Anglican Peace in Our Time

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At the recent Toronto Pan-Anglican Congress, Rev. Canon Christopher Seitz summarised the aggressive plans for a stalwart defence of conservative orthodoxy: they intend to go down with a whimper .

Sietz, acknowledging that that battle has already been lost, concentrated on whether conservative parishes will be permitted to retain their orthodoxy. In other words, the retreat continues apace: no more reforming North American Anglicanism from within; the best conservatives are now hoping for is to be ignored by their dioceses, as they remain (if they are permitted to remain, that is) little islands of orthodoxy afloat in a festering swamp of heresy. Anything to preserve unity.

Read it all here:

Conservatives should seek terms for a negotiated peace to the Anglican wars, the Rev. Canon Christopher Seitz, Old Testament Scholar and Senior Research Professor at Wycliffe College in the University of Toronto and a leader of the Anglican Communion Institute told a conference marking the 50th Anniversary of the 1963 Toronto Pan-Anglican Congress.

The battle had been lost leaving conservatives as “strangers in their own church,” he said on 18 Sept 2013, and “the question for conservatives [now] is about encouragement. Will we be allowed to walk the well-worn paths of the faith,” he asked “or must we follow the trailblazers?”

[….]

But the political battled had been fought, and the conservatives had lost. It was “no longer a matter of saying the new ways are wrong. That point has passed. “

“We are in a new time. It is now here. We can see a before or after” in the Episcopal Church since the consecration of Gene Robinson and in the rise to power of Katharine Jefferts Schori. One group has been defeated” and “traditional Anglicans have lost a battle.”

There is now “no single understanding” of the faith. New Prayer Books will emerge that will enshrine the majority faction’s dogmas. The question for conservatives is not whether they can stop this but if the majority will allow “two rites [to] exist side by side.”

Prof. Seitz noted the “intermediate steps” taken at the 2012 to allow each bishop to approve or reject local gay marriage rites had “no long term integrity.”  The General Convention endorsed “diocesan autonomy here, but rejects it elsewhere.”

In the Episcopal Church and Anglican Church of Canada “we are in a genuinely new time. A time of accomplishment and tidying up,” Prof Seitz said, and this is “why encouragement matters” for conservatives remaining in these churches. “Others have left us and our blazing new trails,” but not all hear the call to depart.

Encouragement for the conservative remnant “would be allowing the status quo ante. Not a new church allowing traditional Anglicans” a home, but the existing churches giving conservatives “the moral space and right to exist.”

“Will dioceses and parishes be permitted to do what has been done before,” he asked. Will we be given the “moral space to conserve our traditions? Can bishops let go of parishes? Can dioceses choose to say no? Can we [as Episcopalians] remain a valued and trustworthy expression of the church catholic?”

[….]

“Conservative parishes are waiting and trusting,” he said, as “God is hiding his face for a season for his own purposes.”

Perhaps God is hiding his face because the conservative parishes still in TEC and the ACoC have ignored his call to disentangle themselves from institutional apostasy.

Diocese of Montreal: “respectful and dignified” objections to the ordination of partnered homosexuals

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From here:

In this case, the bishop said during some brief introductory remarks in French that he had received a letter objecting to the ordination of Alain Brosseau as a deacon and Donald Boisvert as a priest and appreciated the respectful and dignified tone of the objection but did not agree with the arguments and was proceeding with the ordinations.(the letter is similar to ones the same six clergy – Rev. Nick Brotherwood, Rev. Linda Faith Chalk, Rev. Michelle Eason, Rev. Chris Barrigar, Rev. Canon Bruce Glencross and Rev. Tim Wiebe – have presented on similar occasions in the past, saying the signers believe sexually active same-gender relationships are incompatible with scripture and, if civil marriages, with church law and traditions.)

I vaguely remember Norman Mailer writing (or perhaps it was in an interview) that if one believes something strongly enough, then the only defence of that belief that has integrity is one that goes in swinging – he was an amateur boxer. I’m not sure that that would work in a cathedral but, on the other hand, a “respectful and dignified” objection that everyone knows will be ignored seems to me to be worse than a waste of time: it is little more than a ritual conscience absolver.

If only the newly consecrated Donald Boisvert were as reticent in his panegyric to phallic worship in homoerotic and sadomasochistic sex. From his book, “Holy Sex” [Correction: “Holy Sex” is actually a section from Boisvert’s book Out on Holy Ground: Meditations on Gay Men’s Spirituality):

Anyone who has ever publicly cruised other men, or participated in some of the more arcane rituals associated with S/M sex, for example, will understand the powerful, almost overwhelming pull of the masculine and the unspoken codes with which we surround and protect it. Masculinity represents many things for gay men: potency, dominion, authority, abandonment, protection. As the dominant masculine symbol, the phallus acquires many characteristics of the holy. This is not a particularly modern interpretation. Phallic worship is as old as human civilization, and perhaps as controversial today as it was in the past. It has always been transgressive, associated with disorder and excess, with rioutous freedom and wanton sex. …. I call gay sex “holy sex” because it is centred on one of the primal symbols of the natural world, that of male regenerative power. The rites of gay sex call forth and celebrate this power, particularly in its unknown and unknowable anonymity. Gay men are the worshippers paying homage to the god who stands erect and omnific, ever silent and distant.

Oakville residents unhappy about St. Hilda’s being turned into an EMS station

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From here:

Right idea, wrong location.

That’s the sentiment expressed by more than 70 southwest Oakville residents Wednesday night at a public meeting regarding Halton Region’s plan to build an ambulance station and safe haven at the site of the former St. Hilda’s Anglican Church.

The Region recently purchased the two-acre site at 1258 Rebecca St.

While the meeting at T.A. Blakelock High School was set up as a drop-in information centre, after about 30 minutes, Regional representatives bowed to demand from residents and switched to a town hall format.

In 2005, the Region’s 10-Year Emergency Services Master Plan identified the need for a paramedic station to respond more quickly to emergency medical calls in southwest Oakville.

“We agree with this, but there are more suitable locations within less than two minutes,” said resident Cindy Wagg, pointing to Speers Road and non-residential areas.

Resident Ella Kokotsis says thousands of children and teens in the Rebecca Street area travel to school by bus, bicycle or on foot. The area also has a daycare centre, retirement residence, churches and a library. Kokotsis and others are concerned about pedestrian safety.

It’s nice to be missed.

The Diocese of BC: selling churches

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From here:

Nearly four years ago, the Anglican Diocese of B.C. recommended closing 11 churches across Greater Victoria, and selling the property in a bid to reduce debt and reinvigorate itself in the face of shrinking congregations.

Out of the 11, three have sold and two are leased by other organizations. The remainder are open for business as Anglican churches, and no longer face imminent closure, largely by strokes of luck.

“They were put all on the market at once, the ones people wanted to buy immediately are the only reason (others remain),” said Rev. Chris Parsons, speaking for the diocese. “We only wanted to sell a certain amount and re-evaluate what was needed.”

Properties like St. Saviour in Vic West and St. Martin in the Fields in Saanich sold, the former to a dance company and the latter to an evangelical denomination.

St. Columba in Saanich’s Strawberry Vale and All Saints in View Royal have closed as Anglican churches and the space is leased out (St. Alban’s had sold in 2009, prior to the mass sale).

Others once on the block – St. David by the Sea in Cordova Bay, St. Peter’s in Lakehill, St. Philip and St. Mary in Oak Bay and St. Mary in Metchosin – survived by the grace of not being attractive to other organizations or property developers.

[….]

A steadily declining congregational base, the basis for church closures and sales, and internal debates on issues such as same sex marriage still remain a problems for the Anglican Church.

A report from the diocese estimated that in 2009 barely one per cent of B.C. residents identify as Anglican. St. David sees about 40 parishioners on Saturdays and Sundays, and St. Peter’s sees about 60 people between two Sunday services.

St. Mary in Metchosin which is “not … attractive to other organizations or property developers” once housed a flourishing congregation that left the diocese to join ANiC.

The fact that an evangelical denomination bought one of the buildings as, presumably, part of their growth contains a message that will probably be lost on the Diocese of BC.

The Love of God Fits Everyone

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One of St. Hilda’s parishioners wrote a children’s song over 80 years ago. In 2010 he asked me to set it to music. Two of my grandchildren introduced it to the congregation then and, since they are visiting from Australia, they joined me to sing it again today.

Here is the song’s author, his wife and a few others::

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

Here are the words:

The love of God fits everyone,
it comes in every size.
it comes in every colour
And lights a billion eyes.

His miracles are everywhere –
the earth, the air, the sea,
and everything that’s in them,
including you and me.

The time of God is evermore,
a never ending line,
and his hand is everywhere
and here in yours and mine.

The love of God fits everyone,
it comes in every size.
it comes in every colour
and lights a billion eyes.

Today was “Back to Church Sunday”

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Back to Church Sunday is not to be confused with returning to Christ, of course; this is, after all, the Canadian Anglican Church.

In 2009 Toronto bishops dressed up in all their finery and handed out leaflets outside Union Station:

29-09-2013 5-05-55 PM

There hasn’t been a repeat performance by the bishops. As one observer noted:

Well intentioned, but . . well, those of my friends who are not now churchgoers wouldn’t go to church because a scary, robed bishop gave them a leaflet.

He has a point: the Anglican Church of Canada in its desperate quest for relevance, contorts its beliefs to accommodate contemporary culture – from same-sex marriage to there being many ways to God to having no set dogma at all, just community whose commonality is doctrinal incoherence.

The one thing that visibly separates bishops from the common herd is the one thing they won’t give up: dressing up in robes and pointy hats. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

Anglican Planet: Bishop charges journalist with libel

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Read the whole article here:

AN ANGLICAN JOURNALIST has been charged with making libelous comments about a bishop in the Anglican Church of Canada. On Feb.19th, David Jenkins was served personally with a statement of claim for defamation of character from the diocesan Bishop of Niagara, Michael Bird.

[…..]

Another Anglican bishop, Grant LeMarquand, the Bishop for the Horn of Africa, who, like Bird, has also been criticized on Samizdat, commented in an online discussion on the Anglican Journal website: “I have been criticized on the same blog site but it never crossed my mind that a lawsuit was an option. In fact, that the Bishop of Niagara would even consider such an action as this attempt to silence criticism and dissent should make us all cringe. Should the bishop win his case, the principle of free speech will be diminished and all Canadians will all [sic] be lessened as a result.”

Jenkins said that “the pleadings are now closed and we will commence the discovery process on Oct. 17th.”

As the article notes, the next step in my little adventure is the Examination for Discovery which will occur on October 17th. For those who feel inclined to pray, I would value your prayers for wisdom on that date.

Anglicans in Ottawa Pride parade dress more modestly than other participants

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Here is the standard of modesty that Ottawa Anglicans had to beat:

Less than modest

It wasn’t easy, but the six participating Anglican parishes put their heads together and came up with the innovative but, I must say, less than entirely inclusive idea of putting clothes on. Notwithstanding their modest attire, they still managed to stay “in touch with the theme of this year’s Capital Pride Festival” and that, after all, is what Christianity is really all about:

modest Anglicans

More here:

Among the hundreds of parade participants were scores of Anglicans from at least six parishes: St. Alban’s, Church of the Ascension, St. John the Evangelist, St. Michaels and All Angels, St. Marks, and St. James the Apostle. Marching as a group under the banner of Integrity Ottawa, they formed largest Christian group in the parade.

“We have found this to be a wonderful opportunity to make clear that there are parishes in our diocese who are intentional in their welcome to the GLBT community,” wrote Ron Chaplin of Integrity Ottawa, on the diocesan email list. Although Anglican marchers dressed more modestly than many of the participants, many seemed in touch with the theme of this year’s Capital Pride Festival – “Be Loud, Be Proud.”

Coming soon to a church near you: Erotic Justice

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The Anglican Church of Canada tirelessly proclaims its gospel of social justice. In reality, however, the Canadian Anglican Church is rapidly progressing – or regressing, depending on one’s perspective – from social justice to erotic justice. The term has not been adopted by any Anglican dioceses yet but – it’s coming. I expect the Diocese of New Westminster will be the first with its lapdog, Niagara, eagerly following.

Marvin M. Ellison, a gay Professor of Christian Ethics at Bangor Theological Seminary, has written a number of books on the subject, one of which is entitled Erotic Justice. In the book, he argues that sexual expression should be liberated from “frameworks of control” like marriage: eroticism is a good in and of itself. Sexuality, he says, has become intertwined with ableism (yes there is such a thing), racism, sexism and heterosexism. It’s all Christianity’s fault, of course, so because of its “sex-negativity and moralistic, controlling bent with respect to sexual expression, traditional Christian teachings must be critiqued”

Well, you get the picture: sex with anyone or anything in any combination is intrinsically good. When I was growing up in the 60s I remember this concept well; except it wasn’t tarted up with bogus theological justifications. We called it screwing around.