United Church declared guilty of doctrinal deviance
Bermuda’s Supreme Court rules the UCC has wandered from its theological roots
By
Kevin Heinrichs
ChristianWeek staff
BERMUDA–A legal storm over the United Church of Canada’s theology is threatening to blow north from Bermuda into Canada.
In ruling on a complex property dispute involving a Bermuda Methodist church, Bermuda Supreme Court judge Norma Wade-Miller wrote that "the current doctrinal standards of the UCC of Canada (sic) is at variance with the doctrines of the 25 Articles of Faith of John Wesley."
How does a property dispute involving a Methodist church in Bermuda end up ruling on the theology of the United Church of Canada?
It started when two factions within the Grace Methodist Church congregation in Bermuda were at odds over their understanding of the UCC’s 1988 decision to permit the ordination of practicing homosexuals. One faction, including some trustees of the church, believed that the decision broke with church doctrine and therefore broke one of the conditions of the deed to the property: that the building be used for celebration and worship "in accordance with the doctrine rules and usages of the Methodist Church." They argued that the church was no longer under the authority of the Bermuda Synod.
What does that have to do with the United Church?
Grace Methodist falls under the jurisdiction of the Synod of the Wesleyan Methodist Church of Bermuda which, in turn, is under the Maritime Conference of the UCC.
The judge agreed that the doctrine of the 25 Articles of Faith of the Methodist Church is congruent with the original 20 Articles of Faith of the United Church. The legal issue came down to whether the United Church had fundamentally departed from the principles and articles of John Wesley and Methodism since church union in 1925.
If so, the UCC and Bermuda Synod had forfeited their right to control the services of Grace Methodist Church.
Crossed the line
In her 34-page ruling, Judge Wade-Miller said, in effect, that the UCC had crossed that line.
She wrote that "the UCC’s decision to admit homosexuals is a deviation from the original doctrinal standards of the 25 Articles of Faith of John Wesley. I accept Dr. Shepherd’s opinion that UCC has, in its articulation of its formal theology and its fostering of its day to day operative theology, contravened the 25 Articles of the Methodist Church which was written by the late Reverend John Wesley."
 |
Victor Shepherd, pastor of
Streetsville United Church in Streetsville,
Ontario, and chair of Wesley Studies at Tyndale
Seminary, was the expert witness testifying on
behalf of the trustees of the church. He is also
a member of Community of Concern, an activist
group working for reforms within the UCC. "It means the church has been declared apostate," says Shepherd. "The United Church has been put on trial doctrinally and been found wanting. I am pleased that an unbiased observer has ruled what the Community of Concern has said for 10 years…that the UCC has characteristically violated its own doctrine. The UCC denies it, but it takes a secular court to rule what anyone with one eye open already knows." |
| Victor
Shepherd: "The church has been declared apostate." |
Appeal likely
Gordon Ross, a lawyer with the Toronto firm which represented the church trustees, says the ruling is significant because the General Council of the United Church of Canada has always insisted that there has been no fundamental departure from the Basis of Union in 1925.
"In Bermuda, the case was all about who has the right to the church property. Is the UCC upholding the Wesleyan tradition? The court held that [the UCC] had breached from fundamental teaching."
Ross also says the ruling puts into question a past Canadian ruling in a similar UCC church property dispute involving three Ontario congregations known as the Anderson case. They had also maintained that the congregations continued in the doctrinal standards on which they were founded, while the UCC deviated from them by permitting ordination of practicing homosexuals. The ruling, however, deemed that the churches were the property of the national church without addressing the doctrinal issue.
The Bermuda ruling will be appealed, but Ross says the judgement will likely be upheld because the UCC is "stuck" with the evidence it presented at the trial. The fact that an expert witness did not testify to counter Shepherd’s opinions surprised even the judge, as she noted in her ruling.
Ross says the ruling itself is not binding on Canadian courts, but the principal involved is.
Further, an appeal would go to the Privy Council in England, under which Canadian law is obliged to consider. The Privy Council is the highest appeal court of any of the colonies within the empire of the Commonwealth. If a similar ruling is made there, says Ross, it may open the door for a Canadian to pursue legal action against the UCC for abandoning its doctrinal principles. In effect, the argument would go that the current UCC is "impersonating" the church it claims to represent.
The UCC had no immediate statement regarding the case.
