VANCOUVER: BREAKAWAY ANGLICANS WON'T VACATE CHURCHES

By Douglas Todd, Sun Religion Reporter

VANCOUVER (8/28/2004)

Two B.C. priests at breakaway Anglican parishes are defying their former bishop's request to vacate their church properties, which are together worth more than $1.2 million.

The two Vancouver-area conservative priests — who recently left the Anglican Church of Canada because they vehemently oppose same-sex blessings — say their congregations have no intention of saying goodbye to the buildings in which they have worshipped for years.

"We own the premises and we're carrying on as usual," said Rev. Ed Hird of the North Vancouver parish of St. Simon's which has about 200 members.

"We're not going to leave," said Rev. Barclay Mayo of the newly renamed Christ the Redeemer Church in Pender Harbour. It has about 120 members.

Both priests say their lawyer, a prominent evangelical Christian named Bob Kuhn, believes the conservative parish members have legal title to the properties and predicts they would win their cases in court.

Hird and Mayo said they will leave their long-time church buildings only if forced out by legal means.

"Of course, we'd follow the law," Hird says.

A spokesman for the Vancouver-area diocese of New Westminster said he hopes the dispute with the two parishes doesn't have to end up in court. He criticized the protesting clergy for being 'confrontational'.

"I think it's unfortunate. It's not of our choosing," Chancellor George Cadman said in an interview.

Although Cadman 'respects' the parishes' decision to opt out of the Canadian Church and operate under the authority of an Anglican Archbishop in Rwanda, he said there is no legal precedent for the congregations to take control of church property since they were asked in July by the diocese to find somewhere else to worship.

The two activist priests are more than a dozen in southwestern BC who have grown furious over the past few years as Vancouver-area Bishop Michael Ingham and a majority of members in his diocese began favouring rites to bless committed homosexual relationships.

Cadman, legal advisor to Ingham, says he has not seen a single case in North America in the past five years in which a congregation that has broken away from the Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox or Episcopal churches has been able to take its property with it.

Mayo and Hird were among at least four BC priests who recently joined their congregations in leaving the Anglican Church of Canada, whose governing body, at the urging of Ingham and others, passed a controversial motion in June "affirming the integrity and sanctity of committed adult same-sex relationships."

On Thursday, Mayo condemned the national church as 'apostate'. He said in an interview he and like-minded Anglicans are tired of "suffering under the oppression it's foisted on us."

Hird said he believes conservative activists in BC will gain international backing for their cause from two major events scheduled in the next month.

More than 700 conservative Christian activists are gathering Tuesday in Ottawa for a conference called Anglican Essentials, where delegates will try to sway Canada's bishops to censure Ingham.

And next month, a top prelate in the 70-million-member worldwide Anglican Communion, Irish Archbishop Robin Eames, will release a report on how to hold together a church that threatens to break apart over the issue of homosexual rights.

Hird hopes Eames' panel, called the Lambeth Commission, will lead to Ingham either 'repenting' his support for same-sex blessings or being disciplined by the international Anglican Communion.

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