Canada's Anglicans begin "divorce" proceedings

New alignment offers haven for orthodox members

By Frank Stirk  |  BC Correspondent

Former Anglican Church of Canada bishop Don Harvey came out of retirement to resume full-time episcopal ministry as bishop of the Southern Cone.

VANCOUVER, BC—As the Anglican Church of Canada starts fragmenting into two camps with opposing views on what the Bible teaches about human sexuality, the head of the orthodox Anglican Network in Canada (ANiC) hopes they can at least agree to part “in a reasonable, Christian manner.”

Last month, ANiC moderator bishop Don Harvey announced the network’s split from the Anglican Church and set up an alternative structure under the protection of Archbishop Greg Venables.

Venables heads the 27,000-member Southern Cone, an Anglican province in South America that spans Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Paraguay, Peru and Uruguay.

Harvey and Malcolm Harding, formerly the bishop of Brandon in western Manitoba, have invited Anglicans dismayed by the Canadian Church’s growing acceptance of a rite of blessing for same-sex couples to come and join them.

“It was an answer from God,” says Harvey, himself a retired bishop of Eastern Newfoundland and Labrador, “where we could allow people to remain loyal Anglicans in the worldwide Communion without having to conform to the type of apostasy that the Anglican Church of Canada was dabbling with.”

Harvey’s actions have outraged many in leadership in the Anglican Church.

Canada’s primate, Archbishop Fred Hiltz, and his three fellow archbishops appealed to Rowan Williams, the archbishop of Canterbury, “to make clear [to Harvey] that such actions are not a valid expression of Anglicanism.”

New Westminster bishop Michael Ingham told the Anglican Journal the new alignment was “a direct attack upon the catholicity of the church and the gospel of Jesus Christ.”

In 2003, Ingham permitted his diocese to become the first in North America to perform blessings for same-sex couples. Since September three more diocesan synods—Ottawa, Montreal and Niagara—have opted for the blessing as well.

Harvey says he has told Hiltz that “because a divorce is inevitable,” they must “try to make it as amicable as possible”—and avoid the long and costly court battles that seem certain to erupt over who owns the property of parishes that decide to join the ANiC.

“[Hiltz] has indicated that when things settle down a little bit he’d be prepared to sit down and talk to me,” he says.

But even if Hiltz did join him in such an appeal, says Harvey, “each diocese would still have to make its own mind up. But I hope that there are enough bishops… who will say, ‘Let’s see if we can’t do something in a reasonable, Christian manner about this.’”

“I would like to think that something could be done on at least a civil basis to avoid that wasting of Church resources,” says Archie Pell, rector of Church of the Resurrection in Hope, B.C., “because ultimately, the Church is not property, it’s the people of God.”

Pell’s church was the first to join the ANiC, partly because it had no property to lose. It had been independent since its founding in early 2006. After Ingham dismissed Pell as rector of Christ Church, most of the congregation left with him to plant a new church.

Pell calls it a “relief” for them to again be reconnected to the global Communion. “Almost in the DNA of Anglicans,” he says, “is that sense that… the local congregation is part of the… universal Church of Jesus Christ. Anglicans find it very hard to be an independent congregation.”

One estimate predicts that about 20 parishes across Canada could eventually align with the ANiC.

In December Harvey ordained two deacons in Abbotsford, B.C., despite a warning from Ingham that he was violating canon (or Church) law by not first getting permission to perform episcopal acts within his diocese.

But Harvey insists there is nothing sacrosanct about “very manmade” boundaries. “I know it goes back deep in [Anglican] tradition,” he says. “But anything, no matter how old it is, if it no longer conforms with what Holy Writ demands, needs to be changed.”

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