he General Synod of the Anglican Church of Canada is meeting in Halifax, June 3 to 11 under the theme: Feeling the Winds of God-Charting a New Course.
Substantial amounts of time are allocated for reports on work mandated by the 2007 General Synod including on-going deliberations over issues of human
sexuality, VISION 2019 (a strategic plan for the Church) and a review of primacy and governance.
The synod will also consider resolutions generated by its standing committees.
I hope that the Canadian General Synod heeds the admonition of Dean Mercer and Prof. Catherine Sider Hamilton (recently published in the Anglican Journal as an op-ed) that it would be totally incongruous and disingenuous for the ACoC to sign the Covenant, as the province simply can’t do so in good faith or with integrity given the firm commitment of three Canadian dioceses already to proceed with SSM’s. I hope that the Canadians will at least show as much integrity as the Kiwis recently did in New Zealand when they openly rejected section 4 of the Covenant, albeit on fallacious grounds. The worst possible scenario would be for the Canadians to PRETEND to agree to the Covenant, when all their actions show they have no more intention of repenting for their grievously antibiblical actions than TEC does.
As for the Synod theme, “Feeling the Winds of God-Charting a New Course,” although this is Pentecost weekend and that inevitably reminds us of how the Holy Spirit first came like a mighty wind, utterly transforming the earliest community of Jesus’ disciples, the nautical analogy makes me think rather of how fatefully easy it is to be “blown about by every wind of (false) doctrine” (Eph. 4:14), and thereby be driven onto the shoals or rocks and end in a deadly shipwreck. But alas, the leaders of the ACoC, like the blind, deluded leaders of TEC, resemble the owners and captain of the doomed Titanic in 1912. Who’s worried about icebergs? We’re unsinkable. Full speed ahead!
I wish the ACoC would in fact chart a new course, by making a U turn. We have a good, honorable word for that in Christian jargon: it’s called repentance. But that would take a radical conversion. A miraculous change of heart on a wide scale. Veni, Sancte Spiritu!
David Handy+