Monthly Archives: February 2016

Anglican Church of Canada backs away from Marriage Canon change

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It appears that a change to the Marriage Canon to allow marrying same-sex couples is unlikely to get the votes it would need from bishops at the next General Synod in July this year.

Bishops who support the change are mortified and devastated but conversations will continue – when do they not? – and “other options for honouring and fully embracing committed, faithful same-sex relationships” will be explored.

I’m quite surprised.

From here:

In our exploration of these differences it became clear to us that the draft resolution to change the Marriage Canon to accommodate the marriage of same-sex partners is not likely to pass in the Order of Bishops by the canonical requirement of a 2/3rds majority in each Order. Some of us talked of being mortified and devastated by this realisation. We feel obliged to share this with the Council of General Synod as they give consideration to the process for handling this resolution at General Synod. We have grappled with this issue for three meetings of the House, and we feel a responsibility to convey our inability to come to a common mind in discerning what the Spirit is saying to the Church. We share this out of respect for the considerable work that the Church has invested in preparing to debate this motion at General Synod. We continue to wonder whether a legislative procedure is the most helpful way of dealing with these matters.

We have been conscious that the presence of this motion has brought distress to some, and we acknowledge the deep pain that our statement will cause both within and beyond the Church. And we are all saddened that we do not seem capable of unity on this issue. Nevertheless we are committed to work toward the deeper unity for which Christ died, and we pray daily that God would mend our divisions. Our hope is not in ourselves, but in Christ, and so we are committed to staying together that we might witness the miracle of our healing.

In our deliberations, we affirmed a commitment to continuing conversations and engagement with the Report of the Commission on the Marriage Canon, and to achieving the greatest pastoral generosity possible. There is a desire among us to explore other options for honouring and fully embracing committed, faithful same-sex relationships. We will also engage Indigenous and minority cultural perspectives in our Anglican family in our understanding of marriage.

United Church boycott helps to lay off hundreds of Palestinian workers

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In 2013 the United Church of Canada voted to boycott the Israeli company, SodaStream, because it had a factory in the West Bank and the United Church, demonstrating all the political astuteness usually ascribed to mainline churches, has decided that such Israeli settlements are the “principal obstacle to peace in the region.”

From here:

Canada’s largest Protestant church targeted three Israeli companies with operations in Jewish settlements for economic sanctions and boycott.

Last week, the United Church of Canada’s governing General Council approved the start of a boycott campaign, encouraging “economic action” against Keter Plastic, SodaStream and Ahava.

As a result of the boycott, the SodaStream factory has been closed and 500 Palestinians have been laid off.

Another triumph for ecclesiastical social justice.

From here:

The chief executive of SodaStream International Ltd. says he has been forced to lay off hundreds of Palestinian workers after a factory was targeted by an international boycott movement and moved from the West Bank into Israel.

CEO Daniel Birnbaum said the last 74 Palestinian workers left Monday after being denied permits to work inside Israel at the new factory.

The global boycott movement seeks to ostracize Israel by lobbying corporations, artists and academic institutions to sever ties with the Jewish state.

In all, about 500 Palestinians lost their jobs after the factory moved last year following a high-profile boycott campaign against SodaStream.

The Anglican problem condensed into two words – for me

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Michael Curry, Presiding Bishop of The Episcopal Church, tells us that marrying same-sex couples will continue in TEC because it is not contrary to the core doctrine of the church.

More specifically, he says that “For me, marriage is not part of core doctrine”. Therein lies the problem: he is unconcerned whether marriage is actually part of core doctrine or not because for him it isn’t. Truth is relative, doctrine is solipsistic, what is doctrine for me may not be for you. Objective truth doesn’t exist or is, at best unknowable and irrelevant – at least, it is for him.

No matter how heavily they disguise it as piety, the fact remains that TEC and the Anglican Church of Canada have constructed their own perverse doctrinal house of cards; it is already falling about their ears and the faster if falls, the more furiously the bishops, like demented gargoyles, hack at the foundations.

To look on the bright side, though: But as for me and my household, we will serve the LORD

From here (my emphasis):

Many believed that marriage is part of core doctrine.  No individual church can change core doctrine.  Many felt that the expansion of who may be married on our part was a change in church doctrine.  Therefore it was in part on that basis that many felt that we had overstepped our authority as a province. I didn’t agree with that but I respect that that was the understanding of many.  For me, marriage is not part of core doctrine. The doctrine of the Holy Trinity is core doctrine.  The doctrine of who Jesus Christ is – wholly God and wholly human – is doctrine.  The articles of the Creeds are doctrine.  The Holy Scriptures and the Old and New Testament are core doctrine.  Other sections of the Chicago– Lambeth Quadrilateral are core doctrine. Marriage is a sacramental right, it is a solemn and sacred matter of faith and practice.  But it is not core doctrine.

Fred Hiltz personally agrees with same-sex marriage

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The following article is a summary of what transpired during a question and answer session following the recent Queer Eucharist that Hiltz presided at.

The whole thing is worth a read because it illustrates well the morally chaotic universe the Anglican Church of Canada inhabits. A universe where a Primate’s personal view of same-sex marriage is at odds with the religion he is supposed to represent, where telling someone homosexual activity is wrong amounts to abuse, where the main purpose of the church appears to be not only to affirm whatever its members do no matter what but to provide them a safe space in which to do it.

From the attendees at the session, it is once again apparent that ACoC clergy promote gay marriage so strenuously because so many of them are, themselves, married to a person of the same sex.

I do see a bright future ahead for the Anglican Church of Canada, though: not so much as a church but as a gay dating agency for unattached clergy.

“All of us belong to God,” said Canon Douglas Graydon to Archbishop Fred Hiltz, primate of the Anglican Church of Canada, at a gathering held to discuss same-sex marriage in the Canadian church. “The question is whether we belong to the church.”

It was a question many LGBTQ Anglicans brought forward in a question and answer session that took place after a talk Hiltz gave following the “queer Eucharist” service hosted monthly at the Anglican Church of St. John’s West Toronto.

Passions ran high in the hour-long conversation, moderated by Graydon, an associate priest at St. John’s who is in a same-sex marriage. The event saw about 150 people—including several LGBTQ clergy from the diocese of Toronto—come forward to share stories of pain and discrimination, and to call on the church to honour their struggle and their equality.

“What I want from our bishops, and from our primate, is the kind of language that restores hope, that will allow a 17-year-old thinking that suicide is maybe better, to say, ‘No—no, there is hope,’” said the Rev. Alison Kemper (deacon), a professor at Ryerson University. “We are who we are, and if the Anglican church chooses to deny us, we will get married, and we will have careers and we will have churches. What you need to do is claim your authenticity as our leader.”

Her thoughts were seconded by her wife, the Rev. Joyce Barnett, incumbent at St. Matthias, Bellwoods, who stressed the importance of publicly calling out homophobia and exclusion.

[….]

The most pointed question, however, came at the end of the evening, when a young woman named Jessica Davis-Sydor asked Hiltz about his personal views on the issue.

“I never actually heard you come out and say that you supported, that you support what is going on, that you are fighting to try and get same-sex marriage in the church,” she said. “Do you fully support it, deep down, what is happening?”

Hiltz responded by saying that while he personally supports same-sex marriage in the Anglican church, his position as president of General Synod places limitations on what he can or cannot say as a representative of the Canadian church.

 

Fred Hiltz meets with “LGBTQ community”

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From here:

Yesterday, Archbishop Fred Hiltz met with more than 120 members and friends of the LGBTQ community in Toronto at celebration of the Holy Eucharist at St. John’s, West in Toronto.
[….]
Yesterday’s pastoral gathering was an opportunity for the Primate to be in dialogue with a local LGBTQ community about their lives and experiences within the Church and about the resolution that will go before the General Synod in July. Archbishop Hiltz remains deeply committed to hearing the diversity of perspectives in our church about this matter as reflected in his ongoing conversations with the Bishops of our Church, Canadian participants at the Anglican Consultative Council, Canadian and African bishops in dialogue, from theological students and faculty, and from members of the Council of the General Synod among others.

“I left the gathering more convinced than ever the need for the Church to take opportunity to hear first-hand the experiences and longings of LGBTQ persons,” Hiltz said. “So often we speak about instead of with the LGBTQ community. We all need to be creating these kinds of opportunities to have pastoral conversations.”

The group of people that Hiltz has no interest whatsoever in speaking to are Anglicans who experience same-sex attractions yet resist the temptation to act upon them. North American Anglicanism is, after all, predominantly interested in justifying acting on one’s urges not in denying them – other than giving up carbon lust during Lent, of course.

Attendance at Queer Eucharist is “modest”

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The Diocese of Toronto’s St. John’s holds a monthly Queer Eucharist where those still smarting from “the church’s historic condemnation of homosexuality” can reassure themselves that what St. Paul and 2000 years of church history said about homosexual acts was wrong all along.

Rev. Samantha Caravan points out that a lot of “people have left the church” over this. Now, because of the Queer Eucharist, it seems they have returned; all 12 of them.

From here:

On a January evening in Toronto, a dozen or so congregants filter in from the cold into the surprising mauve, green and yellow interior of a stately old church in a leafy west-end neighbourhood.

They stand to sing Marty Haugen’s “Here in this Place New Light is Streaming,” and listen as the Rev. Samantha Caravan, clad in rainbow vestments, asks for inspiration “to speak a new word, to shout another praise.” Caravan reads a passage from St. Peter’s letter, in which he addresses the persecuted early church: “Once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.”

A sermon is preached on the need for a faith of inclusion, after which the congregation affirms that it will not “patronize, exclude or ignore the gifts of any person.”

The group stands in a circle around the altar and takes the bread and wine. Together, they offer themselves to be leaders of liberation and proclaimers of divine love. To the much-beloved Thaxted tune, they sing, “Let streams of living justice flow down upon the earth,” before gathering for refreshments and chat.

It’s queer Eucharist night at St. John’s West Toronto.

It was last fall, says incumbent priest the Rev. Samantha Caravan, when she first suggested having a special Eucharist for LGBTQ people at St. John’s. The church’s historic condemnation of homosexuality, Caravan says, has caused a lot of hurt to non-heterosexuals; a lot of these people have left the church as a result. The idea behind the queer Eucharist, she says, was to welcome them back and to offer them “a safe place to explore what the church and faith might mean to them.”

Ashes to go – supersize that for me and add some fries

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Many Anglican Church of Canada parishes have jumped on the bandwagon of offering passersby in the street ashes on the forehead; it’s called ashes to go. For those who doubt the validity or efficacy of such antics – it has at least partially satiated the ACoC’s craving for relevance: it has its own hashtag, #ashestogo

AtoG

Much as I favour taking the Gospel out of church buildings to the world, I suspect this is more a case of turning a liturgical expression of our faith into buskers disguised as Nazgûl performing street theatre, having first carefully emptied it of all meaning lest it cause offence.