The following two letters written by an academic who teaches on the faculty at the University of Cape Breton in Nova Scotia says a different story.

God help the Anglicans

Below are the two letters which Dr. David G. Mullan sent to Fred Hiltz when he was Bishop of the Anglican Diocese of Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island.

He has never acknowledged either.

Letter 1

Second Sunday of Easter 2004

The Right Reverend Fred Hiltz, Bishop Diocese of Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island

Dear Bishop Hiltz

Tomorrow, 19 April, I leave Sydney for Paris, where I shall be spending the next four months on research.

When I return, I fear that the Anglican Church of Canada, of which I have been a member since St Patrick's Day 1999, will be a very different institution from that which I (thought I had) joined.

I refer, of course, not to the current reformatting of the Anglican Church in Sydney. Those who have been life-long members of one of these parishes might indeed feel some strain over the process of change, but to this relatively new member, the changes are more stimulating than troubling.

My reference is to the upcoming General Synod and the likelihood of an official change in the moral culture of this church.

This is the third time I have attempted to write to you. The previous two attempts lost themselves in excessive length and (attempted) subtlety. This third and final version will at least have the virtue of brevity.

To get to the point, I am appalled by the attempt to legitimate homosexuality within the Anglican Church of Canada (leaving aside events in other member churches of this communion). That church–I mean the Anglican tradition–I joined has long articulated a three-fold vision of theological authority–scripture, tradition, and reason. Clearly, homosexuality cannot claim scripture; tradition has been strong in its rejection; and as for reason, there is nothing compelling to authorize such a decisive amendment of church tradition.

When I became an Anglican, I did so with a sense of gaining a new level of connection with the wider and longer stream of Christianity than is generally promoted by those churches which owe their origins to the Swiss (and further leftward) branches of the Protestant Reformation. My way of explaining my migration–'conversion' seems a bit too strong in this context–to my students in the History of Christianity is that for me, becoming an Anglican represents a redefinition of my relationship with Protestantism and the catholic tradition. In joining the Anglicans I have not rejected Protestantism, but I have now embraced what came before Luther. In this respect I have been so enriched by Anglicanism. I love its worship, and I relish its potential, through liturgical worship based on ancient precedents, to emphasize the divine mystery.

And here is the terrible irony. When Anglicanism in some manner recognizes homosexuality as a legitimate 'lifestyle' for Christians, it will become a church in schism. Among those dioceses we remember in the Prayers of the People are many which will begin to view us with suspicion and perhaps outright rejection, as is happening now with respect to the ECUSA. As an Anglican, I shall end up less connected with the great stream of Christianity in time and space than I would be if I had remained a Baptist!

I cannot let this spate of post-modern revision of Christian tradition go unnoticed. I care too much for the witness of Christian faith and for the stability and integrity of my newly adopted church to remain silent. I implore you to oppose this drift in our national church life.

Letter 2

12 July 2004

Dear Bishop Hiltz

This is the second time I have written to you about a matter of deep concern. I had hoped that I might have heard something from you about that first missive, but then again, I suppose that unfolding events rendered a reply superfluous.

Clearly, when I wrote first, in April, the die had already been cast, that it was your intention to promote the blessing of homosexual 'unions'. I did not realize at the time that you were in fact one of the presenters of the motion at General Synod, though I suspected which way the wind was blowing. The weekly emailing from the diocese contained supportive announcements of homosexual gatherings at the cathedral, and then there was Bishop Moxley's evasive response to the question about homosexual 'unions' reported in the Halifax print media. The diocesan synod was advised that all discussion of the issue in the days before GS must be such that the homosexuals in attendance must feel that it was a 'safe' place.

This fatuous adjective pretty much sums up the direction that any discussion had to flow, casting homosexuals as a defenceless people in need of protection. Were the homosexuals present in danger of assault? I also noted the lack of any invitation to the rank and file to engage in a local study of the issue, suggesting to me that the diocese did not want to hear any dissenting voices. Just like at General Synod, where the leadership categorically refused to hear from a group of persons who wished to talk about their rejection of their erstwhile homosexual lifestyle. A shameful moment in Anglican history, and one which gives the lie to claims of openness and diversity, notions which have by now been thoroughly deconstructed and discredited.

I was confirmed at your hands on St Patrick's Day, 1999. A year later I began to serve as a lay reader, and for several years could not have been happier. But during Lent 2003 I discovered an unhappy reality–or at least I came to the point where I could no longer hide it from myself–that in becoming an Anglican I had not so much joined a church as a political party. The events of this spring, coming quickly on the heels of the calamitous events in the ECUSA, have only confirmed this sense of what the Anglican Church of Canada has become.

Let me hasten to add here that despite that tendentious term 'homophobia', I am not afraid of homosexuals, nor do I hate them. I have worked beside them, had friendly relations with them, and have never said a harsh or judgemental to word to anyone of them. Nor would I be one to discourage them from attending a church, including that one which I attend, such as that Episcopal Church where I have worshipped off and on for several years during my research trips to Edinburgh.

But 'being nice' aside, nothing changes the fact that the Christian tradition has for two thousand years opposed itself to this form of behaviour. By what authority, then, do we now change our response? The Anglican Church of Canada, in concert with the ECUSA, is acting precipitously, ignoring tradition, the Bible, and the voices of most Christians around the world. This form of Anglicanism has become a 'do-it-yourself' religion, and has divorced itself from the main branch.

The ACC and the ECUSA are now sailing without a map, having rubbished the one which has served for so long. I predict that Anglicanism in Canada, the United States, and probably also in Britain, will continue its calamitous decline, and that membership and giving will ultimately plummet to levels where parochial life reaches a point of unsustainability. The necessity of the union of parishes in this diocese is already a sign of this reality, and will prove to be only a stop-gap measure as the meltdown of liberal protestantism continues to the point of self-destruction.

Much nonsense has been bandied about concerning this arrogant repudiation of the Christian tradition. Some have likened homosexual practice to the question of slavery, a foolish comparison in that the Bible nowhere affirms the essential goodness of slavery, and in fact the New Testament expresses a kind of ambiguity toward what was in itself a very ambiguous institution, given the time and place. The rejection of slavery and the affirmation of homosexual behaviour are apple and orange, whale and elephant.

Others have discussed the affirmation of homosexuality in terms of 'inclusiveness', without pausing to reckon with what consequences might flow from that notion. The Christian faith is inclusive in the sense that there are neither Jew nor Greek, but never do the fathers of our faith indicate that this universality should in any way embrace that which is not countenanced by God. Quite the contrary, in fact, since the New Testament and the patristic witnesses to our faith are perfectly clear about the existence of a strong fence around the church–and we must choose which side of that fence we are on. Homosexuals must do the same as all the rest of us. And I am quite aware of how damnably hard that choice is, because it is so natural to human beings to want stand astride the great existential lines of demarcation.

So, the Bible is no longer a convincing authority on this matter. I hope that you are ready to deal with the consequences of this determination. How will you fight back if a group of people begins demanding church sanction for polygamy, especially in view of the clear acceptance of that practice in some parts of the Bible? And what about other deviant forms of sexual behaviour? You certainly cannot now cite the Bible against any one of them–you would be guilty of upholding an obviously outmoded form of religious authority as a fig leaf over your own bourgeois prejudices.

If the Bible–I am no fundamentalist, but the Bible is the only source Christians have–is an unreliable authority in terms of homosexuality, then it is undoubtedly a useless authority elsewhere. One cannot have it both ways. But I suppose that as long as the New Democratic Party and the liberal wing of the Liberal Party do not demand acceptance of polygamy the Anglican leadership will not feel under any pressure to embrace it, since this affair appears to have everything to do with 'keeping up with the times'. That being the case, surely I would be better off abandoning the church and Christianity altogether, and spending my time and money as an advocate for the NDP or the Liberals. It seems that God speaks through them first, and to the church only belatedly. Let's join the vanguard!

The collapse of authority goes further still. The bishops of the ACC, like those of the ECUSA, have utterly deconstructed their own authority. That authority is moral–that is, it is based upon their fulfilment of a theologically-based mandate, that of the faithful acceptance and transmission of the authentic traditions of the Christian faith. By affirming homosexuality bishops have shown themselves unwilling to accept and assert this moral, i.e. theological, authority. Thus they can now look only to the canons–I the bishop must be obeyed because that is what the rules, the legal mind, of the church demand. My imagination? Hardly. Look at New Westminster, Arizona, Connecticut, and elsewhere in the ECUSA. The Anglican church has now begun to persecute those folks who have been faithful supporters for decades and who will not follow a post-modern leadership into an abandonment of that which they have hitherto been led to regard as the truth–and which the vast majority of Christians around the world, including most Anglicans, continue to regard as God's will for humanity.

So it appears that anglophone, western, Anglicanism, has abandoned its three-legged stool, and has become a new form of Quakerism. By this I mean very simply that the authority of the Bible has now been abrogated by a new revelation which comes to us by way of what we feel. This is a very different church from that one which I thought I had joined, and I fear that another critic is correct when he states that apparently when 'radical' Anglican bishops and their abbetors now speak, they speak of different gods. I am resolved to stay with the old one.

When I return to Nova Scotia from Paris, where I am until 25 July, I will no longer be a member of the Anglican Diocese of Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island. I have now lost–or been deprived of–something of great value to me, and I am in mourning. However, I am not so convinced of my own importance to imagine that this decision will make any difference to anyone else, for as Michael Ingham and David Crowley have made quite clear, it is time for people like myself to be gone.

As I now am.

Sincerely

David G. Mullan

---David G. Mullan teaches history and fine arts at Cape Breton University.