ.
We have heard of the recent decision and willingness of Archbishop Gregory Venables and the Province of the Southern Cone to provide a safe haven and Communion connection for those biblically faithful Canadian Anglicans who wish to be recognized as “in full Communion with the Church of England throughout the world”.
We heartily endorse the actions of the Province of the Southern Cone and wish to send our greetings and support for those members of the Anglican Network in Canada who wish to avail themselves of that Communion Connection. We assure you that we will recognize those members as in full communion with us and our Provinces.
It is clear that the Anglican Church of Canada’s actions have contributed to the “tear in the fabric of the Communion at its deepest level”. Many of our Provinces have declared broken or impaired communion with the Province of Canada.
A parallel national Anglican church was launched on Thursday amid charges by a leading theologian that the Anglican Church of Canada has been poisoned by liberalism and is real the cause of the schism now underway.
“Schism means unwarranted and unjustified separation from the rest of the Church (structure), causing an indefensible breach of unity,” said J.I. Packer, a Canadian who Time magazine called one of the 25 most influential evangelicals in America. “Those who are unfaithful to the heritage are the schismatics. It is not we who are the schismatics.”
Mr. Packer said the Anglican Church of Canada has been “poisoned” by a liberal theology that “knows nothing of a God who uses (the Bible) to tell us things and knows nothing of sin in the heart and in the head.”
Bishop Malcolm Harding, retired Bishop of Brandon, has announced that he will minister under Archbishop Gregory Venables and the Anglican Province of the Southern Cone of the Americas, effective immediately.
Bishop Harding is the second Canadian bishop to make this announcement in the past week. It was announced on Friday that the Right Reverend Donald Harvey had been received under the Primatial authority of Archbishop Venables and would be free to offer episcopal oversight to biblically faithful Canadian Anglicans distressed by the seismic shift in the theology and practice of the Anglican Church of Canada.
Bishop Harding will assist Bishop Harvey in performing episcopal ministry in Western Canada.