Canada: Conservative Anglicans determined to stay within church

Keith Knight
Interim editor
Nov 28, 2008

About 50 conservative Anglican leaders, including eight young theological students, gathered in Toronto for a one-day consultation on Nov. 25 and emerged with a determination to remain within the Anglican Church of Canada. They came from 16 dioceses across the country.

Rev. Brett Cane of St. Aidan’s Anglican Church in Winnipeg is chair of Anglican Essentials Federation who was quick to point out that the organization is going through a name change. He said that the “Essentials” label has negative connotations in some parts of the country. He said that the federation is loosening its connection to the Anglican Network in Canada (ANiC). “We will still maintain links of fellowship with the network but we will not be organizationally tied together.”

ANiC includes 23 congregations, 14 of which are churches that left the Anglican Church of Canada, and the rest are new church plants. They are under the episcopal oversight of Bishop Donald Harvey, formerly of the Anglican Church of Canada, and under the primatial authority of Archbishop Gregory Venables, primate of the Anglican Province of the Southern Cone. the rest