Worldwide Anglican split will impact Canada

By Jim Coggins

Donald Harvey, one of the leading figures in Canada's orthodox Anglican movement.

The Global Anglican Futures Conference (GAFCON) -- which was attended by over 1,100 delegates, including 291 bishops -- issued the "Jerusalem Declaration" June 29 and said it would form the basis of a new network of Anglican churches limited to those which accept historically orthodox theology.

This statement insists that supporters of this new structure are "not breaking away from the Anglican Communion" but are instead reaffirming historic Anglican doctrine expressed in such Anglican documents as the Thirty-Nine Articles and the Book of Common Prayer.

Theological Issues

The Jerusalem Declaration states that GAFCON's actions are based on "three undeniable facts."

The first of these is that there is theological disagreement because of "the acceptance and promotion within . . . the Anglican Communion of a different 'gospel' (cf. Galatians 1:6-8) which . . . undermines the authority of God's Word written and the uniqueness of Jesus Christ as the author of salvation." The Declaration goes on to say that some Anglicans in the West "claim that all religions offer equal access to God and that Jesus is only a way, not the way" to God and that they deny biblical teaching by promoting "immoral behaviour," including the blessing of same-sex unions.

The Declaration grieves "the spiritual decline in the most economically developed nations, where the forces of militant secularism and pluralism are eating away the fabric of society and churches are compromised and enfeebled in their witness."

The archbishops who lead the Anglican church in the three main Western nations -- the United Kingdom, the United States and Canada -- have issued statements disagreeing with the Jerusalem Declaration. Archbishop Rowan Williams, head of the Church of England and nominal head of the worldwide Anglican Communion, said issues such as "the uniqueness of Jesus Christ as Lord and God . . . are not in dispute."

Archbishop Fred Hiltz, primate of the Anglican Church of Canada, specifically "repudiated" the charge that a "false gospel" is being taught in the Canadian Anglican church. He pointed to the "faithful proclamation of the apostolic gospel in liturgy" and the official "mission statement of the Anglican Church of Canada" as evidence of the denomination's orthodoxy. However, he did not address what Canadian church leaders actually believe and teach.

Michael Ingham, Bishop of the Diocese of New Westminster in British Columbia, which helped precipitate the crisis by approving the blessing of same-sex unions in 2002, told CC.com he found the "vague and unspecified accusations" of the Jerusalem Declaration "very puzzling." Neither the authority of the Bible nor the uniqueness of Christ have ever been officially denied anywhere in his diocese, he said.

Ingham did concede that his own book Mansions of the Spirit denied "soteriological exclusivity", but he said this was not the same thing as the uniqueness of Christ.

"The doctrine of the church has constantly changed since the council of Jerusalem in Acts 15," said Ingham, and theological differences "have always been characteristic of Anglicanism." He said he was puzzled that GAFCON would try to make the Anglican Communion "confessional" since it has never adhered to a specific confession of faith as Lutheran and Presbyterian churches have and since neither the Anglican Communion nor the Anglican Church of Canada has required adherence to the Thirty-Nine Articles for several decades.

These vague theological accusations were "intended to mask the disdain this group has for gay and lesbian people," Ingham charged.

Bishop Don Harvey, who leads the conservative Anglican Network in Canada (ANiC), told CC.com the charge that conservatives are "anti-gay" is a smokescreen masking the real issue at hand, which he said is "the willingness to unreservedly say that Jesus is the Son of God and the only means by which salvation can be procured."

Structural division

The second "undeniable fact" on which the Jerusalem Declaration is based is that the Anglican Communion is already divided.

The statements by the three Western archbishops all stress the ongoing unity of the Anglican Communion. However, the Declaration states that the controversy "has torn the fabric of the Communion in such a way that it cannot simply be patched back together." It further states that many bishops of the global South have already officially declared that they are "out of communion with bishops and churches that promote this false gospel" and it suggests that this division will remain unless the Western churches "repent and return to the Lord."

As evidence of this rupture, many bishops from the global South have said that they are not going to this year's Lambeth Conference, a gathering of all Anglican bishops from around the world which is convened by the Archbishop of Canterbury once every ten years. This year's Lambeth meeting will be held July 16 - August 3.

It would be hypocritical of bishops from the global South to go to Lambeth and fellowship with other bishops whose fellowship they have already rejected, said Harvey.

The Jerusalem Declaration further states that "the Lambeth Conference has been structured so as to avoid any hard decisions." Harvey said this refers to the fact that this year's Lambeth Conference has been set up to be a "fellowshipping and worshipping gathering" with no plenary sessions scheduled for making decisions or voting on motions.

Many bishops from the global South are "frustrated beyond belief" by such gatherings, said Harvey. The 1998 Lambeth Conference issued a strong statement affirming traditional sexual morality after the Episcopal Church in the USA (ECUSA) had ordained a practicing homosexual bishop in 1993. However, that decision was never enforced, with ECUSA continuing to support homosexual practice and several Canadian dioceses agreeing to bless same-sex unions.

Harvey said it doesn't matter what is passed at Lambeth since, in the Anglican structure, bishops and their dioceses have authority to do whatever they want and there is no central structure which can overrule them.

The Jerusalem Declaration, therefore, called for the setting up of a "Primates' Council" for GAFCON. Originally composed of the half-dozen national church leaders who convened the Jerusalem gathering, this Council would be encouraged to add other primates and provinces.

ECUSA primate Katharine Jefferts Schori dismissed the Jerusalem Declaration as the work of "a few leaders" who "consider themselves the only true believers."

However, the Jerusalem Declaration says the participants at GAFCON represented 35 million of the Anglican Communion's 77 million people. Since the churches in the global South are much larger and growing much more quickly than the churches in the West, GAFCON suggests the Primates' Council could come to represent a large majority of the Anglican Communion. This Council would "authenticate and recognise confessing Anglican jurisdictions, clergy and congregations," which could leave the official Anglican churches in Western countries on the outside looking in.

A Canadian alternative

The Jerusalem Declaration also called for the Primates' Council to recognize the Common Cause Partnership -- a coalition of various conservative groups that have left or are considering leaving ECUSA and the Anglican Church of Canada -- as a North American province. In Canada, the Partnership includes the Anglican Network in Canada, a group of churches now under the Province of the Southern Cone (South America), and the Anglican Coalition in Canada, a group under the Province of Rwanda.

Harvey, who serves as a bishop for the ANiC, says these various conservative groups, now under various jurisdictions, would be brought together in a single North American province under a new archbishop. Initially, this province might have a couple of Canadian "dioceses," but eventually this North American province might be split into Canadian and US provinces, each with several dioceses. In essence, he said, GAFCON is setting up an alternative Canadian Anglican Church.

Cheryl Chang, a lawyer on the ANiC's legal defence team, told CC.com GAFCON's action is "very comforting. We may be a minority in Canada, but we are part of a worldwide majority."

The developments in Jerusalem may also have legal implications for the Canadian churches, Chang said. Currently, three Anglican dioceses are demanding that parishes which have voted to join the ANiC surrender their church buildings. Court cases have already been initiated for three parishes in Ontario and one in British Columbia.

Chang said the dioceses are being inconsistent, on one hand dismissing conservatives as "less than one percent" of Canadian Anglicans but then arguing in court that the denomination will suffer "irreparable harm" if it loses the buildings of the churches that are leaving.

The Anglican Church of Canada would get only "empty buildings" since it has no members to put into them, said Chang, but it needs the assets "to support a dying church." She suggested the Anglican Church of Canada is afraid that if it loses these buildings, many more parishes might choose to leave, and GAFCON's actions may help the courts recognize that the church is in the midst of a divorce, and in a divorce one side does not get all the assets.

Fear of losing their buildings may be holding some parishes back from joining ANiC, said Harvey. He said he does not expect the Jerusalem Declaration will cause a sudden increase in people flowing into the ANiC, but the flow may grow in the next couple of years as more and more churches reach "the flash point."

For some, he said, that might be court decisions saying that departing churches can keep their property. (The court cases are expected to take at least a couple of years.) For others, it may come if "the theological situation gets worse" after the next Anglican Church of Canada General Synod in 2010.

"Many people in the pews are not aware of how far the national church has gone," said Harvey, and "maintaining the confusion is part of the strategy." The leaders of the Anglican Church of Canada are hoping to keep stalling, talking about the issues, until people become so accustomed to liberal doctrines that they give up the fight, he added.

It is important for an alternative structure to be set up because individuals are already leaving the denomination for more conservative denominations, said Harvey.

Whether the Jerusalem conference makes any difference to the property cases now being heard in the Canadian courts, there is no doubt that it has very encouraging to the 30 or so Canadian participants in the conference, said Chang, who said it was "incredible to be with a worldwide fellowship who are on the same page theologically."

Harvey concurred: "This is one of the greatest events I have been to in my ministry."

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