St. Alban’s Anglican Church in Ottawa used to house a thriving orthodox congregation that left the Anglican Church of Canada to join ANiC in 2008. A small, less than entirely orthodox ACoC congregation now meets in the building. Naturally, they pride themselves on their commitment to inclusion:
It is the policy of the Anglican Diocese of Ottawa that no one be excluded from any ministry or leadership position, including ordination, on the basis of race, ethnicity, national origin, sexual orientation or gender identity/expression. All are welcome in our Spirit-Led, Christ-Centred, Contemporary Urban Church.
It is, therefore, a source of considerable embarrassment to have to admit that the notorious racist, colonizer and misogynist Sir John A. Macdonald used to attend the church. To make atonement, the parish is displaying a page of self-flagellation, Uriah Heep humility, and faux remorse on behalf of their ancestors’ flagrantly wicked wrong-inclusion.
Read all about it here:
Sir John A. Macdonald and his wife, Agnes Bernard of Jamaica, were early parishioners of St. Albans. While Sir John A. Macdonald is rightly remembered as the first Prime Minister of Canada, he is also remembered by First Nations as an architect of the residential schools, and by Métis for the execution of Louis Riel. Many decisions integral to Canadian nation building undermined the rights and needs of Indigenous peoples, who were the first to make this land their home.
[…..]
St. Albans is the oldest Anglican church building in downtown Ottawa, and we are proud of our Church’s longstanding commitment to inclusion. As Ottawa’s first free church, parishioners of St. Albans did not have to pay for the right to sit in a pew; Sir John A. Macdonald and other government leaders and officials worshipped alongside carpenters and labourers. However, we are not proud of the dispossession, mistreatment and exclusion of Indigenous peoples in Canada, and we acknowledge and repent of our sins in that regard. Through our prayers and our actions, we are working towards reconciliation with Indigenous peoples. We invite you to join us on this journey.
They left. ACOC, are now ANIC, small congregation, sounds like they’re in-between.
I never have understood why and how moderns can repent of the sins of their ancestors. We have enough sins of our own. Shouldn’t we be focused on that?
‘Mass Murder in Canada’ at ‘Brutal Proof’, published May 31, 2021, in which all the complicit Churches are deemed to have been “indemnified…and allowed them to whitewash their archive” by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission,
published by the protesting former United Church in Canada Minister, Kevin Annett;
also author of ‘Unrelenting: Between Sodom and Zion’; and ‘Murder by Decree’.
True Reconciliation always awaits the whole Truth.
Thursday, June 3, 2021,1House of Commons Motion re. ‘Action Towards Reconciliation with Indigenous Peoples’, longstanding advocate NDP MP Charlie Angus, Timmins-James Bay, has itemized not only the inaction of the Incumbent genocidal Government; but its ongoing systemic crimes and their suppressing the incrimination evidence mounted vs. perpetrators, RC Clergy among them, against Indigenous People and their children.
He has demanded, rightly, the immediate resignation of the Minister; and the cease and desist of all of the nine million dollar law suits vs. them;
as Cindy Blackstock also has been pleading both in and out of Court.
The ACC Archbishop of the Arctic has summoned the true faithful in Jesus Christ to penitential prayers of repentance and actions of sincere remedy for this Communion’s own appalling part in these gross evils and crimes deep-died in genocidal racism.