Category Archives: Anglican Church of Canada

Anglican Church of Canada statement on the resignation of the Archbishop of Canterbury

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Here it is:

We have seen the news that the Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby has resigned, having acknowledged personal and institutional responsibility in relation to “the long-maintained conspiracy of silence about the heinous abuses of John Smyth” that had been exposed by the Makin Review. Our hearts break for the children and young people who were abused by Smyth and further victimized by the lack of meaningful action on the part of the church.

In 2022, the Archbishop of Canterbury visited Canada to listen to residential school survivors and to issue apologies for the church’s role in the abuses at residential schools. We mourn that today’s news will add to the pain of survivors, and we hold them in our prayers.

The Anglican Church of Canada is committed to continuing the work needed to make the church a safe place for all, in keeping with our baptismal covenant to respect the dignity of every human being. We pray for the humility, courage and wisdom needed for this all-important work.

It’s difficult to miss the irony that Welby “visited Canada to listen to residential school survivors”, an alleged scandal that he was not tangled up in, yet failed to meet with victims of a scandal he was.

Note this tweet from the Anglican Survivors Group. Note in particular the word “lie”:

Anglican and Lutheran leaders call for Israel to stop fighting

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Again.

Happily, no one cares what Anglican leaders think about wars being fought in the Middle East. The only thing that stirs less interest in the general populace is what Anglican leaders think about religion.

I can’t bring myself to use the word ceasefire, since a ceasefire is not what Germond and Johnson want. They want Israel to stop fighting, at which point Hamas, Hezbollah and the IDF will join hands around the campfire and sing All You Need is Love.

From here:

Dear Prime Minister:

It has now been more than a year since the horrifying Hamas attack on Israel. Violence has continued with the decimation of Gaza by Israeli bombing and increasing settler attacks on Palestinian communities in the occupied West Bank. In recent days, open hostilities in the region have expanded to include Lebanon, Yemen and Iran. Our hearts break at the horrific suffering and rising death toll caused by these armed conflicts.

We continue our call for a full and sustained ceasefire, for the release of all captives, for the immediate flow of life-saving food, water, aid, fuel and humanitarian assistance for the millions of Gazans suffering at this time, for an end to all arms transfers to Israel, and the end of occupation. We continue our call on leaders to lay down weapons and to work for a just and lasting regional peace.

We express our disappointment that Canada abstained from the September 18, 2024 United Nations motion calling on Israel to end its “unlawful presence” in the Gaza Strip and the occupied West Bank. We believe it is only through an end to the occupation and a just, comprehensive and lasting peace settlement that the security of both Palestinians and Israelis can be assured.

We call on the Government of Canada to diligently support all provisions of international law and a rules-based world order. Failure to consistently support international law allows the powerful to act with impunity, causing great suffering to the most vulnerable, marginalized and powerless people globally.

We continue to pray for an end to suffering—remembering in our prayers all who have died on all sides of the conflict, hostages and their families, those maimed and injured, all who have lost their homes and those who have not been able to move to safety—and for the opening of a humanitarian corridor into Gaza and a peaceful solution to this war.

Sincerely,

Rev. Susan Johnson
National Bishop, Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada

The Most Rev. Anne Germond
Acting Primate, Anglican Church of Canada

The crumbling of the Anglican Church of Canada

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The Anglican Church of Canada is not just crumbling from within, its buildings are also falling apart.

The external decay is a fitting metaphor for the spiritual malaise that afflicts the bishops and clergy whose main preoccupation seems to be to avoid Christianity at all costs. The buildings are empty shells, devoid of purpose, meaning and significance; no wonder they are collapsing.

The Journal articles here and here, lament the loss of historic buildings rather than the loss of the ideas and faith that inspired them.

The destruction by fire of St. Anne’s Anglican Church in Toronto last June underscores risks faced by aging churches across Canada, an architectural historian says—and the country could face significant loss of cultural heritage in the years to come.

Peter Coffman, a Carleton University art and architectural history professor who specializes in Canadian Gothic Revival buildings, says many churches are in danger of being destroyed or collapsing. As their congregations shrink, so does the money to pay for their maintenance and preservation.

Canada’s loss of its historic churches is likely to be a protracted process, he says.

Anglican Church of Canada makes provocative statements

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From the headline you might be tempted to think that one of the statements is: we have decided to start preaching the Gospel.

You would be wrong.

They include things like:

Dismantle the colonial foundations of the Council of the North

And:

Dismantle the racism and colonialism that is built into our governance structures.

There is a survey which you can fill in to throw your support behind dismantling racism, if you feel so inclined, here.

The hope is that by making some of the changes explained in the survey, the decline in ACoC  membership might be reversed.

In case that doesn’t work, one of the suggestions is to end the funding of independent journalism – the Anglican Journal. So if the decline continues, as it surely will, at least no one will know.

From here:

A primate’s commission tasked with rethinking church structures is encouraging Anglicans to provide feedback on its seven intentionally provocative statements or “hypotheses” through an online survey.

The commission, Reimagining the Church—Proclaiming the Gospel in the 21st Century, established by former primate Archbishop Linda Nicholls, first presented the hypotheses in spring to the House of Bishops and Council of General Synod, then distributed them publicly in early June, says commission chair Archdeacon Monique Stone.

The hypotheses include dismantling colonialism in the Council of the North and church governance structures; eliminating either General Synod or the ecclesiastical provinces; returning to a model where the primate is also a diocesan bishop; reducing travel and meeting costs; looking at new ways of running the national office; and ending editorially independent journalism—specifically, the Anglican Journal—funded by General Synod.

Dean Peter Elliott, a member of the commission, says the hypotheses inviting Anglicans to respond to these hypotheses appeared on the Anglican Church of Canada website in late August.

The liberal delusion

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In the early 20th Century Malcolm Muggeridge declared that “the fundamental error of liberalism is its false gospel of automatic and ineluctable progress”. I usually agree with Muggeridge, but I think he had this wrong. That isn’t the fundamental error of liberalism. The fundamental error is the assumption that man is innately good.

From this springs the idea that we can progress through our own efforts, that we can build our own utopia, that all our ills spring from things like a poor upbringing, a hostile environment or by class oppression. Once those are sorted out, the earth will be suffused with peace and harmony.

As it turns out, the opposite is the case. The notion that we are good, or at least self-perfectible, leads to tyranny, bloodshed, death and misery. Just look at Stalin’s Soviet Union, Hitler’s Germany, Mao’s China and Pol Pot’s Cambodia. Millions of dead and endless suffering all because of one simple delusion.

I’m pretty sure many mainline churches have fallen for the same lie. And it is a satanic lie. If we are innately good, we don’t need a Savior. If we don’t need a Savior, Jesus was not who He claimed to be: he couldn’t have died for our sins because He didn’t need to.

Ten seconds of self-reflection will easily dispel this nonsense and confirm that the heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked.

Yet the delusion persists, particularly in the Anglican Church of Canada. I remember overhearing a lady vicar murmur in a break during a TV program Michael Coren used to host before he lost his marbles that “after all, we are all basically good people, aren’t we?”

And here we go again in an article published by the Anglican Journal, a mouthpiece of the ACoC, even though it likes to pretend otherwise (my emphasis):

What to do? How do we change paths? It’s a tall order, but not an impossibility if we can finally dispense with that perversely erroneous, discredited tenet of Enlightenment philosophy that defines humanity as irredeemably wicked, and instead remember that we are innately good. Born that way. It’s a truth that’s available to each of us through common sense and reflection. It is acknowledged and celebrated in classical Greek philosophy and all the great monotheistic religions. In my careers as a journalist and academic I’ve watched for decades as that ancient moral insight has gained the reinforcement of social-scientific researchers, reluctant though they may be to involve themselves with metaphysics.

With that truth firmly in mind we might see that nothing less than a new social contract is what’s necessary and appropriate to our post-modern condition: stronger market regulation to reduce the economic and political influence of industrial and commercial monopolies and oligopolies; a new ethic of corporate social responsibility that replaces hypocrisy with genuine commitment; more equitable distribution of wealth to replace the current winner-take-all ethic; and an improved and expanded social safety net perhaps founded on a guaranteed annual income, for starters.

Anglican Church of Canada seeks to halt precipitous decline

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ACoC revenue is expected to decline by around $200,000 per year, diocesan contributions to the national church are falling and the number of active parishioners is in free-fall.

Most businesses in this situation would have fired their executives long ago but, alas, the number of bishops in the ACoC seems inversely proportional to the number of lay people.

The situation is so desperate that radical solutions are being explored. So radical that, in order not to unsettle the staff, meetings will be held behind closed doors. What could be that unsettling?

Reintroducing Christianity to the church would certainly qualify but that is as unlikely as firing all the bishops. More probably, there will be staff cut-backs, diocesan mergers, church buildings sold and a further combining  with the ACoC’s partner in self-inflicted extinction, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada.

Read all about it here:

He recommends that conversations about the future of the church be convened around the theming of the five “transformational commitments” in the church’s latest strategic plan. Doing so, he says, “could be an instrument to aid in the renewal and rejuvenation of the General Synod and perhaps begin a process of devolving some powers and responsibilities to provinces and dioceses.”

The document ends with five “intentionally provocative statements,” which assert that “generally, General Synod’s adherence to strategic planning must be deemed a failure” and that this planning has not always recognized General Synod’s role as the “weaker partner in a strong alliance of dioceses,” which exercise more power in funding and implementing goals. It notes the church’s “precipitous” decline in attendance and General Synod’s history of strategic plans that have attempted to reverse this without demonstrable results. The last of these statements concludes by asking “Is it time to de-acquisition and downsize some structures to enable new possibilities to emerge? Is this the framing that should guide current planning?”

Archdeacon Tanya Phibbs, deputy prolocutor of General Synod, brought a motion that only council members and Archbishop Anne Germond, soon to be acting Primate of the Anglican Church of Canada, remain for the session. It was necessary for CoGS to meet behind closed doors, she said, to ensure its members were able to freely share ideas, hopes, fears and dreams for the church’s future which may be provocative. Phibbs also said some of the content of the discussion might be unsettling to the staff as it directly affected them. It might be difficult for members of CoGS to discuss some of the options before them knowing staff were in the room, she said.

Decolonizing liturgy

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The National Worship Conference of the Anglican Church of Canada is meeting in Regina this summer. It “will examine how church liturgy and worship practices can better reflect the diversity of modern congregations”.

The aim of the conference is to extirpate “expressions of empire” from liturgy in order to “decolonize“ it. As things stand, we are “excluding voices from the margins”.

We have to “begin by listening to the land, hearing the ancient voices of creation that hold our narratives.”

I’m not sure what the “voices from the margins” or the “voices of creation” are, although I’ve heard rumours that many clergy are hearing voices when they forget to take their pills.

Here is a radical idea: instead of straining to hear the voices of creation, try reading the Bible to see what God has to say.

You can register for the conference at the website.

All are welcome except orthodox Christians.

More here:

Berringer said she expected the subject matter of this year’s conference to be sensitive and controversial. The event’s website describes its purpose as exploring what it means to decolonize expressions of worship in the Anglican and Lutheran churches. Berringer says it’s about identifying the ways in which Anglicans and Lutherans from outside European-derived culture don’t see themselves reflected in the churches’ worship, and about finding ways to make it their own.

The word “decolonize” has so many disparate meanings to people according to their backgrounds and preconceived ideas, she says, that the conference may not get beyond negotiating a shared understanding of what the churches need to do to make themselves more inclusive. But even if that means having some difficult and uncomfortable conversations, she says it’s worth doing.

“I fully expect people to attend this conference and have pushback on everything from the title, to the description, to who we’ve included as far as workshop leaders,” she says. “We do expect people to be uncomfortable, probably. We’re providing prayer support, we’ve got chaplains ready … It’s human nature to feel defensive when the perception is ‘what you’re doing isn’t working, we’ve got to change it and make it better.’”

Anglican Church of Canada decline accelerates

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Numerically, of course, not theologically; theologically, it has nowhere left to go – surely.

In 2017, the ACoC published these numbers, which led statistics officer Rev Dr. Neil Elliot to predict extinction by 2040:

As of 2022, the number looked like this:

There has been a 40% decrease in average Sunday attendance since 2001, with a  accelerated decline of 26% between 2019 and 2022. The good news is funerals have not declined.

Read more about it here:

Sharp drop during pandemic: stats officer

The COVID-19 pandemic saw a significant decline in church attendance, marking a “radical discontinuity” even with previous downward trends, the Anglican Church of Canada’s statistics officer says.

Canon Neil Elliot presented data from 2022 diocesan returns in a January report sent to bishops and diocesan executive officers based on parish statistics. The statistics officer said he did not collect numbers in 2020 and 2021 since COVID-19 shut down churches for much of that time.

The figures show a decline on almost all fronts from 2019 to 2022, including a 12 per cent decrease in the total number on parish rolls, 26 per cent decrease in average Sunday attendance, and 17 per cent decrease in regular identifiable givers. The biggest drops came in the number of people attending services on major holy days: a 45 per cent decline in Easter attendance, 37 per cent for Pentecost and 47 per cent for Christmas.

Declines were also seen in the number of pastoral services, with 25 per cent fewer baptisms, 13 per cent fewer confirmations and 10 per cent fewer marriages—the only exception being funerals, which saw a very small increase.

“Attendance has been hit,” Elliot said. “I think that’s a really clear thing.”

Anglican Church of Canada stands against antisemitism – sort of

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The Most Rev. Linda Nicholls has just released a statement claiming that the Anglican Church of Canada opposes antisemitism:

We must stand against antisemitism whenever we hear or see it. We stand in solidarity with Jewish people around the world who desire to live in safety and security without fear, as do all people.

But is this just doing what the church does best: virtue signaling?

In February, the ACoC urged Justin Trudeau to support an immediate ceasefire in Gaza – by the IDF, of course, since ACoC has little concern whether Hamas continues to fire rockets into Israel. This must be what Nicholls meant by “We stand in solidarity with Jewish people around the world”. Hang on, now I get it: stand in solidarity with Jewish people around the world, except those in Israel.

And, more recently in March, Nicholls signed a letter to the Canadian government rejoicing that Canada has reinstated UNWRA funding – a thoroughly antisemitic organization

Perhaps ACoC leaders are in a moral muddle and, lacking any functioning ethical or spiritual compass, are simply trying to keep everyone happy. Or perhaps they are antisemitic themselves and are trying to conceal it.

Anglican Church of Canada turns to Rome after running out of its own sophistry

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The Anglican Church of Canada, having run out of its own seemingly inexhaustible supply of sophistry, is looking to the Roman Catholic Church for inspiration in finding new ingenious ways to justify blessing same-sex marriages.

The Roman Catholic Church has demonstrated its enviable talent for casuistry in recent statements on same-sex marriage.

A same-sex blessing is blessing the person not the relationship. The fact that the two people in the same-sex marriage are being blessed together is purely coincidental; it has nothing to do with the relationship. Nothing at all.

Why didn’t we Anglicans think of that?

From here:

A document released by the Roman Catholic Church reconsidering its policy on blessings—including those to people in same-sex relationships—offers Anglicans a new way to think about divisions within their own communion, says the Rev. Iain Luke, principal of the Saskatoon-based College of Emmanuel and St. Chad and a member of the Anglican-Roman Catholic Dialogue.

The declaration Fiducia Supplicans, endorsed by Pope Francis on Dec. 18, lays out a shift in the Roman Catholic Church’s approach to blessings. It encourages clergy to offer blessings from the church to any who ask without first scrutinizing whether they are in compliance with the church’s doctrines or meet some moral standard.

When someone asks for a blessing, the document says, regardless of their marital or moral status, they are showing their openness to God’s love and assistance. “This request should, in every way, be valued, accompanied, and received with gratitude,” it states. “People who come spontaneously to ask for a blessing show by this request their sincere openness to transcendence, the confidence of their hearts that they do not trust in their own strength alone, their need for God, and their desire to break out of the narrow confines of this world, enclosed in its limitations.”

Though the new policy does not allow Roman Catholic priests to bless same-sex relationships, it does allow them to bless the people in them, whose relationship status would previously have been grounds for a priest to deny a blessing, says Luke. He compares this approach to that of the early days of Christianity in the first century AD.