The Anglican Network in Canada - a great burden lifted

Anglican Mainstream
by Chris Sugden in Evangelicals Now April 2009

Canadians are not to be confused with citizens of the USA. Many are descended from those British colonists, and their church descends from the many clergy, who wished to remain loyal to the British crown after 1776 and fled north to put the protection of the great lakes between them and the rebels. Citizens of the USA were “patriots”, Canadians were “loyalists”. Their “Britishness” is perhaps revealed in continuance of a sense of deference to the established order.

One Canadian Anglican clergyman has suggested to me that this meant that therefore the direction of the leadership of the Anglican Church of Canada in taking forward same-sex blessings and related issues was more readily accepted and followed by the rank and file in the church than it would be south of the border.

The Anglican Network in Canada (www.anglicannetwork.ca) numbers 3 bishops, 28 parishes, 62 priests, 11 deacons and a Sunday attendance of around 3500, larger than 13 of the 31 dioceses of the Anglican Church of Canada. The Anglican Church of Canada (ACoC) on a good day claims 70,000 in its pews. the rest

Conservative Anglicans in Canada are planning to expand, says Donald Harvey