Tag Archives: Toronto Back to the Anglican Future Conference

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.

Bishop Patrick Yu’s remarks in the Toronto Back to the Anglican Future Conference

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Bishop Patrick Yu is a bishop in the Diocese of Toronto. He is a self-proclaimed conservative bishop who has decided to stay put in the Anglican Church of Canada.

He spoke towards the end of the Toronto Back to the Anglican Future Conference and Sue Careless, Senior Editor at the Anglican Planet, recorded and transcribed what he said. She kindly gave permission to post his remarks here.

You can draw your own conclusions about Bishop Yu’s remarks, so I will confine myself to just one thing that struck me:

In the second paragraph Bishop Yu laments the limited theological diversity of those attending the conference and in paragraph six, perhaps forgetting what he said in paragraph two, laments the presence of “people ordained by other communions sitting in this room [who] still tend to plant churches in Toronto”. Evidently a diversity too far.

Bishop Patrick Yu. Photo: Sue Careless

Bishop Patrick Yu. Photo: Sue Careless

On Sept. 18th when Dr George Sumner, Principal of Wycliffe College, opened the last ten minutes of the Back to the Anglican Future Conference to a question-and-answer period, Patrick Yu, the area bishop for York Scarborough in the Diocese of Toronto, stepped up to the podium at St. Paul’s Anglican Church on Bloor Street and used the full ten minutes to deliver the following comments:

I would like to speak on a point of privilege.

This conference is not as geographically and theologically as diverse as the Toronto Congress [of 1963] was. I wish it was more theologically diverse.

In this Diocese [of Toronto] people are not judged or driven out by their theological convictions. We have canons and even bishops who self-identify as conservatives. I was a founding member of Fidelity, a group set up to have a conservative discussion about homosexuality. Paul Feheley was the vice-president and we still have our jobs. [Feheley is currently Principal Secretary, Primate’s Office of the Anglican Church of Canada.] I do not want any students or clergy or international guests to think that here in the Diocese of Toronto we persecute conservatives.

The question was asked: “How can we support conservatives? I have two comments. I would like to question the definition of the word ‘orthodox’. Are there only 1,000 orthodox priests in the United States? I known they are in a bad way but surely there are more than that? We can define orthodoxy in terms of one’s belief in the Trinitarian formularies of the Church, in one’s commitment to Christ, in adherence to the Scriptures, and the historical creeds. But I have been guilty in the past of putting those who disagree with me theologically as unorthodox.  As someone has said, “Orthodoxy is my doxy and heterodoxy is your doxy.” I have met unfortunately unorthodox conservatives as well as orthodox liberals and the converse is also true.

I have personally suffered as a conservative who did not leave the church and there was guilt by association internationally. I think that when we castigate people in the United States and Canada or both if you are there [staying in the church] you must be in the ranks of sinners. It makes conservatives who decide to stay in this church very fearful.

I am the first Chinese bishop and the only one in Canada and I must say that all of the four Chinese churches in Toronto have adopted a conservative stance towards the issue of homosexuality. And it is to their great surprise, disdain and anger when someone ordained a bishop from the Province of Rwanda comes without their knowledge and begins to lure their parishioners away. And I understand that other people ordained by other communions sitting in this room still tend to plant churches in Toronto. That does not help conservatives who stay in the church. And as speaker once said: “If we are not at the table, we cannot contribute to development in the future.”

Lastly, a lot has been spoken about being victims. I caution you – particularly our international friends – to be very cautious in listening to victim narratives. In Canada victim narrative is one of the most powerful political forces around. Our gay and lesbian friends have used this narrative very powerfully and very successfully. For those who attempted to claim victim it is a very tempting short-term tool but in the long term it is very damaging. It helps you to think of yourself as always the outsider. My counsel is to go into the church and act as if you own it, because it is your church. This church is for conservatives and liberals. My mentor Professor Oliver O’Donovan who was one of the authors of the St Andrews Day statement said: “We invite everyone who confesses the Trinitarian formularies of the Church into this discussion.” So when we protest about being excluded, let us be aware not to exclude others from the conversation.

I also speak as the convener of the Evangelism and Church Growth Initiative of the Anglican Communion. Now it is called Anglican Witness. I have to say that people’s experience of Lambeth [2008] was very different. I agree with Archbishop Ian Ernest that evangelism is a difficult topic here as well as in your diocese. When people think about Lambeth they think about sex. Actually the other issue that was very prominent in the report of the indaba discussions was the strong commitment to evangelism. My organization was a follow-up of that.

Let me share with you my own five years of involvement in that organization. When you talk of evangelism with people from Nigeria and Canada and Solomon Islands and South Africa and Burundi there is very little disagreement even though our perspectives on certain theological issues must be very different. So it seems to me we can talk about the Anglican Communion in terms of its organization, and indeed in terms of its issues and problems but when we do that we would commit our resources in a certain way. But if we commit our resources in terms of evangelism and mission, it seems to me that the things that divide us, the problems that seem intractable, may not be so intractable after all.

I’m very glad that Justin Welby spoke to us. We met in London… He said: “I have only two priorities for my archepiscopate. One is reconciliation and the other is evangelism.” My prayer for the Communion is not overcoming [differences] as that seems more difficult but with our differences and with our imperfect instruments we will take into account and deeply embrace the mission and evangelism that is God’s call to us. Then we may discover that we have a Communion after all. God bless you and that’s my response of my privilege.

***

Dr. Sumner then concluded with: “Part of our hope is free exchange, hearing and being heard, candor, parrhesia, free expression. That is certainly our goal at Wycliffe College: theological reflection with a free expression of views. That is a good thing. Our promise was 9pm. Our time is done.”