By Susan Martinuk, Calgary Herald
December 5, 2010
Clearly, all is not well within the Anglican Church of Canada (ACC).
In what could be termed a reverse protestant reformation, Calgary's St. John the Evangelist Anglican Church voted overwhelmingly (90 per cent) to leave the ACC and align itself with Pope Benedict and the Roman Catholic Church.
As such, it becomes the first Anglican congregation in Canada to take the Pope up on his October 2009 offer to welcome disillusioned Anglican congregations into the Catholic Church.
But that's where the "new" news ends because St. John the Evangelist is not, by far, the first church to leave the ACC. In fact, it's only the most recent departure in a decade-long struggle between conservative Anglican parishes and their increasingly liberal leaders.
Since 2007, more than 40 Anglican parishes (including Vancouver's St. John's Shaughnessy, the largest Anglican congregation in Canada) have left the ACC and joined a parallel governing structure called the Anglican Network in Canada.
Globally, they've joined with like-minded churches in the U.S. to form a wing that functions under the auspices of the worldwide Anglican Church. It comprises some 600 parishes and 100,000 parishioners.
The reason for the split is to separate from a national church that has increasingly rejected biblical teachings in favour of popularizing the Anglican faith, so that it fits in with today's cultural mores.
Many church leaders have denied the authority of scripture, and one bishop publicly denied the bodily resurrection of Christ at an Easter Service.
As such, the real story isn't that parishioners are leaving the Anglican Church, it's that leaders of the Anglican Church in Canada and the U.S. have left the basic tenets of their faith and, in doing so, abandoned their parishioners.
When such trust is broken, it's no wonder that people are leaving and that there is such widespread discontent.
In the words of one longtime Anglican member, who has watched this developing story with great interest: "It seems to me to be such a mistake to water down our core principles so greatly that we are not actually required to believe anything."
The real schism that truly broke apart the ACC occurred in 2002.
That's when the diocese of New Westminster in Vancouver, under the authority of Bishop Michael Ingham, voted to bless same-sex couples. Global church leaders immediately met to draft a letter requesting that the diocese, and Ingham in particular, refrain from the practice until further study and debate was carried out.
But church leaders were still flying home (literally) when Ingham used his bishop card to deliberately defy church authorities and allow the first official blessing of a samesex couple.
In response, the Archbishop of Canterbury, head of the worldwide Anglican Church, declared the act was done without the consensus of the denomination and outside of church doctrine.
Since then, the worldwide Anglican Church has commissioned reports and held countless discussions.
The majority view continues to be that the national churches of Canada and the U.S. (where the same debate is occurring) have moved away from core beliefs of Anglicanism and are now out of communion with the worldwide church. As such, it has repeatedly called upon these two national churches to repent and return to the fold. They have yet to do so.
The decision by St. John the Evangelist will have a steep cost, as it will likely lose its property. Two weeks ago, a British Columbia Court of Appeal ruled that the land and buildings of dissident Anglican churches belonged to the ACC and must be surrendered once they leave the church.
But most parishioners seem quite willing to sacrifice a building for the sake of staying true to their beliefs. Consequently, the biggest loss will be suffered by the ACC in terms of memberships and donations.
Even the judge in the church property court case warned that the ACC's own decisions may further alienate members, saying: "Presumably [the ACC] has chosen to take the risk that the policy allowing samesex blessings will indeed prove to be 'schismatic.'"
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