Author Archives: David

Anglican reactions to impending supreme court abortion ruling

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The Episcopal Church has issued the following statement:

Episcopal Church statement on reports concerning Supreme Court case pertaining to abortion

May 3, 2022

Office of Government Relations

Since 1967, The Episcopal Church has maintained its “unequivocal opposition to any legislation on the part of the national or state governments which would abridge or deny the right of individuals to reach informed decisions [about the termination of pregnancy] and to act upon them.” In light of the recent report about a pending decision in the Supreme Court case Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health, The Episcopal Church reaffirms our commitment to “equitable access to women’s health care, including women’s reproductive health care,” which we view as “an integral part of a woman’s struggle to assert her dignity and worth as a human being.” The Office of Government Relations will continue to advocate at the federal level to protect reproductive rights.

We encourage you to read this overview of The Episcopal Church’s positions on abortion and women’s reproductive health.

Put into simple terms, removing the euphemisms and Newspeak, TEC is endorsing the murder of unborn babies. An organisation promoting such a demonically inspired abomination should not be afforded the dignity of being called a Christian Church.

The Anglican Church of Canada hierarchy, being largely populated with spineless poltroons, has remained silent on the issue. Apart, that is, from the intrepid Rev. Michael Coren who cannot resist coming down on the wrong side of an ethical conundrum whenever he has the opportunity.

Read Coren’s claptrap here:

There is nothing Christian about allowing women to die in illegal back street abortions. Nothing Christian about removing the basic right of a woman to control her own body. Nothing Christian about wanting to criminalize female equality.

[….]

But what of scripture itself? The central point is that any ancient text, even one that is central to a religious faith and certainly crucial to my life and beliefs, has to be understood and interpreted in context and with understanding.

So, for example, when opponents of abortion quote Jeremiah — “Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you, and before you were born, I consecrated you; I appointed you a prophet to the nations” — they should grasp a few realities. First, this was written around 2,700 years ago. Second, the text is speaking of a single person, “a prophet to the nations” rather than making a sweeping comment about the beginning of life.

Or Psalm 139, “For it was you who formed my inward parts; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.” This is poetry and metaphor, a beautiful testimony to God’s love but not a guide to human biology. The very idea is unbiblical.

The New Testament has Elizabeth, the mother of John the Baptist, meeting Mary, mother of Jesus, and “the child leaped in her womb.” Again, a lyrical description of an event that shaped history, but not scientific and not supposed to be. If we’re to take a literalist approach to the Bible we’re in all sorts of trouble. By the way, it sometimes supports abortion, something the Christian right doesn’t like to mention.

Anglicans applauding banning conversion therapy

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“Ensuring a safe space for all” trumpets the headline in the Diocese of Toronto’s newspaper. “All” in this case are people who are lesbian, gay, bi-sexual, transgender, queer, two spirited, and yet to be identified and, we must presume, more murky areas of our contemporary sexual wilderness.

The main concern of a recent meeting between Bishop Kevin Robinson and “150 other religious leaders, academics and lay leaders from 30 countries and a wide range of faith backgrounds” was the banning of conversion therapy. Other than for transgender individuals for whom conversion therapy and bodily mutilation is encouraged; this brand of conversion therapy has even acquired its own liturgy. Such is the nature of ecclesiastical consistency.

Read all about it here:

Empowerment: A key concern of our gathering was the harm done through the practice of conversion therapy. Conversion therapy consists of “any practice or sustained effort that has the effect of denying, repressing, discouraging or changing a person’s non-heterosexual sexual orientation, non-cisgender gender identity or gender expression.”

[….]

We believe all individuals are made in the image of God, whom many call Divine, and should be free to live a life of dignity, consistent with their sexuality and gender identity, within their faith communities without fear or judgement.

Except for empowering those who freely choose to try to resist or change same-sex attractions and who would like prayer, counselling, or non-coercive therapy to help them. No one in that category is afforded any dignity whatsoever; in order to be a certified Anglican, such a person must repress and discourage his wariness of such urges, submit to them even if he would prefer not to and wave a rainbow flag to signify his acquiescence to Anglican doublethink. All because God has made him this way, even the temptations he would rather do without.

I can’t help wondering whether Bishop Kevin Robinson, who is a homosexual married to another man, is more interested in confirming the rightness of his own actions by compelling others to do likewise than in “Ensuring a safe space for all”.

Bishop Mark MacDonald resigns after sexual misconduct allegations

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Mark MacDonald, the National Indigenous Archbishop, has resigned after being accused of and acknowledging sexual misconduct.

The Anglican Church of Canada announced this today here, along with a pastoral letter from the Primate, Linda Nicholls.

All evidence of MacDonald’s clerical existence has been expunged from the ACoC’s website, which until a short time ago said this:

The Most Rev. Mark MacDonald became the Anglican Church of Canada’s first National Indigenous Anglican Bishop in 2007,  after serving as bishop of the U.S. Episcopal Diocese of Alaska for 10 years. In 2019 now Bishop MacDonald was elevated to Archbishop.

This was a home-coming of sorts for Archbishop MacDonald, who had attended Wycliffe College in Toronto and served as a priest in Mississauga, Ont.

As Nicholls notes in her pastoral letter:

This is devastating news. The sense of betrayal is deep and profound when leaders fail to live up to the standards we expect and the boundaries we set.

[….]

The ripple effects of this misconduct will be felt throughout the Church both in Canada and internationally, but most especially within the Sacred Circle and Anglican Council of Indigenous Peoples.

Diocese of Toronto misgenders the Holy Spirit

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The Diocese of Toronto has taken a sad step backwards from full inclusion. In a recent tweet, the diocese – and I’m sorry if this triggers someone, those of a sensitive disposition should avert their gaze now – rashly assumed that the Holy Spirit’s preferred pronoun is “her”. For all we know, it could be “zir”.

Antediluvian throwbacks like me who have always thought of the Holy Spirit as “He” had no idea that the third person of the Trinity had undergone a gender transition.

Adam’s gender is ‘more poetic than clear cut’

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Thus blazes an Anglican Journal headline for an article about the Anglican Church of Canada’s new trial liturgies for gender transition.

Apparently, the mistake we’ve been making for the last 6,000 years or so is to fall into the trap of thinking that men and women actually exist. They don’t. There is only humanity. Now we’ve finally realised that we have taken “an amazing step forward into full inclusion.” Or, depending on your perspective, confirmed Sophocles’ warning: “those whom the gods would destroy they first make mad”.

Read all about it here:

“Although [Christianity] has followed cultural norms about gender wherever it’s been lived and expressed, there is in its theology and its foundation documents in the New Testament a considerable focus on our humanity and not on our gender,” Beardsley said. This focus on humanity rather than gender find reflection in one of the liturgies CoGS commended for trial use, “A Blessing Over the Process of Gender Transition”. This blessing states that according to Scripture, the “first human’s gender is more poetic than clear cut—this first human embodiment included maleness, femaleness, and more than these—all of this was affirmed as very good.” The Rev. Theo Robinson, a transgender priest at Interlake Regional Shared Ministry and consultative body member, called approval of the liturgies for trial use “an amazing step forward into full inclusion.”

An Anglican bishop offers her opinion on the trucker protest

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Anna Greenwood-Lee bishop, of the Diocese of BC, likes to tweet. ​She had this to say about the Ottawa protest against vaccine mandates:

There is nothing particularly surprising – or accurate – about her opinion; it is a quote from the left-leaning Guardian newspaper. If you would like to see for yourself just how biased, deceptive and dishonest journalism can be, you can read the entire article here.  It’s no wonder it merited a quote from Greenwood-Lee.

An Anglican cleric comments on the trucker protest

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I’ve been waiting for the Anglican Church of Canada to say something about the protestors congregating in Ottawa. The church has no hesitation lobbing opinions into the ether to support BLM, Indigenous rights, LGBT activities and so on. Even in the face of universal uninterest. Why the reticence here? It can’t be that hard to pick a side since the bishops’ mentor, our illustrious Prime Minister has already blazed the path of righteousness by denouncing the protesters as racists, misogynists, homophobes, Nazis and probably a few other things I’ve forgotten. Surely the church should find itself prophetically harmonising with this wave of heady invective?

At least one clergyman has finally stepped into the fray. The ex-Catholic, ex-Evangelical Rev. Michael Coren.

“At the trucker protests, the political hard right is co-opting Christianity” blazes the headline, omitting the fact that anyone to the right of Joseph Stalin is “hard right” in Rev. Coren’s book.

What seems to upset Coren most is that the protestors recited the Lord’s Prayer. How dare they! They aren’t allowed to because they are not making obeisance to Coren’s idols of inclusion and tolerance – which makes as much sense as the rest of Coren’s analysis.

There is a video circulating on social media of a group of truckers in Ottawa discussing their plans. They exchange views in a quite heated manner, and then suddenly one of them begins to recite the Lord’s Prayer. In direct obedience and observance, all of the others remove their caps and follow suit. It’s being posted by supporters of the convoy who see the enterprise as God’s work and want to emphasize the piety of all concerned.

[…..]

I’ve no idea of what was in the hearts of those men who suddenly turned from bellicose plotting to telling God they “forgive those who trespass against us,” but judging by the ubiquity of vulgar anti-Trudeau signs and images of nooses, I’m a little cynical. I’m a priest – the Lord’s Prayer is central to my very being – but it’s more than just a collection of words. It’s what Jesus taught us to say. Jesus – who owned nothing and lived communally – reserved his harshest words for the wealthy and legalistic, redistributed food and preached tolerance, inclusion and grace. He could be as gentle as a watercolour in his love and compassion, but fierce as a lion of Judah in his demand for social justice.

There’s nothing new of course about the politicization of Christianity; it’s been happening ever since church and state began to mingle 1,700 years ago.

Admittedly, the Anglican Church of Canada does not politicise Christianity. It can’t because it has ceased to be Christian.