Voting with their feet
At least five more Anglican churches—three in British Columbia and two in Ontario—are likely to separate from the national Church over the divisive issue of same-sex blessings by the end of the month. Another four will also vote on similar motions this month. national postThe Anglican Church is a funny sort of organization. On the one hand it is a hierarchy with an area’s bishop holding an extraordinary amount of power, on the other, it is entirely dependent upon its lay members for support.
In British Columbia this is especially the case as the Church has not been around long enough to accumulate significant independent wealth at the diocesan level. It owns real estate but short of putting condos on Church sites there is very little capacity to realize on those assets. Which means, ultimately, that Bishop Michael Ingram is dependent upon his flock for his operating funds.
The issue of same sex marriage and blessing is hugely divisive within the Anglican Church in general and in the diocese of New Westminister specifically. Ingram is well out in front of the Church in his support for the blessing of same sex unions. And the clergy of the Church, many of who are, themselves, gay, are – while divided – well ahead of the People.
While a Bishop has a great deal of power that power can vanish if a sufficient number of congregations chose to leave. And that is what appears to be happening here.
Now I happen to agree with Bishop Michael’s position but I can certainly understand the position of the people who do not. And here is the rub, Bishop Michael takes his position, after years of consultation, very seriously. He has been willing to defy the rest of the Church and his fellow bishops who want a much slower approach. It is a principled position but it is also, as we are seeing, a corrosive one.
At a point, and that point is coming nearer, Bishop Michael will no longer enjoy the confidence of the People of his diocese. He can continue as Bishop in those circumstances – Bishops have tenure even a university professor would envy – but it would be an empty gesture.
Now, at the moment, the diocese is making threats about the confiscation of property and looking for loyalty oaths from its remaining clergy. This is bootless. If you kick a congregation out of a Church all you have is an empty Church.
If ever there was a time for compromise and a recognition that the more conservative views of Anglican doctrine need to be respected this is it. One way out of the dilemma would be to allow a purely local option on the blessing of same sex marriages. Another might be to reserve such blessing to a small number of churches where clergy and People are in favour. At the same time, the more robustly conservative clergy and congregations would have to accept the idea that there is room in the Anglican Communion for the blessing of same sex unions.
Unfortunately, this may all have reached the point of no return so long as Bishop Michael remains in place. Same sex marriage is the lightening rod for a good deal of conservative dissent withing his diocese and within the Anglican Church in general. The tone of the Church, with its unctuous embrace of anti global warming, anti-war, pro-multicult, pro-pc positions has gone a long way towards alienating the Faithful. Combine that with the sidelining of the Book of Common Prayer in favour of more inclusive texts and conservatives have fewer and fewer reasons to go to Church.
Lent can be and should be a time of reflection. Perhaps all of the parties to the dissolution of the Diocese of New Westminister might reflect upon both its proximate cause and the broader issues that cause represents.
I can’t help thinking that this was a little something of yours to send me off. Something a little bitter for me to chew on between cervezas.
Fair enough.
You remain, as ever, an infuriating antagonist on this front, Jay: decent, gentlemanly, moderate … And utterly wrong. (I am not fooled by this appearance of taking a middle line. Given that it is a middle line relative to the extreme left of the spiritual (loose usage there) spectrum which you insist on taking as rote. I’m a little impressed, but not fooled.)
Two trifles re. the above:
1) Many of the clergy are gay? I have no doubt that there are a few, but I’m unclear as to how this factors into anything. They’re all sinners, to be sure, so what of sin then? ... Ah, there’s the rub!
Which brings me to:
2) “If you kick a congregation out of a Church all you have is an empty Church.” ... I wish you would recognize that this is what your beloved Ingham wants. It is the final stage of the neo-Christian—or the Spongian, if you like, as Christ has nothing to do with it—dialectic. When people stop going to church, it means that they must’ve transcended it!
I look forward very much to your conversion, my friend. You deserve it, for all your nonsense.
Ah, Edward, packing, checking the sun screen and now this. Well, I must admit I did write the above with a thought to you.
The problem Bishop Michael faces is that his activists – and from a degree of personal knowledge this includes a fair sized gay contingent – see the blessing of same sex unions as a matter of Christian duty while the Evangelicals who took over St. Johns view it as a deal breaking abomination. And there are more where those came from.
I don’t think Bishop Michael wants empty churches but he has yet to figure out a compromise which has half a chance of succeeding.
And, as I said, the same sex blessing is simply the lightening rod for the disaffection many of the laity have for the various modernizing tendencies which the clergy, straight, gay and confused, seem intent on inflicting upon the Church.
The replacement of The Book of Common Prayer with the various alternative service books takes the Church much further from its roots than any number of same sex marriage blessings. It is a vain attempt to make the sacred accessible when the very basis of Faith is the profound mysteries it embodies.
For me, if I wanted to go to the United Church I would. I don’t and would prefer my own Church not make the journey for me.
My quick and dirty test to see whether a church is jumping the shark: is “Onward, Christian Soldiers” still in the hymnal? Is there a movement for its removal?
...And so we witness the true separation of the church and the secular state…Individual parishes having to break ties with the state-sycophant mother church because of the corrupting influence of state-propagated identity politics woven into church dogma.
The British CoE is the Orwellian model of the secular state using the church as a policy propagation tool…it is an effective “amalgamation” of church and secular state…the CoE being a religious ministry of the crown and propagating crown (ruling government)social policy through it’s bishops as “piety” to the church.
In North America most state “registered” religions are corporate patrons of the state…receiving state dispensation of revenue and land taxes…..this is a powerful hold the state has over the property of the church….perhaps too powerful to resist having church pontiffs engage in a little state policy dissemination.
Thankfully the “colonists” in Canada and the US actually see that the separation of church and state does not mean a separation from Christian morality or gospel teachings in governance, but merely a removal of the church as a tool of control by the state….it was never any other way regardless of what militant atheists say in their revisionist orthodoxies.