Same-sex Marriage Dividing the Church

From the National Post, Friday February 15

The largest Anglican congregation in the country has voted overwhelmingly to leave the Canadian Church and put itself under the authority of a parallel conservative Anglican movement -- a move that may help accelerate a schism and open the way for a nasty legal battle over Church property.

St. John's, which has more than 2,000 members in the affluent Vancouver neighbourhood of Shaughnessy, has been at odds with the Diocese of New Westminster, which lets its churches perform same-sex blessings, since 2002.

The congregation has withheld financial support from the diocese for the past six years as a protest, but now has taken the radical step of breaking off all together.

"The mood at the meeting [on Wednesday night] was really something," said Lesley Bentley, a member of St. John's for 20 years. "It was a very sober atmosphere. No one was taking it lightly. There was no sense of exuberance. We did it because we believe the future of our Church depends on it."

Last week, Michael Ingham, the bishop of the diocese, said any church that voted to leave could face legal action.

"No parish or congregation ... has any legal existence except as part of the diocese, and any attempt by any person to remove a parish from the jurisdiction of the Bishop and Synod would be schismatic," Bishop Ingham wrote.

But David Short, the senior pastor at St. John's, said his congregation simply wants to practise an orthodox Anglican faith and that its members' views are more in line with the worldwide Anglican communion than the diocese or the Canadian Church.

"Within the diocese we are called the dissidents, but looking at global Communion, the diocese and the Anglican Church of Canada are the dissidents," he said.

Rev. Short said his parish asked to be put under the jurisdiction of a Canadian bishop who shared their orthodox views, but they were offered a compromise that was not satisfactory.

"One of the key disappointments for orthodox Anglicans right across the country has been the failure of the [national Church] to address this properly."

Paul Feheley, principal secretary to Archbishop Fred Hiltz, head of the Canadian Church, said Anglicanism has always contained wide areas of opinion and there is no reason for anyone to leave.

"We're not holding our noses and pretending this is not happening, but at some point we can't be all things to all people."

Archbishop Hiltz released a letter this week that said "in our Anglican tradition, individuals who choose to leave the Church over contentious issues cannot take property and other assets with them."

Three other churches in the Diocese of New Westminster and two churches in Ontario are also expected to vote on resolutions to leave the Canadian Church.

In November, two retired bishops were brought back to active duty, but under the authority of Gregory Venables, Archbishop of the Southern Cone, which encompasses parts of South America. The move coincided with the launch of a parallel national Anglican church, the Anglican Network In Canada, designed to represent the interests of conservative parishes.

Marilyn Jacobson, a spokeswoman for the network, said the vote at St. John's will give confidence to the other parishes to make the same move. She said the network has a legal fund of $1-million to help defend any churches from legal action or eviction.

The group eventually hopes that a new Anglican jurisdiction, or province, will be created to encompass American and Canadian orthodox churches.

In December, the entire Diocese of San Joaquin in California, 47 churches and 8,300 people, also put themselves under the authority of Archbishop Venables. As well, about 120 individual churches have broken with the main U.S. church and are reporting to conservative African church leaders.

Reverend Van McCalister, a spokesman for San Joaquin, said the issue for orthodox churches, whether in the United States or Canada, goes much deeper than same-sex blessings.

"We saw that the [Church] leadership was moving in a direction that was very different than classical Christianity. They are redefining who Christ is and what it means to be a Christian. And so we really thought it was important that we be aligned with the majority of the Anglican Communion that still had an orthodox view of Christ and Christianity.

"[The issue of same-sex blessings] was certainly the tipping point, something that exemplified how far off Biblical Christianity the leadership has gone. For some time now there have been a number of bishops and seminary professors who are denying the Virgin Birth, that Jesus is the son of God, denying the Resurrection, things that are essential to what Christianity is. This reinterpretation of scripture ... that really is the central issue. The same-sex issue really is a symptom of the deeper problem."