Dissident Anglicans get ready to surrender their buildings
VANCOUVER, BC - Four Anglican parishes that had left the Diocese of New Westminster to join the Anglican Network in Canada (ANiC) have lost their legal battle to take their buildings with them.
On June 16, the Supreme Court of Canada said it would not hear an appeal a B.C. Court of Appeal ruling in November that accepted unanimously the diocese's claim that it owned the property. As is normal in such cases, the Supreme Court gave no reasons for its decision.
That leaves the four parishes - St. John's Shaughnessy and St. Mathias and St. Luke in Vancouver, the Church of the Good Shepherd in Richmond, and St. Matthew's in Abbotsford - no choice but to vacate their buildings and find new places to worship.
“It's time to move on," says ANiC special counsel Cheryl Chang.
“We always knew that we might have to choose between our faith and our buildings. But that decision was made a long time ago, and we stand by it. We'll choose our faith over our buildings."
At issue was the congregations' inability to accept on theological grounds the diocesan synod's 2002 decision to approve a marriage-like rite of blessing for same-sex couples.
In a statement, New Westminster bishop Michael Ingham says while the clergy in the four parishes will now have to give up their pulpits, the congregations are welcome to stay.
“I will work with these congregations to find suitable and mutually acceptable leaders, so that the mission of the Church may continue in these places," he writes. “I pray that in time these sad divisions may be healed."
But St. John's trustee and church spokesperson Lesley Bentley is confident that just about all of their 1,000 or so regular Sunday attenders will choose to leave along with their clergy - leaving the diocese with no one to give toward the cost of operating “a big, expensive, old building," let alone pay salaries.
“They win in the fact that they get to keep the building," she says, “but it doesn't help their revenue stream, that's for sure."
Although the diocese has not set a deadline for taking control of the properties, Bentley expects St. John's will be meeting in a new location - and likely with a new name - in a couple of months.
“There is no doubt," says Chang, “that these churches will survive, just in some sort of different building or formation or who knows what."
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