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Anglican Essentials Canada NEWS RELEASE Orthodox Canadian Anglicans Launch New Organization To Show Support for Global Anglicanism Orthodox Anglicans host “An Open Door Conference” to show the Canadian Anglican Church they do not wish to “walk apart” from global Anglican Communion FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: 09 June 2005
TORONTO – Orthodox Canadian Anglicans will gather at the Roy Thomson Hall in Toronto from June 16-18, to show the Anglican Church of Canada and the world that there are many Canadian Anglicans who wish to remain part of the 77 million member global Anglican Communion while the Anglican Church of Canada contemplates the possibility of “walking apart” from the global church.
Anglican Essentials Canada (AEC) is holding “An Open Door” Conference, to mobilize the orthodox constituency in the church opposed to separating from the global Anglican Communion. AEC will launch a new organizational structure at the conference, offering orthodox Canadian Anglicans membership in one of two new branches of AEC, the Essentials Federation and the Anglican Network in Canada (the Essentials Network). By joining one of these groups, people will automatically be a member of the umbrella group, Anglican Essentials Canada. Each of these groups will use their resources to focus on different but complementary tasks to help orthodox Anglicans remain faithful members of the global Communion.
At the February Primates’ meeting in Newry, Ireland, the Primates (leaders of the 38 Anglican provinces) issued a Communiqué unanimously requesting the Anglican Church of Canada and the Episcopal Church in the United States of America (ECUSA) to withdraw their representatives from the Anglican Consultative Council until the 2008 Lambeth Conference (the decennial meeting of Anglican bishops from around the world), effectively suspending the ACC and ECUSA from the Communion. Both the ACC and ECUSA were directed to take the time until 2008 to consider whether they wish to remain part of the global church. In the meantime, they were also directed to appear at a hearing June 21 and 22 before the Council which is the international body that governs the work of the Communion in between the Lambeth conferences.
The Federation will focus on the General Synod vote of the Anglican Church of Canada in 2007, and will attempt to convince the Synod to vote to stay within the Anglican Communion and adhere to Anglican teaching and doctrine. The Network will focus on building bridges with the Anglican Primates to ensure that faithful biblical Anglicans can remain members of the global Communion in the event Canada chooses to “walk apart”. The Anglican Church of Canada and ECUSA have indicated they will proceed with their agenda to bless same sex unions, which has been declared by the Primates of the Anglican Communion and the Lambeth Conference as contrary to Anglican doctrine and teaching.
If the Anglican Church of Canada votes to proceed with same sex blessings in 2007, they will find themselves in the same position as the Diocese of New Westminster which voted to proceed with same sex blessings in 2002, thereby igniting the international crisis. Thus far, 22 of 38 Anglican Provinces have declared a state of impaired or broken Communion with the Diocese. In addition, the Primates have issued a number of unanimous statements declaring such actions to be contrary to biblical Anglican faith and doctrine.
Anglican Essentials Canada expects the Conference to be a major event leading to the renewal of orthodox Anglicanism in Canada and a return to the founding principles of the Anglican Church of Canada set out in its Solemn Declaration of 1893 which specifically declared the church “to be and desire that it shall continue, in full communion with the Church of England throughout the world”.
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