The more than 300 delegates to this week’s Anglican General Synod will be deciding whether to follow the lead of Vancouver-area Bishop Michael Ingham, who drew both global praise and censure in 2002 when he first blessed same-sex couples.

With outspoken African Anglican leaders threatening to try to shove the Canadian denomination out of the 77-million-member global Anglican communion, the decisions Canada’s Anglicans make this week are being closely watched.

At a Fraser Valley meeting this month, Ingham told Anglicans he disagreed with the Canadian House of Bishops’ “surprising” vote in May to recommend a further delay, for three years, of a decision over whether to allow same-sex blessings to be approved by local dioceses.

However, the bishops did recommend Anglican priests offer communion to homosexual couples who had undergone civil unions.

Whatever the case, the bishops’ vote is not ultimately binding on delegates to the denomination’s once-every-three-years synod, a governing body with more authority than the bishops alone.

On Wednesday, both Ingham and Stephen Schuh, a gay Anglican from Vancouver, put forward a motion calling on the synod to affirm that it will still be acceptable for him to continue to sanction same-sex blessings in his diocese — no matter what delegates decide this week, probably on Saturday, to do nationally.

Read it all.

In the Parable of the Sheep and the Goats in Matthew 25, Jesus was telling his disciples that if you want to meet God face to face, the nearest you are going to come to it on this planet is to look into the faces of your brothers and sisters — and especially your sisters and brothers who have been declared unrighteous, unclean, unacceptable. It isn’t that we find God there; it is that God finds us there.

That is where our faith is nurtured and bears fruit. There, where we expect to meet monsters, we meet God instead. The opportunity to serve God lies there among the prisoners, the naked, the sick, the hungry, who have been reckoned to be least deserving of any service at all.

The vocation of the Anglican Communion is this. As Michael Ramsay said in ‘The Gospel and the Catholic Church,’ the centre of Anglicanism, her primary vocation is to witness to the perpetual passion of Christ’s body which must lead, according to the divine providence, into the heart of the gospel.

Proper penitence and a readiness to go willingly, and perhaps be lifted up, to suffer whatever sacrifices may be necessary for the visible unity of the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church.

For this to happen we must die in order to bear fruit and be messengers of God’s redeeming love. We are called to die to the values of the world — greed for wealth, status and power; as well as our psychological tendencies: our desires and compulsions for success, to be loved, to be held in esteem, to be acclaimed by those in our group, to have, power and control over others. .It’s a call to disarm ourselves, to die to our plans and let God’s plans and ways take hold of us.

Read it all.

The draft agenda is here.

Read it all from the Anglican Church of Canada’s General Synod.

Watch it all (starts about 5:30 in).

The move will mean the departure of a priest who, arguably, is one of the most accomplished and theologically noteworthy clergymen ever to serve in the city. He was among five candidates to be considered in 2003 to head the Colorado Diocese. Radner already had gained worldwide respect as a theologian and author by the time he was chosen earlier this year by Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, to be a part of an international panel asked to design a “covenant” for all the world’s Anglican churches. The aim was to create a working agreement among members of a church riven when American Episcopalians – a part of the Anglican community – ordained an openly gay man as bishop of New Hampshire in 2003.

Radner had been a delegate to the August 2003 general convention in Minneapolis, which ratified the New Hampshire diocese’s selection as bishop of Eugene Robinson – a divorced father of two who had lived with his male partner for 13 years.

Radner left the convention in protest, claiming that the meeting had forfeited “its authority, according to the traditional understanding that church council which act either illegitimately or heretically are no longer valid councils.”

He said that, “ultimately, some means within the larger Anglican communion must be brought to bear in order to adjudicate this matter.”

It made sense, then, that he serve on the international panel, as one of only two Americans thus invited. The gay-bishop and other issues have divided parishes, dioceses and the worldwide community of Anglicans, which numbers 77 million adherents.

Read it all.

Watch it all.

Certainly one of the most difficult items for our discernment will be the question of how to proceed on the issue of same-gender relationships. Related to it are other questions. One is the deeper question of how Anglicans receive and understand Scriptures in the light of modern scholarship and contemporary experience. Another is how our decisions will impact our sister churches in the Anglican Communion. And beside that is a question as to the nature of the Communion, and the appropriate relationship between provincial autonomy and global interdependence.

Another way of putting that is, how do we wish authority to be exercised or limited within our family of churches? And perhaps most important, how will our decisions witness to the Good News of God in Jesus Christ for our gay and lesbian brothers and sisters within the Church and outside it. There are of course many other questions to consider in the hard work of discernment over this issue. We are taught that the first principle of moral theology is obedience to conscience, and I ask each of you to embrace that principle, and with it the ethic of respect for the conscience of those who disagree with your own. The second principle of moral theology is to inform your conscience to bring it, if possible, into line with the teaching of the Church. And here careful listening using the Anglican approach of Scripture, Tradition and Reason will be helpful.

At the end of the day, when decisions are made, they will not be unanimous. Differences will remain, but the unanimous opinion of the Theological Commission (and of many other sources) is that the question of same-gender blessings should not be a communion breaking issue. So the alternative to that is that in keeping with a long Anglican tradition, we make room at the table for those whose views we do not share. For the table is the Lord’s and not our own. And it is He who invites us to share the life that is offered there for the sins of the whole world.

Read it all.

John Thorp’s case for is here and Robert Gagnon’s rebuttal is there.

This is a serious debate among our friends just to the North, take the time to read both pieces and pray for General Synod. Thanks–KSH.

Check it out.

Most of the world’s Anglican churches have openly opposed sanctifying same-sex marriages, arguing that such blessings defy scripture.

“If we go through with this, we’re going to be tearing the fabric of the Anglican community worldwide at its deepest level,” Calgary-based delegate Sheila Vanderputten told CBC News.

“The primates have really been strong in telling us that we may have to choose to walk apart if we go against our 2000 years plus of history of Christianity according to scripture.”

On Saturday, delegates will vote on a “local parish” option. If it passes, Anglican priests would be allowed to choose whether their individual parish will bless a same-sex couple.

Read it all.

From the diocese of New Westminster:

A special Synod of the Diocese of British Columbia has told its delegates to the national Church’s General Synod this month that about two-thirds of its members approve of same sex blessings now or sometime in the future.

A slight majority of the 197-member Diocesan Synod, 102 or 51.7 per cent, voted to tell the delegates on Saturday, June 2, that they felt a resolution coming before General Synod to “affirm the authority and jusisdiction” of diocesan bishops and synods to authorize same sex blessings should be approved by the national Church.

Another 13.7 per cent were in favour of the motion in principle, but said that now was not the time the Canadian Church should take action.

And some 22.8 per cent said the Anglican Church of Canada should never approve same sex blessings. The rest were undecided or expressed no opinion.

Read it all.

From the Toronto Star:

Toronto’s historic Church of the Holy Trinity says it will defy any attempt by the Anglican Church of Canada to stop the blessing of same sex unions, and may even start performing the wedding ceremonies themselves.

In a resolution released late Sunday, members of the activist downtown church voted to “continue to exercise its conscience and bless same-sex unions and marry same-sex couples.”

Rev. Jim Ferry, fired by the Anglican Church 15 years ago for being gay but since given limited duties at Holy Trinity, says the parish has long supported same sex blessings, and predicted it will soon take the next step of performing a gay marriage ceremony.

“I think we’re going to be consistent and move in that direction,” Ferry told the Star. “Our parish is not about to go backwards.”

Read it all.

For my part, I do wish that the PTC had done more work on the definition of doctrine and the nature of doctrinal development. Nevertheless, I want to reflect a little bit on where the issue of same-sex blessings fits in this spectrum between core doctrine and adiaphora, leaving aside the question of whether or not same-sex blessings are “commanded or forbidden by God’s word.”

There are many beliefs that are rightly ”Žunderstood as “doctrinal” in that they represent the ”Žacknowledged teaching of the Anglican Church and are essential to its identity, polity (that is, structure and organisation) and mission.

The SMR rightly observes that an issue like same-sex unions, while not itself a matter of core doctrine, carries strong implications for central doctrines such as what it means for human beings to be made in the image of God, salvation and marriage. So it would be a serious misreading of the intent of the report to isolate the category of “core doctrine” and claim that because same-sex unions are not to be categorized as such, they are not important enough to require greater consensus in the Anglican Church’s deliberations.

Read it all.

From the ACC News:

What is the situation now in the church with same-blessings? With same-sex marriage?
Same Sex Blessings: Officially the House of Bishops of the Anglican Church of Canada has requested that all dioceses refrain from permission for the blessing of same-sex unions until General Synod 2007. The Diocese of New Westminster has permitted those parishes that had been granted permission up to that point to continue to do so but has granted no new permissions. The Diocese of Niagara voted at its Synod in 2004 to permit the blessing of same-sex unions in parishes that had approved ”“ however, the Bishop (as is the Bishop’s right) withheld permission at this time.

Same ”“Sex Marriage: The Anglican Church of Canada has not, in any diocese, granted permission for clergy to perform same-sex marriages.

What is the situation now in New Westminster?
After 3 successive Synods requesting permission for same-sex blessings by increasing majorities, BishopMichael Ingham granted permission in 2002 for blessings to occur in parishes where the membership of the parish has studied and voted to permit them to occur in that parish. When the House of Bishops requested a moratorium on permission for same-sex blessings the Bishop of New Westminster withheld any further parish permissions but allowed those previously granted to continue.

Read it all.

The Anglican Church of Canada has been far behind the governments and courts of this country in recognizing the rights and privileges of same-sex partnerships. Although the church has passed statements of welcome and support, same-sex couples have not been able to have their commitment to one another blessed within their parish church.

This month the national decision-making body of the Anglican Church of Canada will meet in Winnipeg and one of the agenda items could open up an option for supportive dioceses to bless same-sex partnerships. If, however, this option is denied again there will be a call for more study and more discussion even though the Anglican Church in Canada has studied and debated this issue for over 30 years.

Caution has held sway over the decades because it is a divisive issue for Christian traditionalists and because the Anglican Church has to work within a vast international communion that struggles with cross-cultural tensions.
To many in the secular world this rift within Anglicanism may seem unimportant: a sign of yet another moribund institution unable to ”˜keep up with the times’. Not so; this struggle is much more broadly instructive because it is about the risks ”“and promises ”“ of communal decision-making. It is about the openness that societal organizations must allow for successful local autonomy, while at the same time fostering a broader sense of identity and kinship with those from whom they differ.

Read it all (subscription required) or read it there.

From the Winnipeg Sun:

Planning a wedding is usually complicated, taking months to sort out a seemingly endless parade of details.

For Frank Kajfes, 60, the months leading up to the big day with Bryan Wannop, his partner of 30 years, were difficult for another reason.

As Anglicans, it was important to Kajfes and Wannop, 70, to have a religious component to their wedding. Since the church doesn’t allow its priests to bless same-sex unions, having Kajfes and Wannop at the altar on their wedding day was a delicate matter.

Church leaders came up with a clever compromise.

Before they were legally married by a Federal Court judge at the end of a regular Sunday mass, they were prayed for by the entire congregation of St. John the Evangelist in Ottawa — instead of just the priest.

“They were blessing us, not our marriage. That was a technical point,” said Kajfes.

“It was the closest thing they could do without contravening the bishop’s directives.”

Read it all.

Scott at Magic Statistics blog has a good listing of links for those wanting to follow the Canadian General Synod as coverage by various orthodox bloggers.

Oh, and Scott, here’s another link for your roundup. We category-loving elves have created a Canadian General Synod category for all the Canadian Synod news here on T19.

From Magic Statistics blog:

The big event is almost here. On Tuesday morning, a week of festivities kicks off as General Synod 2007 convenes in downtown Winnipeg. Lots of important stuff will be discussed and voted upon. A new primate will be chosen on Friday 22 June, with formal installation scheduled for the following Monday.

You can follow the action via the internets. Here are a few suggested sources.

Anglican Essentials Canada is running a blog where they will endeavour to post the latest news as it happens. The blogmeister is Peter (I don’t know if he’s ever mentioned his last name online), proprietor of the fine blog The Age To Come. He’s from an orthodox Anglican parish on the south side of Calgary. AEC also has a page of general information about General Synod 2007 and another on the AEC 24/7 prayer vigil.

The mighty, mighty webelf Binky oversees the CaNN General Synod 2007 blog. At last report, Binky has been laid low by the hot humid weather out east, combined with other health problems. Prayers, please.

Also in attendance will be my friend The Rev Joseph Walker, of St Timothy’s, Edmonton. Joe’s been making fun of certain Anglican leaders and talking about going on pub crawls with Winnipeg Anglican priest Preston Parsons, so I don’t know if Joe will be a reliable news source. On the other hand, he may be able to report dirt information that no one else can, so stay tuned to his blog felix hominum.

For those who want the official line, the Anglican Church of Canada says it will provide webcast and other coverage here.

Much prayer is needed for the bloggers, for their jobs demand stamina, quick thinking, and nimble fingers. Pray also for the clergy and lay delegates, for they will need our Lord’s wisdom and guidance.

In the run-up to GS 2007, Anglican prayer blog Lent & Beyond has posted a series of prayers for Canada. This one was posted today:

O Lord,
The Anglican Church of Canada is fragmented and in need of rebuilding. Turn the hearts of its leaders to fear and obey You that they may become like a signet ring, carrying the authority of Jesus, teaching Your people to obey everything He has commanded, and making disciples of all nations.

Lord, it is our hearts’ desire that the Anglican Church of Canada be rebuilt upon the foundation of the apostles and the prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the cornerstone. All authority is given to Jesus in heaven and in earth. Rebuild this church on Jesus, dear Lord. Amen.

Haggai, Matthew 28:18-20, Ephesians 2:20

You can read Scott’s full post, including links to previous background on General Synod here.

While the Anglican Church of Canada prepares to vote this week on whether to let priests bless same-sex couples, a relaxed Christopher McBain is celebrating Edmonton’s gay pride week with members of his new church.

The former Anglican marched Saturday in the gay pride parade behind a banner for the Robertson-Wesley United Church, a church that welcomes gay, lesbian and transgendered people.

After 15 years as an Anglican, McBain left that church in April 2006.

“I left because of the gay issue,” said McBain, who said he never felt comfortable telling people in the Anglican Church he is gay.

The Anglican church’s longtime indecision over the issue has served to alienate supporters on both sides, McBain said.

“I’ll certainly celebrate with them if they are able to make a decision in favour of gay and lesbian rights, but it certainly won’t affect where I worship. It’s too little, too late,” said McBain, 27.

The issue of blessing same-sex unions is slated to go before the Anglican Church’s General Synod, the governing body of the Anglican Church of Canada, which begins its weeklong meeting in Winnipeg on Tuesday.

About 350 delegates representing bishops, clergy and lay people will discuss a so-called “local option” resolution that would let each diocese decide whether to perform the blessings.

Critics have said such a move would split the church.

Read it all.

From The Living Church:

When Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams visits the House of Bishops of The Episcopal Church in September, meeting planners should learn from scheduling mistakes made in preparing for Archbishop Williams’ visit with the Canadian House of Bishops last spring, according to the Rt. Rev. Michael Ingham, Bishop of the Diocese of New Westminster and the Canadian observer to Executive Council.

Executive Council is meeting June 11-14 in Parsippany, N.J. Bishop Ingham addressed a plenary session of council June 13.

“I think there was a design flaw,” Bishop Ingham said. “I don’t know who prepared the schedule, but we did not give [Archbishop Williams] a chance to ask us questions.

Read it all.

There is an aura of stripped down, straightforward African directness about Rev. Ed Hird.

Sitting in short pants on this humid day in the spartan hallways of a former North Vancouver public elementary school that now houses his congregation, the Canadian leader of a breakaway Anglican faction talks about how liberating it feels to serve under the authority of the conservative Archbishop of Rwanda, Emmanuel Kolini.

After endless emotional battles within the Vancouver-area diocese of New Westminster over what Hird considers its appalling and sinful decision in 2002 to sanction the blessing of homosexual relationships, the spunky priest and his congregation said goodbye two years ago to the Deep Cove Anglican sanctuary in which they’d worshipped.

Read it all.

From Canwest News Service:

Whatever they may believe, one theologian says at the heart of all the wrangling about sexuality is a more profound disagreement over 400-year-old Anglican doctrine.

“The debate around the blessing of same-sex unions really is a discussion on whether the Bible is the word of God still today or not,” says Rev. Charlie Masters, director of Anglican Essentials, a group of conservative Anglicans. “This is why the (global leaders) of the Anglican Communion have been so strong in their dealing with both the Anglican Church of Canada and the Episcopal Church of the United States.”

For gay and lesbian Anglicans, however, the same-sex issue is itself a core question, and some say if the church rejects the idea, significant numbers of clerics in Canada will simply perform blessings anyway, creating the conditions for schism.

That in turn could lead to debilitating rounds of litigation, as priests and parishes on either side of the dispute battle in the courts over Anglican properties and financial assets.

Chris Ambidge, who leads the Toronto chapter of Integrity, a group of gay and lesbian Anglicans, acknowledges that same-sex couples could simply get married outside the church, or transfer their worship, as many already have, to more welcoming denominations such as the United Church.

But Ambidge says many couples have personal allegiances to local Anglican churches, and have a real need for public recognition of their relationships in their own parishes.

“Why are we asking for church ‘blessings’ in a country where we can already be legally married?” Ambidge says. “Because there’s a pastoral emergency – there are Christians who are getting older, who want to be married in church, but who are willing to settle for blessings now, and the church needs to minister pastorally to them.”

Read it all.

From the Toronto Star:

The blogs have started and the 24-hour prayer vigil is accepting emails as the Anglican world turns its eyes to Winnipeg.

Canada’s Anglicans gather this week in Manitoba to pick a new leader and decide whether to allow same-sex marriage blessings. But that narrow debate only touches what is truly at stake. For all those involved, on either side of the issue, what is really at issue is the definition of Anglicanism itself ”“ and the possibility of schism.

“The nature of Anglicanism is that it has been from the beginning a movement that tries to be comprehensive,” says retired U.S. Bishop Arthur Walmsley, who has studied and lectured on church history.

But the trait that for more than 400 years has been its strength ”“ an ability to reflect varied theological perspectives and practices ”“ may yet prove its fatal flaw as the gap between conservative and liberal grows too wide to bridge.

“Even if there was a way to solve the same-sex issue satisfactorily to all parties tomorrow, we would still have a major problem on our hands,” says Newfoundland Bishop Don Harvey, spiritual head of the conservative Canadian group Anglican Essentials. “It’s so much deeper than that.”

Already, the church in the U.S. faces expulsion from the Worldwide Anglican Communion if it refuses to recant by Sept. 30 its support of gay marriage and homosexual clergy ”“ a fate that could await Canada if it votes to allow an accommodation of gay marriage within the church. With so much at stake, the Anglican world will be watching what happens in Winnipeg.

Read it all.

As Canada’s Anglican Church prepares for its historic ”“ and possibly schismatic ”“ decision on blessing homosexual unions, six of its most senior clerics Thursday called for a yes vote that would show “justice, compassion and hope for all God’s people.”

The declaration from the half-dozen retired archbishops from across the country reveals a sharp division in the church’s hierarchy.

While the archbishops said that blessing the unions of same-sex couples does not touch on the church’s “core doctrine,” last month the national House of Bishops issued a pastoral statement saying that the “doctrine and discipline of our church does not clearly permit [same-sex blessings].”

The vote will be taken at the church’s general synod, or parliament, meeting next week in Winnipeg.

Read it all.

From the ACC News:

More than 400 people including delegates, partners and staff will gather in Winnipeg next week for the Anglican Church of Canada’s 38th General Synod — a crucial assembly that will elect a new national leader or Primate and once again tackle the difficult and divisive issue of the blessing of same-gender relationships.

The General Synod meets every three years and consists of bishops, clergy and lay people elected as delegates locally in each of the church’s 30 dioceses. It is the Anglican church’s chief governing body, dealing with everything from changes to church laws and practices to finances and the membership of committees that oversee church programs in years when General Synod does not meet.

The synod is being held at the Marlborough Hotel in downtown Winnipeg, with the diocese of Rupert’s Land acting as host.

The seven-day synod will be chaired by Archbishop Andrew Hutchison, the current Primate, who has announced his retirement, effective June 22. On that day, clergy and lay delegates will elect a new Primate. Church practice is that Canadian Anglican Bishops nominate candidates for the primacy but do not participate in the actual election.

At their spring meeting, the bishops nominated bishops Bruce Howe of Huron, Fred Hiltz of Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island, George Bruce of Ontario and Victoria Matthews of Edmonton as candidates for the primacy. It is possible for electors to ask the bishops for more nominees after the electoral process has begun.

The new Primate will be formally installed in office at a special service the evening of Monday, June 25.

Read it all.

From the diocese of new Westminster:

The Anglican Communion described in 1930 at the Lambeth Conference: “…a fellowship, within the one Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church, of those duly constituted dioceses, provinces or regional Churches in communion with the See [Diocese] of Canterbury…”

In other words, “dioceses, provinces, or regional Churches” are in the Anglican Communion if they are “duly constituted” and Canterbury wants to be in communion with them.

In practice, how you can tell whether you’re still on the good side of the See of Canterbury seems to work out as being invited by the Archbishop of Canterbury to the Lambeth Conference.

It’s up to the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Most Rev. Rowan Williams, to decide who to invite. Up till now at least, the Archbishops of Canterbury have invited everyone, except in very rare instances of competing bishops in the same geographical area.

There’s nothing said about heads of the various national Anglican Churches, the Primates, helping the Archbishop of Canterbury decide who’s to come – although the present Archbishop of Canterbury in some statements seems to have suggested he might seek advice.

To turn to history, it was North Americans who got us into this strange situation in the first place.

It was an American bishop from Vermont who originally had the idea of a Lambeth Conference. But it was Canadian Bishops, who in 1865 urgently asked for the then 144 bishops in the Anglican Communion to meet at Lambeth in 1867.

Read it all. Please note that the author fails to give adequate attention to the way in which the controversy focused on how to work with and understand Holy Scripture. As Bishop Colenso wrote:

the Pentateuch, as a whole, cannot personally have been written by Moses, or by anyone acquainted personally with the facts which it professes to describe, and, further, that the (so-called) Mosaic narrative, by whomsoever written, and though imparting to us, as I fully believe it does, revelations of the Divine Will and Character, cannot be regarded as historically true.

From the Walking with Integrity Blog:

[Bishop] Ingham also discussed the pending General Synod He said that that resolutions regarding the blessing of same-gender relationships are likely to consume a majority of the synod’s time””as it did during the Episcopal Church’s 2006 General Convention in Columbus””causing other important resolutions to be tabled. Earlier in the day, during a report to the Standing Committee for International Concerns, Ingham expressed his belief that the majority of lay and clergy delegates to General Synod are in favor of same-gender blessings but that the majority of bishop are not””meaning that same-gender blessings are unlikely to be authorized.

Read the whole piece.

Bishops of the Anglican Church of Canada, at their regular spring meeting, on April 19 chose four of their colleagues as candidates for the office of primate, or national archbishop: George Bruce of the Kingston, Ont.-based diocese of Ontario, Fred Hiltz of Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island, Bruce Howe of the London-Ont.-based diocese of Huron and Victoria Matthews of Edmonton.

In a three-hour closed session, the 39 bishops voting began with a slate of eight nominees. They did not release the names of the other candidates and there were no additional names proposed from the floor, said Bishop Don Phillips of Winnipeg-based Rupert’s Land, secretary of the house of bishops. Voting went to 14 ballots, since under the rules of the election, no names were dropped from the ballot after each round. When a nominee received a majority of votes, or 20, he or she moved to the candidates’ list, in effect releasing those 20 votes to other candidates for the next round. Voting was fairly evenly spaced among the four finalists, with each taking about three or four ballots to attract a majority. Bishop Phillips declined to give the order in which the four candidates were chosen.

Bishop Bruce was present for the first half of the session, but had to leave at midday when he received news that his daughter-in-law, Margo, had died after a long battle with cancer.

After four names, the bishops voted to end the balloting. The new church leader is scheduled to be elected on June 22 by the 300 delegates at the triennial General Synod governing convention, which will meet in Winnipeg from June 19-25. The primate will be officially installed in office on June 25.

Read the whole article.

As men and women who have experienced same-sex attraction in our own lives and who still strive to live chastely in accordance with traditional Christian teaching, the members of Zacchaeus Fellowship are gravely concerned by the motions before Synod that would bless and affirm same-sex unions.

Contrary to what is implicitly suggested by the recent direction of our Anglican Church of Canada, not all persons with same-sex attractions want these attractions affirmed. We are especially concerned for those whom we describe as “silent sufferers” in the pews. These are the many individuals who adhere to the traditional Christian teaching on sexuality and wish for the church neither to condemn them as persons nor to encourage them to act on those same-sex attractions. To approve Resolution A186 or A187 would pull the rug out from under such people.

Please be warned that the current controversy is not simply about inclusion of those who are in same-sex unions. While we concur with the consensus to include all persons in our church, we believe a misperception has arisen, namely, that accepting persons of homosexual orientation must lead to the accepting of same-sex unions/marriages. In fact, no one is excluded from our church because of sexual orientation; the rite of baptism includes us all.

Recently the Reverend Canon Michael Patterson, director of evangelism in the Diocese of Niagara, was quoted in the Toronto Star (June 2, 2007) as indicating that same-sex marriage is the law of the land and that the church needs to accept that reality or risk becoming irrelevant. He also said, “We need to be the face of the church in the world, and I fear that we are losing that opportunity.”

In fact, to be the face of the church in the world, we need to be proclaiming the Good News of Jesus Christ and his transforming power in people’s lives. The church should focus on what God accomplishes through the person of Christ and not let secular law dictate church discipline. While same-sex marriage is the law of the land, it is contrary to Scripture, Tradition, and good solid Christian reason.

Read it all.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE (Toronto)

Wycliffe College, the evangelical and Anglican theological college in Toronto, is delighted to announce the appointment of the Rev. Dr. Ephraim Radner to be professor of historical theology, to commence Sept. 1, 2007. Dr. Radner, presently the rector of the Episcopal Church of the Ascension, Pueblo, Colorado, has a doctorate in systematic theology from Yale University. He was called by Archbishop Rowan Williams one of the most creative Anglican minds today. Dr. Radner has a distinguished record of publication which includes The End of the Church, a major work on the doctrines of the Spirit and the Church, Hope Among the Fragments, dealing with Scriptural hermeneutics, and The Fate of Communion (co-authored), a theological reflection on contemporary Anglicanism. His commentary on Leviticus for Brazos will appear later this year. On the occasion of his appointment, George Sumner, Wycliffe’s principal, said “Ephraim Radner brings an impressive scholarly corpus to this new work. Equally impressive are his years of faithful and effective parish ministry. His range of ministerial experience includes Burundi, Haiti, and inner-city Cleveland. He embodies the Anglican ideal of the pastor-scholar. Ephraim also continues to make a key contribution to conversations about the future shape of the Anglican Communion through his membership on the Covenant Design Group. On that stage he has been a patient and wise voice on behalf of the unity and catholicity of Church. The addition of Ephraim to an already strong and cohesive faculty means that there is no stronger place than Wycliffe for an Episcopal/Anglican ordinand to learn about his/her tradition.”