By Hilary White
WINNIPEG, Manitoba, June 22, 2007 (LifeSiteNews.com) – “No scenario could emerge” from any decision made by the Canadian Anglican Church this week that would prompt the church’s expulsion from the World Wide Anglican Communion says a top spokesman of the Church of England. Canadian Anglicans are meeting now in Winnipeg at their General Synod and are expected to vote in favour of the blessing ceremony for homosexual partners that has already been in use in some Canadian Anglican dioceses.
Kenneth Kearon, secretary general of the Anglican Communion told CanWest News, “There’s no question the Anglican Church of Canada is a valued member of the Anglican Communion. There’s never been a scenario considered that would lead to the exclusion of the Anglican Church of Canada.”
A privilege of the office of the Archbishop of Canterbury in the Anglican Church is to decide who may attend the Lambeth Conferences every ten years in London. Invitation to Lambeth is considered a mark of full membership in the Anglican Communion. Rowan Williams has already announced that he will exclude Gene Robinson from the next Lambeth meeting in 2008, the actively homosexual bishop of New Hampshire whose elevation to the episcopate has come close to splitting the Anglican Communion.
Bishop Michael Ingham of New Westminster in British Columbia is another controversial Anglican figure, and has been accused of using strong-arm methods to coerce cooperation from conservative clergy. Ingham, the country’s leading liberal bishop, has allowed same-sex blessings since 2002.
“The possibility of not inviting Michael Ingham (to Lambeth) was never considered,” Kearon told CanWest.
While most news media focuses on the same-sex issue, some more orthodox groups attest that this is only a symptom of larger theological problems in the church. The Canadian group Anglican Essentials asserts that the threat of schism is really about the general drift away from historical Christian teaching on deeper theological issues.
The group says, “While the motions generally centre on same sex blessing, the real underlying issues are the authority and integrity of Holy Scripture, the uniqueness and divinity of Jesus Christ, and the exclusiveness of redemption through the death, resurrection and life of Christ.”
Many, if not all, supporters of same-sex unions in the Anglican Church are agnostic on some basic questions of Christian teaching. Significantly, Michael Ingham, the country’s leading Anglican episcopal supporter of same-sex blessings and openly homosexual clergy, is also a leading member of the United Religions Initiative (URI), a project to create a unified world religion that rejects Christian dogmatic theology.