Up, down and out in Canada

As I wondered what to call this piece, two ideas popped into my mind. One was the haunting KJV version of Acts 27.27, where we read that before the shipwreck ‘we were driven up and down in Adria [the Adriatic]’. The other was the equally haunting title from old Etonian, social critic, master satirist and beautiful writer George Orwell: Down and Out in Paris and London. Suddenly my own title was fully formed in my mind.

So, now, my story

My wife and I moved to Canada in 1979. Principal James Houston had recruited me to teach theology at Regent College, which I still do. God’s call was clear. Our only uncertainty was where we might find a spiritual home. New Westminster Diocese, of which Vancouver is the see city, was decidedly liberal, and its few evangelical clergy seemed to be keeping their heads down. But in 1978 my oldest friend among Canadian clergy, Harry Robinson, became rector of St. John’s Shaughnessy, nearby where God gave us a place to live. So that problem was solved. Called as I am to be a pastor, alongside my teaching duties, I became Harry’s honorary assistant. (For the record, I am now the longest serving clergyman in the St. John’s team.)

At St. John’s in 1979, a few evangelicals were scattered through the Sunday attendance of some 120. But the congregation as a whole started from cold on the Bible, the gospel, and spiritual church fellowship. At the zenith of Harry’s ministry, however, Sunday numbers were not much under a 1,000, partly due to a fantastically successful evening youth service, but mainly by reason of Harry’s preaching of the biblical gospel and his skill in leading individuals to Jesus Christ the Lord. St. John’s was then, as it is now, the largest Anglican congregation in Canada.

Blessing same-sex unions

When Michael Ingham, dean of the cathedral, sometime global socialist and personal assistant to the Primate (an extreme theological radical who claimed the serio-comic, arguably heretical Primus of Scotland, Richard Holloway, as his mentor), offered himself for election as bishop, he made no secret of his hopes of drawing practising homosexuals more fully into the life of the church. (Vancouver has a very large gay population.) He said, however, that he would only do this constitutionally and with the diocese’s support. Most, I think, assumed, as I did, that this support would not be forthcoming.

But not so. In due course a motion appeared on the diocesan synod order paper asking that the bishop initiate the blessing of same-sex unions. It scraped through with a vote of 51%, which the bishop declared insufficient for action. Two years later, this motion reappeared, and passed again with a tiny percentage increase. The bishop’s response was the same. But three years later the motion was on the agenda once more, and this time the bishop lobbied, sending synod members a letter begging for a decisive majority so that he might act with consensus and the diocese no longer be distracted from developing its larger pastoral ministry.

The implication was that blessing gay unions was a matter of secondary importance anyway. This time the vote in favour was 62%; the bishop said he would take action; and something like 100 of us, who had seen this coming, at once declared that this forced us to see ourselves as out of communion with both Bishop and synod. We walked out to show that we meant what we said. We constituted ourselves the Anglican Communion in New Westminster (ACiNW), thereby indicating that in our view the bishop and the synod had un-Anglicanised themselves, transgressing the limits of Anglican fellowship by their action. I expressed this at the time in a widely-published article entitled ‘Why I walked’. The breach has continued.

My convictions

My personal convictions in this matter, which were, I believe, representative, were reluctantly reached but conscientiously compelled. They stemmed from my understanding of three realities:

* Christianity, the faith of the patristic creeds and Reformation confessions (of which the 39 Articles, historically and theologically, form one), rests on the authoritative truth of biblical teaching. Nothing un- or anti-biblical may be received as a standard of faith and practice.

* Anglicanism, the English version of Reformed Christianity, now internationalised in the worldwide Anglican Communion, is trinitarian, incarnational and Christocentric; liturgical, pastoral and educational; gospel-focused, holiness-oriented and continuity conscious. It rests on an explicit estimate of the canonical Scriptures as ‘God’s Word written’ which, as such, is sufficient for salvation (Article 6), a unity of gospel instruction (Article 7), the final authority for belief (Articles 8, 20- 22, etc.), and coherent throughout, so that as ‘it is not lawful for the church to ordain anything that is contrary to God’s Word written’, so ‘neither may it so expound one place of Scripture, that it be repugnant to another’ (Article 20).

* The Anglican Church of Canada (ACC) is constitutionally based on the Solemn Declaration of 1893, which expresses the intention that ‘this Church… shall continue in full communion with the Church of England throughout the world’, maintaining the ‘Doctrine, Sacraments and Discipline of Christ as the Lord has commanded in his holy Word, and as the Church of England has received and set forth the same in the Book of Common Prayer, including the Ordinal and the 39 Articles; and the determination to ‘transmit the same unimpaired to our posterity’. This does not, of course, mean, that the ACC should refuse insights of new depth and wisdom into God’s truth; it means only that in discerning and welcoming such insights the church must never lose sight of the insights into God’s truth that it has already, and that the Solemn Declaration specifies.

Eight conclusions

Applying these principles to the bishop’s actions, first in accepting the blessing motion three times over and then in permitting gay partners to be blessed as if they were married couples, following together the path of moral holiness, I was left with the following conclusions:

1. That the bishop’s behaviour flew in the face of Resolution 1.10 from the 1988 Lambeth Conference. This, the most recent, most representative and weightiest Anglican pronouncement on homosexuality, while pastorally oriented, excluded ‘acting out’ altogether.

2. That, in terms of the constitution of the ACC, the bishop’s permission was ultra vires and unlawful, since it entailed a novel and un-Anglican doctrine of approval of the gay lifestyle and ignored the global Anglican Episcopal consensus to the contrary.

3. That, according to the apostolic gospel, homosexual behaviour, which runs counter to God’s order and purpose in creating the sexes, imperils the soul, as 1 Corinthians 6.9-10 clearly states, and that the call to renounce it, along with all other forms of known sin, is integral to the gospel message. But whereas the gospel, in summoning sinners to repentance, proclaims the power of the Holy Spirit to keep erstwhile sinners, homosexuals as much as any, from sinning again (1 Corinthians 6.1l), the bishop’s procedure entrenches anti-biblical belief and behaviour among Anglicans and anti-biblical liturgy in the usage of the worshipping church.

4. That it is exegetically and theologically certain, beyond any reasonable doubt, that ‘God’s Word written’ in both Testaments views all forms and frames of homosexual conduct as deeply displeasing to God, and that no alternative interpretation of the relevant passages can stand the test of honest examination.

5. That the true pastoral care of homosexually-inclined persons requires that we urge them to abandon the acting out of their desires and support them with loving fellowship as they seek to live chastely. But the bishop’s policy totally obstructs any such pastoral care.

6. That the synod, the bishop and the diocese need now to repent of the move they have made, and to backtrack on it.

7. That, pending such repentance, congregations will be right to withhold monies from the diocese, as God cannot be honoured by subsidising sin.

8. That any congregation that is out of communion with its bishop on this or any other doctrinal matter should seek alternative Episcopal oversight, that is, a bishop independent of the diocese who will minister to them in confirmation, ordination, appointment of clergy and provision of spiritual leadership.

These eight conclusions, none of which was peculiar to me, became effectively the platform of the AciNW.

No parallels

Alternative Episcopal oversight emerged as the sticking point, for the idea of parallel Episcopal jurisdictions within the same territory was ruled out as long ago as the fourth century, when Constantine made Christianity the most favoured religion of the empire, and modelled Episcopal administration on Roman provincial government. Monepiscopal jurisdiction was thus established to exclude invasions by apostles of heresy. When, early on, the AciNW was offered alternative Episcopal oversight from within Canada, and Bishop Ingham threatened the offerer with legal proceedings, he was acting in line with 1,700 years of Christian tradition. To be sure, the conscientious necessity of protest against one’s diocesan for acting on a view that breaches both orthodoxy and orthopraxy, falsifying the gospel and altering Anglicanism for the worse, seemed to be without precedent, but that was how we were situated. A new pattern of episcopal leadership was needed. In the goodness of God it has now emerged.

Epoch-making fact

An offer of full protective jurisdiction, to be mediated by two Canadian bishops who have left retirement for this purpose, came to us and to others from Gregory Venables, Archbishop of the Southern Cone (the south of South America). ACiNW, having with other congregations become the Anglican Network in Canada (ANiC), has now passed into his care with others from Brazil and California.

A letter from Bishop Ingham, dated May 1, tells me that he is sending ‘a Notice of your Abandonment of Ordained Ministry in the Anglican Church of Canada’ to ‘the Metropolitans and bishops of the Church and to the clergy of the Diocese of New Westminster’. Since April 26, I, with 28 other presbyters, had been re-licensed under Archbishop Venables, I have not lost sleep over this, and I have not ceased to hope and pray that New Westminster diocese will one day be back in shape again.

The globally momentous and epoch-making fact here is that the Archbishop’s initiative in extending large-scale jurisdictional hospitality has broken with the 17-centuries-old custom of geographically exclusive diocesan jurisdiction in a way which, I think, makes its re-establishment impossible. For this is not the hiving off into independence of disaffected splinter groups; this is confessional and administrative re-alignment within the Anglican Communion to secure Anglican continuance in faithfulness. For, as every evangelical and every faithful Anglican knows, preserving the gospel in its purity must come first. All else is second to that.

A personal retrospect from J.I. Packer

So, now, my story

Blessing same-sex unions

My convictions

Eight conclusions

No parallels

Epoch-making fact

Jim Packer

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