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By Jim Coggins
 THE DIVISIONS within the Anglican community have become emotionally charged, with threats of legal action, as several more parishes have voted to leave the jurisdiction of the Anglican Church of Canada (ACC) and join the Anglican Network in Canada (ANiC), under the jurisdiction of Archbishop Gregory Venables of the Province of the Southern Cone (South America).
Fifteen parishes have voted to join the ANiC, most of whom made the decision this month. After St. John's Shaughnessy in Vancouver, the largest Anglican parish in Canada, voted on February 13, seven more parishes voted on the weekend of February 16 - 17 and three more on February 24.
No more parishes are expected to hold votes in the near future, said Marilyn Jacobsen of the ANiC, but others are certainly watching with interest.
Legal actions
The dioceses -- regional groupings under the authority of a bishop -- of the Anglican Church of Canada have responded with institutional and even legal challenges.
Bishop Michael Ingham of the Diocese of New Westminster has written to the priests of the parishes leaving his diocese, giving them until the end of February to tell him if they have "abandoned" their ministry in the ACC. This is a disciplinary action, but the priests will have new ministry credentials through the ANiC.
St. John's Shaughnessy rector David Short said he draws some "comfort" from the fact that among those losing their credentials in New Westminster along with him is world renowned theologian James I. Packer, a volunteer associate at the church.
The institutional reaction has been stronger in the Diocese of Niagara in Ontario. There, after St. George's in Lowville and St. Hilda's in Oakville voted February 17, representatives of the diocese very quickly demanded that they hand over the keys to their buildings.
When the parishes refused, the diocese filed court papers to gain control of the buildings, with the case to be heard by Friday of that week. The diocese has also used those court papers to convince the local bank to freeze St. George's bank account.
The diocese also insisted that it have access to the buildings in order to offer ministry to members of the parishes who voted against leaving the ACC. (St. George's voted 128-3, with one abstention, and St. Hilda's 86-0, with one abstention.)
The two parishes agreed the diocese could use the buildings at 9:00 on Sunday morning, February 24, ahead of the regular 10:30 parish services. In St. George's, the diocese encouraged members from other parishes to come and attracted about 150 people -- to the point that the parking lot was jammed and the main St. George's congregation ended up moving their service to the parish hall. Only a few people attended the diocese service at St. Hilda's.
Joyce Lee, a member of the ANiC legal committee, suggested to CC.com that the ACC may have targeted the smaller St George's and St. Hilda's parishes rather than take on the larger and wealthier St. John's Shaughnessy. However, the ANiC is offering legal support to the two parishes, and has received offers of contributions to a legal fund of about a million dollars.
St. George's may also have been targeted because its rector, Charlie Masters, has been a leader in the "conservative" faction within the ACC, said Lee. "We get the sense it's very personal . . . almost punitive," she added.
The original February 22 court date was postponed one week. Representatives of the two congregations, the Diocese of Niagara and the ANiC held a meeting February 26 to try to resolve the issue out of court. That meeting did not produce a resolution, but both sides agreed to meet again the next day. At press time, the results of that meeting were not known.
Things also became tense in the Diocese of British Columbia. On February 14, the diocese "inhibited" rector Sharon Hayton and her assistant Andrew Hewlett at St. Mary's of the Incarnation Church in Metchosin, near Victoria -- forbidding them not only to preach and lead services but to talk to any parishioners or be present on church property.
The ANiC claimed this was an attempt to intimidate the parish and keep it from choosing to leave the ACC in a vote scheduled for February 17. Lee suggested the prohibition against talking to parishioners is beyond the diocese's powers and is a violation of the priests' human rights.
However, Archdeacon Bruce Bryan-Scott, executive officer of the diocese, argued that the inhibition was valid because the priests were defying their bishop's order to rule any motion about leaving the ACC out of order.
The Metchosin parish held its meeting anyway, with the church wardens presiding, and voted 105-14 to leave the ACC, with three abstentions.
At a subsequent meeting with the two priests and an ANiC lawyer, Bryant-Scott agreed to suspend the inhibitions until March 3.
The British Columbia diocese also held a service February 24 for the minority of the Metchosin parish who voted not to leave. However, that service was held in an older, smaller church building the parish vacated when it moved to its current building several years ago.
Significance debated
The ACC is "not a congregational church," said Paul Feheley, principal secretary to Archbishop Fred Hiltz, the "primate" or head of the ACC.
Parishes have no existence outside of a diocese but are just geographical divisions where the dioceses have chosen to provide ministry. Therefore, he said, people have every right to leave a parish as individuals, but they cannot leave as a parish or take any assets with them -- any more than Vancouver can vote to move from British Columbia to Alberta.
The significance of those leaving has been overestimated, added Feheley. The 15 parishes are "less than one percent" of the 2300 Anglican parishes in Canada.
Moreover, Feheley admits that there "a lot of conservatives" who are unhappy with the ACC's direction but are "still part of the church."
Seven of the 15 ANiC churches -- and several others in the Anglican Coalition in Canada (ACiC), a separate group that left a couple of years earlier and is now under the authority of an African archbishop -- are from the Diocese of New Westminster, which precipitated the crisis when Bishop Michael Ingham authorized the blessing of same-sex unions in 2002.
Three of the ANiC churches are in the Diocese of Niagara and two in the Diocese of Ottawa, which both voted late last year to approve same-sex blessings even though neither has performed any such blessings to date. This followed the ACC's General Synod, which voted last June that the blessing of same-sex unions was "not in conflict with the core doctrine of the ACC" but did not authorize such blessings either.
No one is sure what conservatives in other dioceses will do if those dioceses should vote to bless same-sex unions -- or how conservatives overseas will respond to developments in North America.
Most of the primates, or heads of national Anglican churches, have demanded that the ACC and the Episcopal Church in the United States repent of their support for homosexual practice. Some of these primates are threatening to boycott the next Lambeth meeting in July -- a gathering of all Anglican bishops that takes place every ten years -- and hold their own Global Anglican Futures Conference (GAFCON) next June in Jordan and Israel instead.
Archbishop Venables did not decide on his own to recognize the churches in the ANiC, said Short. Rather, this was a plan of the primates from the Global South to provide support for conservative Anglicans in North America. The division in the ACC is thus part of a larger division within the global Anglican communion.
While conservatives may be a minority in North America, they are definitely the majority in the global communion, said Short -- and the action by the primates from the Global South is evidence that Christian power has shifted away from North America and Europe.
"Global South Christianity is deeply vibrant and massively growing," said Short. While the ACC has lost a third of its membership over the last three decades and the Episcopal Church almost as much, the Anglican Church in Nigeria has grown by 517 percent and the Anglican Church in Uganda by 567 percent.
Theology
The division is "not really about sex," said Short, but about "two gospels" fighting for ascendancy.
The conservatives' gospel is biblically orthodox and redemption-centred -- God accepts everyone but only as they are willing to repent of their sin and allow God to transform them -- whereas the other gospel accepts everyone without repentance. These two gospels affect every aspect of theology, said Short, including understandings of Scripture, the nature of Christ, the significance of the cross and the nature of the church.
Feheley, however, said it is not true that the ACC has moved away from its core doctrines, as all parishes recite the Nicene Creed every Sunday. "We are a very orthodox church," he said.
He suggested there are not two different gospels but many different views in the ACC.
However, the two sides offered fundamentally different definitions of the church.
Short said the church's true authority is spiritual and comes from faithfulness to Scripture. Thus, the conservatives are the true Anglicans because they adhere to the Solemn Declaration and the Thirty-Nine Articles, historic documents establishing the Anglican Church's adherence to "the faith that was once for all entrusted to the saints" (Jude 3). In contrast, the "liberals" hold to an institutional authority that adjusts its doctrine to accommodate the current context.
Feheley insisted the ACC is still orthodox, but said the Anglican Church has historically contained a variety of views. "The church is not a stagnant place," he said. "It continues to change and evolve. . . . Historically, Anglicans stay together and work through issues. . . . That's the nature of the Anglican Church."
The result of these differing understandings of the church, Short said, is that the two sides "are talking past each other."
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Buildings and assets
The two definitions of the church will play a role in any court cases over ownership of buildings and other assets.
The ACC's position was defined by Archbishop Hiltz in a letter released February 15, just prior to most of the parish votes: "In our Anglican tradition, individuals who choose to leave the Church over contentious issues cannot take property and other assets with them."
That position was repeated by both Feheley and Bryant-Scott. Feheley said the dioceses have a responsibility to past generations which established the parishes and built the buildings for the ministry of the Anglican Church of Canada.
The ANiC has countered that it also has a responsibility to defend the assets, which were contributed to serve the ministry of orthodox Anglican churches.
While Feheley said all parishes were established by the decision of a diocese, Lee pointed out that the buildings were built and paid for by the parishes, not the dioceses. She cited the example of her own Church of the Good Shepherd in Vancouver, whose first members were Chinese immigrants who "saved every penny" in order to establish the church.
The legal issues will be fought at the diocesan level because the main organizational power in the Anglican Church lies with the diocese. While the diocese has power to open and close parishes and appoint clergy, the higher levels of the church have limited control over the dioceses. The ACC is essentially a federation of dioceses, and the international church is "a communion" with more moral authority than organizational authority.
To complicate the matter further, different dioceses have different "canons," or rules and regulations. In some dioceses, the diocese holds legal title to all parish buildings and assets, but in others, it does not. Many parishes are legally incorporated and hold title to their own buildings, said Lee, noting that some dioceses encouraged the parishes to incorporate so the diocese would not be held liable if a parish defaulted on its mortgage.
Further, when the Cariboo diocese declared bankruptcy in 2001 due to lawsuits brought by victims of abuse at aboriginal residential schools, the diocese itself successfully argued in court that the parish buildings could not be considered assets of the diocese because it only held them in trust for the parishes.
When the churches of the ACiC left the ACC several years ago, they left their buildings behind. However, ACiC spokesman Ed Hird, rector of St. Simon's Church in North Vancouver, said this was not because the parishes did not think they had a right to the buildings. Rather, it was simply that the cost of a court battle would be more than the buildings were worth.
The same may not be true for St. John's Shaughnessy, which has a facility worth several million dollars.
Both sides cited the prohibition in 1 Corinthians 6 against Christians taking their disputes to the secular courts. Both sides said that they do not want to go to court but that the other side is forcing them into it.
Court action would be costly in terms of finances and the church's witness, Feheley admitted: "People are not going to run to a church which is fighting in the secular courts."
Related stories:
Second church set to split
Members of an Anglican church in Abbotsford are expected to become the second local congregation in a week to split from Vancouver-area Bishop Michael Ingham over his support for same-sex blessings. And two more Anglican churches -- St. Matthias/ St. Luke and The Church of the Good Shepherd -- in Vancouver are poised to fill out similar ballots later this month as orthodox followers openly challenge Ingham's liberal vision for the church.
Vancouver Sun, February 15
Also: National Post
Churches could separate over same-sex unions
As many as 15 Anglican congregations in Canada will decide over the next few weeks on whether to follow the lead of St. John's Shaughnessy Church in Vancouver and put themselves under the authority of a South American archbishop. The conservative congregations in Canada are in conflict with their diocese and the Anglican Church of Canada over theological issues that include the blessing of same-sex unions.
Globe and Mail, February 16
Five Anglican parishes set to separate from Church
At least five more Anglican churches -- three in British Columbia and two in Ontario -- are likely to separate from the national Church over the divisive issue of same-sex blessings by the end of the month. Another four will also vote on similar motions this month.
National Post, February 17
Anglican rift growing deeper
An Abbotsford Anglican congregation on Sunday became the second Lower Mainland congregation in a week to split from the diocese of Vancouver-area Bishop Michael Ingham as part of a nationwide pattern reflecting fundamental rifts in the church. And on Vancouver Island, another congregation voted 86 per cent on Sunday to separate from their national body over the issue of same-sex blessings.
Vancouver Sun, February 18
Parish exodus accelerates Anglican rift
Six more parishes voted to officially separate from the Anglican Church of Canada this weekend, widening a rupture that opened in June after the national church decided to support same-sex blessings. In Ontario, St. Hilda's in Oakville and St. George's in Lowville voted decidedly to leave over the issue. In a much closer vote, the small Toronto parish of St. Chad's also voted to break off. Two parishes in Abbots-ford, B.C., voted to leave: the small Holy Cross parish and the larger St. Matthews. On Saturday, St Alban's Ottawa parish also voted to separate.
National Post, February 18
More Anglican parishes to leave the fold
Bishop's prediction follows on the heels of seven new congregations joining breakaway traditionalist movement
Globe and Mail, February 19
Anglican split could spread worldwide
The battle taking place inside the Anglican Church of Canada is a microcosm of a larger problem that could see the worldwide Anglican Communion end in division, said the South American archbishop who has been taking dissident churches under his wing.
National Post, February 20
It's time to return to the fold
Last week, Vancouver's St. John's Shaughnessy, the largest Anglican congregation in the country, overwhelmingly voted to separate itself from the Anglican Church of Canada (ACC). Since then, seven congregations across Canada have followed its lead. Another 10 opted out long ago and are considering their options. For many others, the "what to do" conversations are just beginning.
Susan Martinuk, National Post, February 20
A 30-year-old problem
Was the episode with St. Peter the first example of cafeteria-style Christianity? The current furor over same-sex blessings in the global Canterbury Anglican Communion is being characterized as a debate between orthodox Anglicans who oppose same-sex blessings and those who do not. But how orthodox are those Anglicans who are now considering leaving the Canterbury Communion to preserve their opposition to same-sex unions?
Reverend Carl Reid, National Post, February 20
'End of an era' for Anglicans
St. Hilda's Anglican Church isn't just in a theological battle, it's in a legal one
National Post, February 22
The Lord giveth ...
One Anglican church in Ontario faces both theological and legal concerns
National Post, February 23
Anglican priests get 'grace period' in diocesan rift
The Anglican Diocese of British Columbia has temporarily softened its position against a pair of priests who have been suspended for leading a congregation of breakaways. Diocesan Archdeacon Bruce Bryant-Scott wrote in an e-mail to parishioners on Thursday that he has agreed to a 12-day grace period, during which no disciplinary action will be taken against the Venerable Sharon Hayton, the rector, and Rev. Andrew Hewlett, the assistant priest, of St. Mary's of the Incarnation in the Victoria suburb of Metchosin.
Globe and Mail, February 23
Rift widens among Anglicans
Two more churches, including Canada's largest Chinese Anglican church, voted Sunday to break away from the diocese of Vancouver-area Bishop Michael Ingham, primarily over same-sex blessings.
Vancouver Sun, February 25
Three more parishes vote to join orthodox archbishop
Three Anglican parishes voted yesterday to separate from the national Church over the divisive issue of same-sex blessings. St. Matthias & St. Luke and the Church of the Good Shepherd, both in Vancouver, and the Church of the Good Shepherd in St. Catharines, Ont., chose to put itself under the authority of conservative Gregory Venables, the Archbishop of the Southern Cone, which includes parts of South America.
National Post, February 25
Preaching duel no contest
Competing services held at Oakville church as Anglican dispute heads to courtroom
Toronto Star, February 25
Breakaway parishes gird for possible legal costs
A group of people in Vancouver has committed to underwrite up to $1-million for a legal fund set up by the Anglican Network in Canada to defend breakaway parishes that refuse to hand over their keys to the Anglican Church of Canada. Cheryl Chang, a director and a lawyer for the Anglican Network, declined yesterday to disclose the names of donors.
Globe and Mail, February 26
Anglicans fight over parish properties
Breakaway congregations meet behind closed doors in debate over ownership of three Ontario churches
Toronto Star, February 26
Reverend Carl Reid answers readers' questions about the Anglican split
When we published columns by the Rt. Rev. Carl Reid and Susan Martinuk about the split in the Anglican Church, we invited our readers to follow up with questions for the authors. Here, Rev. Reid answers some of these queries.
Carl Reid, Full Comment, National Post, February 26
Susan Martinuk answers readers' questions about the Anglican split
For years now, The Anglican Church of Canada has been losing members, congregations and the national office has been downsizing and their finances dwindling. The church is cash poor - but land rich. Many churches have existed for decades and in some areas, the value of property has skyrocketed. The national church leaders have already closed churches and sold them to cover their administration costs. I have been told this practice follows the economic theory of self-cannibalization: they eat their own to stay alive. Of course, if that is the case, it can only last so long ...
Susan Martinuk, Full Comment, National Post, February 27
February 28/2008
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