The recently published attendance statistics of the Anglican Church of Canada paint a gloomy picture of a dying denomination. The proposed solution is to do more of what is killing the church but do it with more enthusiasm.
Five conservative clergy in the Diocese of Toronto have noticed the flaw in this strategy and are proposing, not a divorce exactly, but at least a separation. They optimistically reckon that a third of the clergy in the diocese would go along with this.
This is nonsense for two reasons:
First, clergy willing to risk their reputation, friendships, buildings and pension for the sake of the Gospel have already done so: they have joined ANiC.
Second, it assumes that liberals in the church are willing to live alongside those who disagree with them. They aren’t. If you want evidence of this, look back at the recent General Synod after the failure of the marriage canon vote. Those who lost the vote were literally rolling on the floor wailing in anguish because their views were not affirmed. Uniformity of thought is the only balm that will ease their suffering.
Some may see this letter from the Anglican Communion Alliance as encouraging. I don’t. Conservative clergy who remain in the ACoC have been in desperate retreat for decades, occasionally throwing up a rearguard action as a squid squirts ink to aid in its getaway. If they really meant what they said, they would no longer be ACoC clergy.
From here:
An Open Letter to the House of Bishops November 14, 2019
A simple question:
If the clergy of Toronto were asked, “How many of you wish to be part of a region where your ministry will be conducted within the boundaries of the doctrine, discipline, liturgy and canons of the church?,” how many would say “yes’? Likely a third. Probably more.
The question is asked because a clear choice now exists. If Toronto’s 2019 Diocesan Synod is the example, the ruling ethos of the diocese, led by a very talented and likable bishop, is demonstrably outside those boundaries.
Using experimental liturgies and hymns that abandon the “common prayer” of the church,
. . . living by the open sexual ethic of the local option,
. . . in public defiance of the church’s canons
. . . according to a faith that is unrecognizable by the received standards of the Christian faith and indistinguishable from the secular mores of Canada’s cultural elite.
And, not insignificantly, having failed completely regarding one of its most cherished dreams – diversity! In the time that membership in the ACC fell from 1.3 million to 350,000, down to less than 100,000 in average Sunday attendance, Canada’s population doubled. Where the ACC once represented 7% of the population, that number has now dropped to 1%. There are two ways forward. The first is the status quo. If you choose 1960 as the starting point, it has 60 years of decline behind it. It was a time when that which was held in common – doctrine, discipline, canons and liturgy – shrank dramatically, and the outer boundaries grew apart, to the extent that they are no longer recognizable to each other.
The second is to recognize that the outer limits cannot, at present, be contained in the same body because the resulting tension is both destructive and fatal. It is to declare a 20-year ceasefire and to give what has become two distinct realms the freedom to conduct their ministries according to their truest lights and to show the fruit of their ministry. Call it the Gamaliel experiment. Keep it simple. For the sake of the unity of the church, limit the division to bishops and clergy. Parishes would retain a certain independence and remain able, as they now are, to seek and request a change in direction when a successor is appointed.
Let the experimental party be guided by their self-declared bishops.
And let that party seeking to live within the boundaries of the received doctrine, discipline, liturgy and canons of the church fall under the oversight of bishops publicly committed to upholding the received teaching of the Church. Communion Partners and Communion Partner bishops is one example ready to hand. They are a body already active in Canada, recognized communion wide and capable of maintaining order and oversight according to the received faith of the church.
Why 20 years? Because the best prediction says 2040 is when we close up shop, anyway. If this is the last leg of the journey, would it not be better to have the two realms in a state of peaceful co-existence, serving at full strength, to be judged by the fruit of their ministry for the sake of Christ and his Church?
We place this proposal — our own — before the whole House of Bishops to consider.
Ajit John+, Murray Henderson+, Dean Mercer+, Ephraim Radner+, Catherine Sider-Hamilton+
Hi : I think this is a splendid idea and should be put to the laity not the leadership as it won’t happen if the leadership has anything to do with simply because it challenges the status quo and their livelihoods!!! I would love to see a vote on this in my community. Also
it would give a chance for some Anglicans in the mainstream that just simply want to be real Christians to survive. There are a lot of condo developments in the wings waiting for all that real estate to be liberated. C
Does the proposal in the open letter arise from some sort of interpretation of the Gamaliel test? Hence the “Gamaliel experiment” name?
I must commend these clergy for taking a stand – all be it a little soft. The history of the ACoC clearly shows the APOSTATES will legally steal properties and evict genuine Christians and will do so using the civil courts which have absolutely no interest in the GOSPEL. The ACoC will come down very harshly on anyone that dares to take a stand for THE GOSPEL. These clergy might now be considered brave in taking this move but you can be sure they will be forced to bow down to the APOSTATES or be removed from their positions.
I wish I could believe that this is not typically too little, too late. The parting shot of what is left of the Essentials movement.
It was ever thus with the federation unfortunately. You have to decide what is the most important thing, and for them it was the institution.
I have a certain level of sympathy for the situation in which they find themselves, tempered by the fact that the congregations they lead have been left in the dark lighthouse that is the ACOC.
Btw David knowing your penchant for irony I thought you might find this one interesting: https://theagetocome.com/2019/11/21/the-new-triune-god/
🙂 yes.
Good article; I’ve emended your Dean Inge quotation.
Ha yes, I replied. I’m not taking any credit for the somewhat modified quote, it just fits well with the blog.
It would mean both teams of horses could pull in their respective directions, instead of pulling in opposite directions against each other.
We don’t need to embark on a new Gamaliel experiment. One has been in place, in effect, for the past few decades and the results are clear, as is obvious in the declining numbers. We know very clearly what is of God and what is of man, and it shouldn’t take existential evidence to see so. (Acts 5: 38-39)
Yes, it’s really unwise to try to be Gamaliel-like about something that Gamaliel himself would never have been Gamaliel-like about.
As an Anglican layman in the Diocese of Toronto, I wholeheartedly encourage and support this notion. These are the clergy I look up to, apart from whom I would probably not remain in the ACC. Their actions here demonstrate God’s kindness even to his enemies in calling the wayward bishops to repentant by the fact of their persistent, conscientious objection whilst remaining faithful in the ACC. These clergy are waging spiritual combat and deserve our prayerful support. They represent true courage and spiritual fortitude in the face of a peculiar yet prophetic suffering in the cause of the gospel. To those Christians who read this and scoff, in the least please pray on their behalf and perhaps even consider how you can lend support.
In the stark wake of another inevitable ‘Disruption’ (1843), The Reverend Dr. Alexander Whyte (sole Son of a single Mother), Minister to Free St. John’s, Glasgow, then to Free St. George’s, Edinburgh, offers sobering Scriptural counsel on Gamaliel; and other ‘Bible Characters’:
“Jesus Christ was not a Theudas, nor a Judas of Galilee, nor a dispersed man. Jesus Christ was Jesus Christ. He was Himself, and not another. Jesus Christ had been promised in every page of the Law and the Prophets+ and the Psalms, all of which were daily text-books in Gamaliel’s school. And Jesus Christ had come, and had fulfilled, and that a thousand times told, every jot and tittle of all that had been Prophesied and promised concerning Him. And Gamaliel had been set in his high seat by The GOD of Israel in order that he might watch for the Coming Messiah, and might announce His Coming to the People of Israel…but still kept his seat in the Sanhedrin all through the arrest, the trial, The Crucifixion, The Resurrection, and The Ascension of Jesus Christ..and we all make Gamaliel’s tremendous and irreparable mistake when we approach Jesus Christ and His Cause and His Kingdom as a matter of policy, and when we handle Him as a matter open to argument and debate. He is an Ambassador of Reconciliation.
We are simply not permitted to sit in judgment on Almighty GOD, and His Message of Mercy to us….Speaking philosophically and politically and ecclesiastically, Gamaliel was a liberal..he was all for toleration, and for a free-church in a free state, in an intolerant and persecuting day…
Peter would summon all Jerusalem to repentance in spite of the prison, the scourge and the cross…” pp.220-221.
+ Isaiah 8:20. Amen.