From the ANiC newsletter:
Anglican Essentials Canada (AEC) ceases operations; AEC blog soldiers on
Effective 31 December 2011, Anglican Essentials Canada ceased operations. The AEC website states that its board voted unanimously to wind down operations, saying “the mandate of Anglican Essentials Canada (AEC) had been fulfilled and was being carried on by the ACA [Anglican Communion Alliance, formerly known as the Anglican Essentials Federation] and ANiC.”
The AEC blog, which began in June 2007 at the Anglican Church of Canada’s General Synod, continues to keep Canadians informed about happenings in Canadian Anglicanism.
Which brings us to a good question. When Essentials was launched in 1994, I doubt they expected it all to finish with a blog! So I think it now might be a good time to consider what you might like to see in the future.
Back in 2007 this blog was set up to report on General Synod; there was plenty happening, and the orthodox did not have a voice. We’ve done our best to present a perspective that wasn’t found elsewhere (Anglican Planet excepted) in the Canadian Anglican scene, and to give normal people (and even some abnormal ones) a voice.
Roll on 5 years and the landscape has changed significantly. Essentials has become ANiC on one hand, and the ACA on the other. Many decisions that needed to be made have been made. There’s still news stories, but they are fewer.
Speaking personally, I was interested in bringing together a community based news blog when things were happening, people were waking up to the direction the Church was taking, wanted information, and wanted to decide for themselves what, if anything, they needed to do.
I do not believe we are really at that point any more – and so I would welcome your opinion as to what we could do next. Options might be:
1. Retire / archive the blog – job done.
2. Keep things going as-is.
3. Widen the blog to include other content. E.g. wider Anglican news. More ‘socially conservative’ content. Etc.
4. Other……
Whatever your thoughts, we value hearing them. Thanks and blessings,
Peter
Peter – I have really valued and still value having a blog for the orthodox voice in ACoC. Many of us have been asked to stay by the Lord for the time being in the ACoC, and it can get very lonely without the support of others who are similarly placed. I keep checking Stand Firm to see what is happening to the Episcopal Church and it is totally in free fall. They have widened their blog to include wider Anglican content and other relevant news. It would be great to continue like that. However, I understand blogs have their own cycle, and it takes many hours for the admin to keep it up, so I think it is your decision as to whether it should continue. Thank you for keeping us informed. It has been a life line.
I think it would be great if the blog continued on. This is one of the few places that has frequent news updates from an orthodox perspective that points out some of the failings/lapses of the ACoC. Please keep it going.
I would like to see the blog continue as it is, perhaps re-named, but a site and a voice for orthodox Anglicanism in Canada, whether ANiC or for those of us remaining, for the present, in ACoC.
Thanks to all the admins for their faithful sergvice.
John K
alphacanada.org
From the Occasional Christian
Keep going! The ACoC needs to know that there are still those manning the watchtower and reporting on their trangressions.
Isaiah 21:6-8, you have it on Good Authority IMHO
As one who was raised in Canada, became Anglican in the ACoC, and who now is an American living in the USA, I highly value this blog as a way of keeping current with what is happening in Canada. Yes, many of the decisions re:direction of Anglicanism have already been made, but that is true down in the US also. But that doesn’t mean that there isn’t news still, and it certainly DOES NOT mean that there aren’t very, very important decisions still to be made. In many respects, as for the future of Anglicanism, we are only just finishing up the first chapter of the book.
I agree with the comments above that this blog should cover relevant news for both ACNA and ACoC in Canada – just as StandFirm does for the US. Also, I think it would be good to cover Canadian perspectives on wider Anglican news (no need to duplicate what StandFirm does, though – thus go for the Canadian perspective). Also, I would encourage coverage of social/political news from Canada. Canada is much farther down the road of the socially liberal police state than the US is, and, as one who still has Canadian citizenship this is both sad and shameful. But the story needs to be told. Information empowers. Now is not the time to cut the information!
Thanks for all of your kind words! Personally, I am not at all keen to start covering politics, for two reasons. First, on the left right scale I hover somewhere between the Liberals and the NDP – are you sure you guys want stories from that perspective? Secondly, and more importantly, political comment threads can get very nasty very quickly, and I really don’t want to be moderating them.
Please carry on as is. I access your blog to find out what is going on in the rest of Canada from an ‘orthodox’ standpoint. Be blessed in doing God’s work in Canada and thank you so much for all the work you have done so far.
Kate, as a political conservative I’d happily argue with you. I’d even keep it civil…
Please keep this blog going. Between this and Anglican Samizdat I find a connection with other Anglicans, both no longer with the ACoC and some who still are. Of course I am speaking as a person who is in an ACoC Parish without any viable alternatives within a reasonable distance.
And as Kate has already mentioned, I agree that there is no need to deliberately become political. Just remain factual.
@Gordon – I’m sure you would.
Don’t misunderstand me – definitely avoid politics which is just for the sake of politics – i.e. whether free trade is a good idea or not. Rather, what I meant by “social/political news” is more along the lines of, for example, how some federal Liberals are trying to distance themselves from – horror of horrors!!! – someone who is pro-life (http://m.ctv.ca/topstories/20120208/liberals-fear-pro-lifers-trying-to-take-over-weakened-party-120208.html) or when the inevitable litigation begins against churches that refuse to solemnize same-sex marriages. In other words – social and political subjects which have a direct connection with the ability to be a Christian “in the public square.”
And of course us Albertans are all to the right of Genghis Kahn, so we could bicker all day about stuff.
I know what you meant James – and I just don’t want to go there. I may get outvoted by the other three mods, but I’m sure that the ACoC and ANiC will provide plenty enough blog fodder to write about. Besides, if you are after social conservative/political posts, David is already filling that void quite nicely on Anglican Samizdat. He’s also pretty funny!
I’ve been reliably informed that I keep the Diocese of Niagara in stitches.
Apoplexy, more like.
Kate: Not a problem – you are right that one can get those sort of updates elsewhere.
What about opening some discussions about topics we might be interested in but don’t necessarily have a clear answer to. For example
1. How do you share your faith with somebody who sees Christianity (or all Religions) as repressive and intolerant?
2. If abortion was made illegal in Canada, how would we handle the dangerous back ally abortions or the thousands of kids who would now be born who are unwanted by their parents?
For Cathy:-
Your second question deserves a second question:-
Do you believe it is morally correct to kill unwanted children in the womb simply because they are not wanted? Would you not classify this as murder?
The problem is that as a society we have become more and more amoral and live as if there are no commandments other than I can do what I want and to put it bluntly, to hell with anyone that disagrees with me. Society has basically spit in God’s face and we are witnessing the consequences, one of which is legalized abortion for which no reasons for same are required.
Well, I am grateful to you all for keeping us outside your borders up to date with all the happenings in Canada and what ghastly things some bishops get up to. We hear a lot from South of the border, but we keep you in our prayers and it is useful to get the low down from a source other than the more magazine like Anglican Planet and the unctuous propaganda from the official church/ENS sources. Keep up the good work and God bless. Remember John 3:20-21 – information is power and you never know who keeps up to date through your efforts.
I have found the blog to be useful and informative. Please keep it going with roughly the same focus, perhaps under ANiC if it needs a home.
Yes, I agree it should be kept going. Although I’m not a blogger as such, I am a faithful reader of most of the blogging. However, that being said, I firmly believe if it is kept going (and it should) I believe the negativity and name calling that occasionally goes on should be done away with and stick to the real issues of information letting in a positive way as what its intentions were in the first place. Some of the sarcasm that have being on-going in these previous blogs need to be addressed as it hurts rather than helps.
#21: I agree with you. No need for name calling! We have two thousand years of church history or church conflicts.
Kate,
I cannot understand how you can be so conservative in your religion and then stand with cryto-communist socialists in your politics (you know, the anti-lifer, granola-eating tree-hugger, pro-euthanasia, pay everything with some elses money crowd). It makes no sense to me. How you cannot support same-sex blessings is completely inconsistent with your politics.
Eph 3:20 ,
I won’t speak for Kate, but it does occur to me that something similar could be said of your views, the other way around.
I take issue with one position – just one – and I’m pigeon-holed on the left in terms of theology. I take exception wit the rigorous legalise of Leviticus and people think I cast doubt on the whole of the OT.
BTW, conservatives pick and choose what they find supports their argument all the time.
My dad, for example, is always quoting Lev 18:22. He brings it up in casual conversation, in letters to MPs, at family BBQ’s while violating Lev 11:7, but he does not see the apparent inconsistency.
Leviticus is a legal code (a covenant). How would you expect it to be treated?
And who is that covenant with? Christians?
Again? Good grief. Go read the 39 articles again, specifically “Of the Old Testament”. That’s how we prayerfully discern (not pick and choose) what of the OT applies to Christians.
And I made a decision long ago not to discuss politics on this forum, nor will I engage in stereotypeing. If you want to discuss it with me, you can use the blog email.
I have to wonder, though, if the ‘just one issue’ thing really applies. What do you think of Michael Ingham’s universalism, for example? If you think he is wrong, and that Jesus is the only way to the Father, how do you justify staying in a church that hasn’t disciplined him?
And I actually don’t have much of a problem with the government making same sex ‘marriages’ legal, just as long as freedom of religion is still part of the charter of rights. (Oops, I guess that is talking politics. No more of that from me).
Actually – I think I’ll start a new political party. I’ll call it the ‘a plague on all their houses’, or maybe ‘none of the above’. Think it’d fly? That’s pretty much how I think of politics these days, anyway.
Kate,
I take no dispute with you in post 29. I’d add Spong to your list however.
Why stay? I just arrived! I’ve only been an Anglican for 18 months. My own parish is an awesome place – I can’t imagine any other parish. The Anglican Church ameliorates the concerns I have with RCism but maintains a liturical practice and ecclesiology that I am familiar with and cherish.
I can’t imagine embracing the ANiC brand because they have it it for gays and I’m not convinced that they will try and ban women clergy (which means you guys are gonna split again). And those clergy I know who have left my own diocese for ANiC are nutters. I can’t imagine having to put up with them on a weekly basis.
Besides, I’m not interested in fighting or splintering churches. There are enough denominations already. I’ll stay put. Yeah there are some zanny lefties here, but every church has to tolerate its rif raf. The RCs have Gravel. The Epicopalians have that “abortion is a blessing” wacko. We have Ingham. You’ve most certainly got yours. I’ll stay and prosper.
But thanks for the invitation.
Obviously, you feel free to engage in stereotyping. I haven’t found that it results in a very good heat to light ratio on discussion boards, so I try not to do it.
I’m not stereotyping. You guys do it really well to yourselves.
I give up. You baffle me, and this is a threadjack anyway. You want to chat, you’ve got the blog email.
Eph 3:20. Purity of doctrine and church unity are always going to be in tension with each other. People in ANiC made a judgement call that doctrine was getting watered down too much, and we all made a judgement call to join them in leaving. It was your judgement call to stay. That’s fine, but one does need to put thought into how one can continue to have unity with extreme liberal theologians, particular when they have made it to the bishop level. Similarly, all of us in ANiC are going to have to stand guard against the extreme right wing wackos that just want to expound hate. Luckily, right now it looks like our leadership is pretty good but if it started to appear as though a bishop was off the rails, I would leave the church. I don’t agree with every doctrine in ANiC, but I do believe that they are doing their best to be faithful to the Bible.
Eph 3:20 [#27] the covenant was with the Jews. However, as Paul tells us in Romans 11, the Church was grafted into the vine. Without its Jewish heritage, Christianity is rootless. Jesus was a Jew, and most of His earthly ministry was to Jews.
Now, what exactly was your objection to taking Leviticus as law?
Gordon: One of the best pieces of text in the BAS is in the Good Friday service, top of page 316:
It’s hard for me to see the world of theology without a late 20th Century view. With some surprise, I learned years ago that almost everyone in ANIC is actually younger than me. (And not just ANIC; I’m older than Kendall Harmon, for example.) The same generational divide seems to fall around the view of modern Israel; I was essentially raised with the “boomer” view that “Israel are the good guys” (It’s far more complicated than that), while people even slightly younger than me default to “Israel are the oppressors” (and it’s far more complicated than that, too.)
What’s the point of all that? I think that I can’t easily divide the liberal church from its glory days of the civil rights movement in the early/mid 1960s where they were fighting for justice against real and embedded injustice. Like Kate, my politics are more or less left-liberal, because overall I see more good in working for justice than in upholding traditional privilege.
Probably both too long and too short, and as usual, I’m still trying to understand myself.
Eph 3:20. Regarding the church splitting and new denominations. One of the tenets of the reformation was and is that the church is always reforming. We are fallible people that make up the church, and our leadership is fallible, and it means we are going to keep getting in wrong, wolves will keep coming in and messing it up and we need to keep just trying to get it right. Denominations will start, denomination will fail, new denominations and new networks will form, they will go for awhile then something else will happen. The church is Jesus’ to build and he will build it and our job is to roll with what’s he’s doing. Will ANiC split again over something like the ordination of women? It’s possible, some may even presume it’s likely. Does that mean we should avoid all conversations relating to difficult doctrine? I would say of course not. Are there areas where we can agree to disagree? I would say yes. Anyway, what I want to get at it this, denominations don’t particularly matter to me but doctrine does. That is the stance that you will probably increasingly be seeing in my generation (<35 years old). To be honest I'm highly doubt that ANiC would even survive past the current generation of leaders, I'm not even certain that there would be enough interest in the next crop.
I realize that's a little rambly in nature, but it's a mixed bag of responses to what you have said in your above post.
Just so no one things I’m making it up, from wikipedia:
Ecclesia semper reformanda est (Latin for “the church is always being reformed”, sometimes shortened to semper reformanda, “always being reformed”) is one of the basic tenets of the Protestant Reformation, particularly in the ideas of German theologian Martin Luther.[1] The phrase itself comes from the Nadere Reformatie movement in the seventeenth century Dutch Reformed Church and widely but informally used in Reformed and Presbyterian churches today (for example, the French Reformed Church use “Ecclesia reformata, semper reformanda” as motto). It refers to the conviction of certain Reformed Protestant theologians that the church must continually re-examine itself in order to maintain its purity of doctrine and practice. The term first appeared in print in Jodocus van Lodenstein, Beschouwinge van Zion (Contemplation of Zion), Amsterdam, 1674.[2]
The term was also used by ecclesiastical reformers of the Roman Catholic Church who were caught up in the spirit of Vatican II of the 1960s.[3] This latter usage appears in a 2009 pastoral letter by bishop R. Walker Nickless that encourages a hermeneutic of continuity in Catholic teaching and practice.[4]
The phrase (without the est, which is quite usual in Latin) is also put into the mouth of the fictional Pope Gelasius III in Mary Doria Russell’s 1998 novel The Children of God.
The verb tense is subjunctive, placing the action on God. The Church is changed by God’s action, not its own.
Jon – I think you are being pessimistic about our survival chances and leadership. We are over run with clergy at this point, and planting churches all over the place. I think it’s exciting.
Henry – working for justice has to be grounded in the Gospel. I don’t think the mainline churches understand that anymore. (And I do believe that I am older than you!)
I’m not trying to be pessimistic. I think there future looks bright for many of the individual churches. I’m just not convinced that the ‘whole’ will survive as-is for many more decades. I just don’t see any interest in people my age and younger in anything that happens beyond the local church.
Jonathan – I think it will. Biblically faithful Anglicanism will, at any rate. It might not be called ANiC in 50 years time, but that’s ok. By the way, your last comment was held for moderation because of the number of links in it.
Actually, there aren’t any links, are there? I’m not sure why it was held, but it’s approved now.
#38 #39: Yes, the Church should keep on reforming. The Anglican Church in North America is tiny in the universal church. The bottom line is that Jesus Christ is the Head of the Church. I am not too concerned about denominations. Mind you, John Stott remains my faith hero and he didn’t leave the Church of England.
(Kate: May 29, 1959)
We live in a strange world; viewing the US Republican primary makes me seriously wonder what forms of Christianity are being practiced by some of the candidates. It seems to me that there are significant groups trying to roll back everything I regard as social progress of the 20th century.
Justice must be based in the Gospel, indeed. And I know you are literally taking your faith to the street. But let us always remember that uncomfortable parable of the Unforgiving Servant in Matthew 18:21-35. I often think I see people who want to be the last one into the lifeboat – pushing all the others under the water.
I’ve never understood American politics, and the persistent view that it is impossible to be a real Christian and vote left, so I mostly agree with you on that one. My politics these days runs towards ‘a plague on all their houses’.
Henry, how many ANiC folks do you know really well? Tony (who is involved in prison Alpha), me, who else? What are you forming your opinions on? I haven’t met anybody in ANiC leadership in Ottawa who would fit that description.
I’m with Jack. #2
I find the blog useful to keep track of where former friends and parishioners might be and how they’re doing– in spite of the unpleasantness of some of the circumstances, I have not forgotten the positive aspects of days at Saint Alban’s. I fear that I am with Kate politically, both in her leanings and with her preference to minimize politics in the blog. My own position is that a close adherence to traditional (catholic) Anglicanism will naturally keep one on the political left, but YMMV. Our US friends suffer from the absence of an anointed monarch, and their politics is too far from our own to allow for much comparison.
Actually, Jesus was resolutely non political. ‘Give to Ceasar what is Ceasar’s and to God what is God’s’ is the only remotely political thing i can think of that he said.