Here's trying to put a positive light on a difficult decision made recently, which I quote here for the first time publicly, that challenges true from false Christian spiritual renewal...
My leaving the Anglican Church in January of this year is really a statement of an indictment, (especially) against the Diocese of Montreal, Ottawa and Toronto where I have experience personally. It is also addressed to the Canadian Anglican Church at large (and according to Canterbury, they too have issues here) and it concerns its often divisive, unpastoral and imbalanced imposition of a now rampant and hollow influential contemporary ideology called-- (and a heresy in its many forms) of a kind of pseudo secular liberalism--which has crossed the line of no return in its pervasiveness throughout its ecclesial canons, hierarchy and clergy leadership.
Sadly, I have watched so many good people leave this church tradition (or decide not to join it) because of it, over the years, and have seen and experienced how true church renewal in the Spirit has been stymied or blocked one way or another, time and again to the detriment and growth of its laity and church.
I often asked myself—‘whose best interests did this serve?’ Was it truly for the common good of the Church as a whole or the vested interests of a few?
This is especially grievous to me because I joined it as an ecumenical statement of a vocation to Christian unity—as a personal witness for the possible greater good of all the Universal Church. I thought I was promoting (at least in part) the noble initiative of a ‘bridge church’ between Catholics and Protestants which I still believe was once its true and higher calling...
Not any more, with its (power) obsession for relevant political activism (and the incessant predominance of the Gay Rights agenda which has been allowed to dominate the Church over the Gospel priority of the love and unity of the brethren), we are left pretty well these days, with a side dish of eclectic spirituality thrown in for good measure as progressive thought.
And as a result, it has now lost in large part its evangelical and anglo-catholic contingent--that large elephant in the room no one wishes to talk about (and which means there is nothing and no one to offset its ultra-liberal agenda which surprisingly is not the whole Gospel, or some might say, is not even the Gospel)...
Needless to say, it does not bode well for its future or survival as a so-called ‘Christian’ entity (let alone as an orthodox, pastoral and caring tradition especially in how it treats its clergy who genuinely seek to live a spiritual 'via media' inspite of the liberal/conservative divide). I could not in all honesty bury my head in the sand or tolerate this state of affairs any longer as a practicing Christian who has always sought the reconciliation and unity of the Body of Christ, as divided as it is, but was once united officially for the first thousand years of its life and hopefully will be before Christ's Second coming...
As regards a true ecumenism for today's global world in crisis, see my article on this web site under a 'Renewed Ecumenism'.
With Sincerest Condolences,
--the former Rev. R.S. Gariepy
My leaving the Anglican Church in January of this year is really a statement of an indictment, (especially) against the Diocese of Montreal, Ottawa and Toronto where I have experience personally. It is also addressed to the Canadian Anglican Church at large (and according to Canterbury, they too have issues here) and it concerns its often divisive, unpastoral and imbalanced imposition of a now rampant and hollow influential contemporary ideology called-- (and a heresy in its many forms) of a kind of pseudo secular liberalism--which has crossed the line of no return in its pervasiveness throughout its ecclesial canons, hierarchy and clergy leadership.
Sadly, I have watched so many good people leave this church tradition (or decide not to join it) because of it, over the years, and have seen and experienced how true church renewal in the Spirit has been stymied or blocked one way or another, time and again to the detriment and growth of its laity and church.
I often asked myself—‘whose best interests did this serve?’ Was it truly for the common good of the Church as a whole or the vested interests of a few?
This is especially grievous to me because I joined it as an ecumenical statement of a vocation to Christian unity—as a personal witness for the possible greater good of all the Universal Church. I thought I was promoting (at least in part) the noble initiative of a ‘bridge church’ between Catholics and Protestants which I still believe was once its true and higher calling...
Not any more, with its (power) obsession for relevant political activism (and the incessant predominance of the Gay Rights agenda which has been allowed to dominate the Church over the Gospel priority of the love and unity of the brethren), we are left pretty well these days, with a side dish of eclectic spirituality thrown in for good measure as progressive thought.
And as a result, it has now lost in large part its evangelical and anglo-catholic contingent--that large elephant in the room no one wishes to talk about (and which means there is nothing and no one to offset its ultra-liberal agenda which surprisingly is not the whole Gospel, or some might say, is not even the Gospel)...
Needless to say, it does not bode well for its future or survival as a so-called ‘Christian’ entity (let alone as an orthodox, pastoral and caring tradition especially in how it treats its clergy who genuinely seek to live a spiritual 'via media' inspite of the liberal/conservative divide). I could not in all honesty bury my head in the sand or tolerate this state of affairs any longer as a practicing Christian who has always sought the reconciliation and unity of the Body of Christ, as divided as it is, but was once united officially for the first thousand years of its life and hopefully will be before Christ's Second coming...
As regards a true ecumenism for today's global world in crisis, see my article on this web site under a 'Renewed Ecumenism'.
With Sincerest Condolences,
--the former Rev. R.S. Gariepy