Nominees for position of Toronto Coadjutor Bishop all in favour of same-sex marriage

Well, apart from Jennifer Andison who is not partial to binary declarations and has opted instead for a stream of consciousness analogue waffle. In Anglican parlance this is known as “spiritual discernment” after “deep listening”.

All the rest are in favour. In Anglican parlance this is known as “diversity”.

From here:

If General Synod were held today, how would you vote on the Marriage Canon amendments?

The Rt. Rev. Jennifer Andison

I have been asked these questions during the course of our Diocesan discernment process and have consistently shared the following.

I understand that the laity and clergy of the Diocese of Toronto will feel supported or disappointed by how their Bishop votes at General Synod 2019 and that how the Bishop votes matters. However, there are a number of reasons why I don’t think it is pastorally helpful to answer this first question, today, with a simple Yes or No.

First, in our Anglican polity, Bishops vote “in Synod.” Synod is where Bishops, along with laity and other clergy, make such decisions. I want to be part of what the Holy Spirit is doing in General Synod 2019, and I am not prepared to pre-judge how I will vote then, and am not “in Synod” now. As a Bishop, I take spiritual discernment seriously. At General Synod in 2019, I intend to cast my vote after completing a process of prayer, scriptural discernment, and deep listening to laity, deacons, priests and other bishops, as well as those outside of the Church. I intend to seek the mind of Christ for the Church on this issue, whether I am voting in my current capacity as Area Bishop for York-Credit Valley or as Bishop of Toronto. The Bishop of Toronto also needs to be mindful that she or he serves on a national stage, both participating in the wider discernment of the Anglican Church of Canada and also acting as a witness of Christ’s love to our culture.

Second, the current wording of the proposed amendment is increasingly unlikely to represent what will be voted on in 2019. As our Primate, Fred Hiltz, has recently made clear, there very well may be amendments to the currently proposed canon change. Some other path may also emerge before 2019 as an alternative to a Yes/No vote, a binary and legislative approach that inevitably creates winners and losers, doesn’t account for culturally different ways of making decisions across our diverse Church, and risks oversimplifying the issue at hand. Although I would not abstain from a vote in 2019, locking episcopal candidates into such binary declarations at this stage is premature and potentially divisive.

The Very Rev. Andrew Asbil

I would vote in favour of the motion.

The Rev. Canon David Harrison

I would vote in favour of the change, as I did as a member of General Synod in 2016.

The Rt. Rev. Victoria Matthews

If the General Synod was being held this week and if I had a vote as the Diocesan Bishop of Toronto, I would vote YES to affirm the amendments to the Marriage Canon. I would do so believing that every Christian is called to interpret Holy Scripture in light of all of Holy Scripture, and I believe the weight of Scripture calls to care for every human person and give special attention and love to the marginalised. Secondly, I believe there are times when the church recognises a teaching in Scripture that has always been there but which has been undervalued. It is the work of the prophet to call the church to read Scripture with fresh eyes. In Luke 2.21-40, Simeon and Anna recognise the Christ in the Temple when everyone fails to recognise the Son of God. May our beloved church have eyes to see and ears to hear.

The Rt. Rev. Kevin Robertson

Unequivocally, I would vote “Yes” to amend the Marriage Canon, just as I did in 2016.

The Rt. Rev. Riscylla Shaw

Yes.

 

8 thoughts on “Nominees for position of Toronto Coadjutor Bishop all in favour of same-sex marriage

  1. This is not in the least surprising since the ACoC no longer worships the GOD of the Scriptures but seems to believe that the word of so-called bishops supersedes the truth. This has resulted in the ACoC now worshipping the detestable god of political expediency.

  2. All puppets, eager to say and do whatever the hand up their backside directs. None of them perhaps interested in anything but themselves. Poor ACoC.

  3. ‘Corporate memory’ appears to fail all of the above in their subjunctive support of the genesis of Resolution C003, originating in 2013, as it did, outside the regular order of General Synod: emanating, as it did, from the troubled mind of a Nova Scotia Priest’s wife and her sympathetic PEI co-Delegate, as to who on earth, if not in Heaven, would marry their lesbian daughter to her lesbian partner? Alas! The United Church came to the rescue; while ‘Lot’s wife’ proceeded with all the anti-Scriptural like-minded to set the ACC on its present course of defiance of The LORD and its ensuing, because inevitable, division. +John 17:17-21.
    As for his Grace’s apparent-only Reformed hermeneutic: Holy Writ’s boundaries are set in
    +Deuteronomy 4:2, reaffirmed by Holy Writ Himself, our LORD Jesus Christ, in His +Revelation ch. 22:19.
    In the alternative? The “woe” to “all the men* that followed Baal-Peor” + Deuteronomy 4:3 + Jude 11.
    (*and women)

  4. I note that the amendments to the Canon (on Marriage in the Church) that were
    passed by Synod in 2016 replace the original, implicitly meaning _two_ people,
    of “man and woman”/”husband and wife” by “the parties to the marriage”, which
    lacks any such two-person numerical restriction. Since the preceding rubric in the
    wording of that amendment states “applies to all persons who are duly qualified by
    civil law to enter into marriage”, it follows that should the secular state declare some
    time in the future that bigamy is no longer forbidden, then it will have the ACoC
    in the grip of its tractor beam.
    When that happens I look forward, perhaps with some perverse delight, to the
    sophistries of those who might have supported same-sex “marriage” but oppose
    “marriage” between more than two.

    • Because the Caesaropapists now had the ‘Blessing’ of The Sun King’s
      Proclamation “Because it’s 2015”.

  5. It seems to me once a person becomes a Bishop, he is more concerned about the unity of the House of Bishops. If this is the case, perhaps all decisions made by the House of Bishops have to be unanimous.

  6. The problem is that many so-called bishops seem to believe their word exceeds the authority of Scripture and that their white collar and purple shirt gives them the right to subvert the authority of Scripture. Tragically many in the pews seem to accept that premise which is the reason the ACoC is no longer Christian. I can only urge true Christians to seek out true believing churches such as those within the Anglican Network in North America. .

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