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Correction of misinformation about women’s ordination
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29 February 2008
Some recent media stories have implied that women’s ordination is somehow an issue in the current crisis in the Canadian Anglican church. It is not.
While the Anglican Province of the Southern Cone currently does not practice women’s ordination, the North American churches which have sought and received refuge under the Primate of the Southern Cone are completely free to practice their consciences on this matter.
Of the eight clerics currently licenced by Anglican Network in Canada moderator Bishop Donald Harvey under the jurisdiction of the Province of the Southern Cone, three are women, including the Rev Desiree Stedman (Ottawa) who holds the prestigious role of assistant to Bishop Harvey.
The real issue is theological: the profound differences on key Christian teachings and the irreconcilable views of the Bible. Even to say the issue is sexuality is a gross simplification. Sexual ethics is merely the tip of the iceberg, a reflection of much deeper theological constructs.
Parishes that have chosen to take such a difficult and serious decision – to seek the protection and care of a bishop outside the Anglican Church of Canada – do so because the parishioners deeply value their Anglican heritage and want to stay true to global and historic Anglican teaching and orthodoxy. They want to faithfully preserve what has been entrusted to them by their Anglican forebears, so they can pass it on, intact and unaltered, to future generations.
These parishioners, while perhaps in the minority in Canada, stand firmly in the mainstream of global and historic Anglican teaching and orthodoxy. Their beliefs are shared by roughly two-thirds of the 77 million Anglicans worldwide. So, it could be said that rather than leaving, they are actually staying – staying true to the fundamental and historic tenets of Anglican Christianity and staying in full communion with the global Anglican Church.
They have acted only after exhausting all possible alternative avenues.
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