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The trustees of four Vancouver-area churches have decided to take their claim
for ownership of their church buildings to the Supreme Court of Canada.
In 2008, the four parishes – St. John’s (Shaughnessy), St. Matthews (Abbotsford), Good Shepherd (Vancouver) and St.
Matthias & St. Luke’s (Vancouver) – voted to leave the Anglican Church of Canada’s Diocese of New Westminster and come under the authority of the Anglican
Network in Canada (ANiC).
In November 2009, the B.C. Supreme Court awarded ownership of the four parishes’ church buildings to the Diocese of New Westminster, but awarded ownership of a
$2.2 million bequest to the breakaway parish of the Good Shepherd. That
decision was essentially upheld by the B.C. Court of Appeal on November 15,
2010. This is the decision that is now being appealed to the Supreme Court of
Canada.
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The case is significant because it will set a precedent for other ‘conservative’ parishes leaving the Anglican Church of Canada. The conservatives stress the
authority of Scripture and the uniqueness of Christ and oppose the blessing of
same-sex unions.
The ANiC now has 40 parishes and 14 more congregations in formation, with
average Sunday attendance of more than 3500. It is one of 20 dioceses in the
Anglican Church in North America (ACNA), which has 100,000 attenders in over
600 parishes and has plans to plant 1,000 new churches in five years. The ACNA
represents a minority of Anglicans in North America but is united to a majority
of the almost 80 million Anglicans in the world, who have split into liberal
and conservative camps, with the liberals dominant in North America and England
and the conservatives dominant in the global south.
“This decision to appeal was taken only after much prayer and internal
consultation within the parishes,” said Cheryl Chang, special legal counsel to the four parishes. “As churches, we believe that we are being called to stand firm for our faith,
seeking to be faithful to Scripture and follow Jesus . . . even if it
ultimately means we lose our church properties.”
January 2011
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