Tag Archives: Anglican Church of Canada

The Anglican Church of Canada, social services agency

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The Anglican Church of Canada, having spent many decades trying to persuade us that man’s yearning for transcendence can be satisfied by installing a solar panel and buying a Prius, is continuing to transform itself into a social services agency by converting its buildings into apartments. The latest effort hails from Winnipeg where St. Matthew’s is, so we are told, excited by the fact that it worships in a small corner of the former church building. This must be what revival means in the ACoC.

Fittingly, Fred Hiltz was installed as Primate at St. Matthew’s; clearly he has taken St. Matthew’s decline to 80 parishioners as inspiration for the direction of the entire denomination.

From here:

The congregation at St. Matthew’s Anglican Church is excited to worship in what is only a small corner of the grand brick edifice that once was the largest Anglican church building in Winnipeg.

That’s because the remainder of St. Matthew’s Anglican Church has been converted into 25 low-income apartments, a $7.3-million project under construction for nearly three years.

For recalcitrant Anglicans who remain unmoved by these stirring tales of the Soviet style conversion of churches into apartments, there is this magnificent Hiltzian denunciation of all things not green. An unnamed source high in the Chinese Politburo – they are keen observers of ACoC policies – told me, on the condition of remaining anonymous, that the Standing Committee is so moved by this panegyric to renewing the face of the earth (heaven and hell having long ago been extirpated from the ACoC) that they immediately plan to stop building smog spewing coal fired power plants – currently expanding at the rate of two per week.

New Satanic Temple in Detroit

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From here:

The Temple says its mission is to “actively provide outreach, to lead by example, and to participate in public affairs wheresoever the issues might benefit from rational, Satanic insights.”

It didn’t expand on those “insights” on its website.

Blackmore said the temple’s plans for Michigan include offering same-sex wedding ceremonies and advocating for women’s rights — in particular, opposing on religious grounds the informed consent laws requiring that women receiving abortions be given certain information.

Delete the word “Satanic” from the first sentence and replace it with “Anglican Church of Canada” or “TEC” and you will note that the article is just as believable; that is because they appear to have much the same mission.

Keeping Anglicans Talking

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Keeping Anglicans Talking – KAT – is a series of videos by the Anglican Church of Canada to promote, once again, the opposite of what is needed: I have been waiting in vain for Shutting-up Anglicans Talking, the far more apposite, SHAT.

The first videos concentrate on collecting more money; that’s a real shocker.

From here:

Keeping Anglicans Talking (KAT) is a new online video resource featuring short, compelling talks by notable Anglicans. Each talk touches on a different aspect of how Anglicans are living out the Marks of Mission locally and globally.

The first round of ten videos is now live at the KAT website and focusses on stewardship, giving, and mission.

Anglicans want bishops to become weathermen

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A survey response from 120 Anglicans demands that their bishops “become fluent with the science of climate change”; this, they said will be “prophetic”. That is a good point. Anglican bishops have had years of valuable experience: the only thing less reliable than weather forecasts are prophecies from Anglican bishops.

From here:

“What sort of leadership in response to global climate change would you hope to receive from a group of Anglican bishops and archbishops?”

This question garnered over 120 responses from Anglicans Communion-wide when posed early in July by the Anglican Communion Environmental Network (ACEN).

[….]

So what do respondents name as priorities? They certainly want the bishops to be bold, vocal and to speak with a sense of urgency. The word “prophetic” appears again and again. Otherwise the bishops should be “visionary, courageous, strong, uncompromising, wise, discerning, proactive and humble.”

To whom should they speak? Both to the Church but also to civil society, governments, industry and policy makers. Many respondents cited visible and consistent dialogue with other Churches and like-minded organisations as essential.

Respondents want bishops to do their homework and become fluent with the science of climate change and work very much in public with national and international bodies. One respondent urged the bishops to “use the bully pulpit to galvanize folks in the pew and others to realise this is a real disaster in the making.” Others want bishops to join marches and go public with their personal commitments. Many want the bishops, all bishops, clergy and lay leaders to live in a different and noticeable way.

In an era of horrifying and grotesque Christian persecution, it’s comforting to see Anglicans concentrating on what is really important.

Anglican Church in North America vs. Anglican Church of Canada Sunday Attendance

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An interesting article from VOL about the rise of ACNA and decline of the ACoC.

There is a book by Dr. Marney Patterson called Suicide – The Decline and Fall of the Anglican Church of Canada? Even the bastion of Canadian liberalism, the Globe and Mail, has managed to notice what the ACoC has not: Anglican Church facing the threat of extinction.

Read it all here:

The upstart Anglican Church in North America (ACNA) is set to surpass the Anglican Church of Canada (ACoC) in Average Sunday Attendance, if it has not already done so.

New figures obtained by VIRTUEONLINE (www.virtueonline.org) reveal that over the past two years the ACNA has steadily gained in numbers, while the ACoC, which has been on a steady decline since the beginning of the 21st Century, is now rapidly declining even as it attempts to position itself as a major global player in talks on reconciliation in the Anglican Communion.

In 2001, the ACoC claimed an annual Average Sunday Attendance of 162,138. By 2007, the last year official figures could be obtained, the ASA had dropped to 141,827 a drop of 19,311.

The total number of Anglicans on parish rolls in 2007 was 545, 957. The total number of Anglican parishes was 1,676. The true barometer of health is, however, Average Sunday Attendance.

Based on attrition rates in 2007, including loss of membership to the Anglican Network in Canada (ANiC), death, moving to other denominations and parish closures, now estimated to be some 300, Average Sunday Attendance, based on annual losses of about 3044, (between 2007 and 2014) the estimated attendance in 2014 in all churches in all provinces would, in fact, be closer to 100,000!

By contrast, the Anglican Church in North America, which officially birthed in St. Vincent’s Cathedral, Bedford, Texas in 2009 under the authority of the Bishop of the Anglican Diocese of Pittsburgh, Robert Duncan, reveals a missionary Anglican denomination of some 983 congregations and a membership of 112,504 with an Average Principal Service Attendance (APSA) of 80,471. That compares to 700 known congregations in June of 2009. This is a 40 per cent growth in absolute numbers of congregations. 105 new congregations were reported (in the 2013 congregational/diocesan reports) as anticipated start-ups in 2014.

The figures for last year (2013) do not include some 230 congregations which did not get reports in, therefore these figures are actually higher.

[….]

Newspaper headlines can now be found which read, “The Decline and Fall of the Anglican Church of Canada.”

In 1961, 1.3 million people attended an ACoC church; making the average yearly number of those exiting the ACoC around 20,300 people. If one assumes a constant number of people exiting per year, one ends up with no one left by the year 2025!

The deeper question is why, and the answer is not too difficult to come by. The ACoC is bent on proclaiming a gospel quite different from that of its immediate rival, The Anglican Network in Canada (ANiC), which proclaims itself a missionary diocese out to proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ, making and baptizing disciples, and spreading the gospel of the kingdom.

Anglican Church of Canada clergy agitate to legalise prostitution

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Canada’s Bill C-36 proposes the oddly asymmetrical arrangement of criminalising the buying and advertising of a prostitute’s services but not criminalising selling them. This, we are told, will help protect “exploited persons” and “communities”.

I’m not particularly convinced that it will work – if it’s illegal to buy something, how can it legal to sell it? – but it seems to me that at least the intention behind it is benign.

According to a collection of over 30 Anglican clergy, nuns and academics, though, the bill itself is the immoral component in all this: not the prostitutes, the customers, the pimps or the act of prostitution itself, but the bill. They have written an Open Letter, the most potent agent of social change known to man –  especially when it’s signed by clergy. Read the whole thing but, to summarise: the bill infringes on prostitutes’ rights; it will drive prostitution “underground” – by that argument everything should be legal; no-one asked prostitutes what they wanted – better not ask this ex-prostitute, and – now we get to the nub of the matter – poverty compels women to become prostitutes, so it’s all the Harper government’s fault for not ushering in Instant Utopia.

If anyone is wondering what the ecclesiastical solution is, it’s to legalise all aspects of prostitution:

Rev. David Opheim, who runs a drop-in centre for women and transgender sex workers at the All Saints Church-Community Centre in Toronto, says that prostitution must be legalized in order to make the sex trade safer. “You don’t bring about change by over-regulating and over-legislating and not listening to people,” he says.

How in heaven’s name legalising prostitution with its attendant horrors of sex trafficking makes any sense from a Christian perspective is entirely beyond the reach of sanity and reason – just like the signatories to the open letter.

The real problem, apparently, is that we are uncomfortable with talking about “unconventional types of sexual expression”, although “we like to do it”. By “we” Rev. Opheim must mean his fellow clergy:

One of the main reasons for the differences of opinion among Christians is that they aren’t typically comfortable with unconventional types of sexual expression, Opheim says. “It’s one of the tragedies of the ways Christian theology has unfolded through the ages. We like to do it, but we don’t like to talk about it.”

Those who have signed the letter all adhere to a dogma-free version of Christianity, particularly, in this context, any discernibly coherent standard of sexual mores – we well know how the clergy loath them:

“There’s a large number of people who follow a particular Christian doctrine who feel they must impose all of their dogma on everybody else. From my perspective and the friends of mine who have signed this letter, we don’t come from that place.”

As a rector friend of mine likes to remind anyone who will listen, the ’60s were not about principles at all: they were about everyone screwing around. The Anglican Church of Canada has finally caught up to the ’60s.

More Anglican Church of Canada statistics

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The Anglican Church of Canada published the following statistics for 2001:

acoc2001In 2007 the numbers looked like this:

acoc2007The “Members on Parish Rolls” number has little meaning since, for example, I am still counted as being a member of the Diocese of Niagara. The more meaningful number, “Confirmed on Parish Rolls” is missing for some dioceses for 2007 so 210,094 is low – probably not that low, though.

The diocese of Nova Scotia has seen a rather startling Average Sunday Attendance decline of 63% in 6 years and the number of Regular Givers in Quebec has declined by 66%.

The 2001 and 2007 numbers for some of the dioceses – Niagara, Fredericton, Calgary, BC [updated] and Saskatchewan – are suspiciously identical, so they are almost certainly inflated for 2007.

Note that the ANiC split occurred in 2008 so the post 2008 figures for the Anglican Church of Canada will be even bleaker.

Anglican and Lutheran leaders meet to compare notes on who is in steeper decline

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The leaders of the North American Anglican and Lutheran Churches recently met in Toronto to discuss mission. With each denomination in dramatic decline – the Anglican Church of Canada had a pitiful average Sunday attendance of around 141,000 in 2007 – it only makes sense that they pool their survival strategies, known as “mission” in ecclesiastical parlance, to attempt to eke out an existence at least until the current generation of clergy start collecting their pensions.

This “renewed focus on mission” has created a sense of “renewed energy”, apparently; to paraphrase Dr Johnson, nothing concentrates the mind as effectively as the prospect of one’s imminent demise.

As part of the plan to demonstrate that the denominations are still relevant and to allay the suspicion that the meeting was entirely self-serving, the leaders have promised to issue a joint statement on climate change. Many of us have been waiting agog with anticipation for a joint Anglican-Lutheran statement on climate change: if that doesn’t fill the pews, nothing will.

Fred Hiltz is confident that conflict around same-sex marriage is not as all-consuming as it used to be. This shouldn’t be too surprising since most of those who disagree with the church’s determination to bless same-sex unions have either left, died or are too exhausted to argue any more.

four-wayFrom here:

When the heads of the Anglican and Lutheran Churches in North America met recently in Toronto, a common theme emerged when they shared developments in their respective churches: all felt a sense of “renewed energy” that they attributed to a “renewed focus on mission.”

One of the big things he heard, said Archbishop Fred Hiltz, primate of the Anglican Church of Canada, was that, “We’re in a different place…Notwithstanding the fact that there’s still some tension within our churches around human sexuality, we could all say, ‘we’re in a much less conflicted place.’”

While conflicts around same-sex blessings and same-sex marriages remain, “it’s not all consuming compared to, say, a few years ago,” said Hiltz in an interview.

Hiltz, along with Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada Bishop Susan Johnson, Episcopal Church Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori, and Evangelical Lutheran Church in America Presiding Bishop Elizabeth Eaton met in Toronto July 2 and 3. The meeting was the fifth of informal talks colloquially known as the “Four-Way” dialogue.

Anglicans can’t afford a float in Toronto’s World Pride Parade

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I imagine you are pretty upset about that; I know I am.

From the Proud Anglicans Facebook page:

As midnight May 2nd approaches Proud Anglicans have been registered in the World Pride Parade. We are “marching contingent” only. I know this is not perfect and we have had a float for the past few years but due to rising costs and less money available to us this is the best we can do.

In past years the float has been a tourist bus:

Bus

The cost of participating with the bus would amount to about $3000, apparently. I find it extraordinary that a church that has done so much to attract Proud Anglicans has not managed to attract enough of them to contribute a trifling $3000 to an event that is evidently so dear to their hearts.

The Anglican Church of Canada reckons earning $11 per hour is an offence against human dignity

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In June 2014, Ontario’s minimum wage rose to $11 per hour. Unsurprisingly, the Anglican Commissariat of Canada is not happy about this. According to Rev. Maggie Helwig, Proverbs 22:2 has it wrong: people derive their dignity not from the fact that God made them in his image but from how much money they earn. Earning $14 per hour is what is needed to maintain human dignity. The exact demarcation point where indignity ends and dignity begins remains a mystery, although I suspect it will always be a little higher than the current minimum wage.

rev-maggie-helwigFrom here:

“It is an offense against human dignity when people can work full-time year round yet still live in poverty,” says Maggie Helwig from the Anglican Church of Canada. “As communities of faith, we expect Kathleen Wynne to fulfill her promise to create good jobs and leave no one behind by raising the minimum wage to $14.”

I am quite sure that Rev. Helwig owns numerous electronic gadgets made by Chinese workers earning $1.50 an hour; I wonder what she thinks about that?