Open letter to the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Primates of the Anglican

The Right Reverend Donald Harvey
Moderator, Anglican Network in Canada
5 September 2008

After consulting with my Primate, Archbishop Gregory Venables, I report with great sadness that two Anglican Network in Canada (ANiC) churches under my jurisdiction – St Matthews (Abbotsford, BC) and St Matthias and St Luke’s (Vancouver, BC) – received letters on 26 August 2008, informing them that the Bishop of New Westminster had taken action on 10 July 2008 to seize control of those parish properties. The letters also notified the wardens, trustees and parish councils that Bishop Michael Ingham had dismissed and replaced them and ordered the clergy to vacate the church buildings by mid-September. It is clear that our other two ANiC parishes in Vancouver, St. John’s Shaughnessy and Church of the Good Shepherd, will receive the same action in the near future.

This is the fourth Canadian diocese to act in this way against ANiC churches which have come under the jurisdiction of the Anglican Province of the Southern Cone. The actions of two of the other dioceses have led to the secular legal courts. This latest action by the Diocese of New Westminster almost certainly will end in the courts as well and is particularly ironic given these letters implementing such hostile action arrived the same day we received the Archbishop of Canterbury’s appraisal of the Lambeth Conference, emphasizing the need to build trust. the rest (pdf)