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   I wish I could find a podium from which to reach the “silent majority” of the Anglican Church of Canada. By this I mean those Canadian Anglicans who, whatever their doctrinal convictions or liturgical preferences, still grieve, as I do, over the demise of the tolerant, comprehensive church we once knew and loved.

These thoughts are occasioned by the arrival, a few days ago, of a mailing from the Prayer Book Society of Canada, Toronto Branch. For several years I served on the executive of this organization, which had published the talk I gave in 1993 at Wycliffe College on Liturgy and the Role of the Worshiper (Rejoyce Publishing, 1995).

But that was then, and this is now. Today the Prayer Book Society is in partnership with Anglican Essentials, a militantly doctrinaire group which is fomenting division within our church and positioning itself to lay claim to the legal title of “The Anglican Church of Canada,” should our church ever be declared to be no longer in communion with the world-wide Angican Communion.

What could possess the Prayer Book Society, whose stated purpose is to promote the Book of Common Prayer, to ally itself with such a group? Well, “what goes around, comes around.” Twenty years ago, when the Book of Alternative Services was introduced, those of us who preferred the Prayer Book were made to feel like strangers in our own church. The leading theologian of the day referred to us uncharitably as “beached whales.” Although the Book of Common Prayer remained technically the official service book of the church, rectors felt at liberty to terminate its use, and the bishops raised no objection.

Here at the Good Shepherd, thanks to Bill Linley, you were spared this traumatic experience. But the Prayer Book Society, finding no support in the church, eventually became ready and willing to be taken over by Anglican Essentials. Intolerance breeds intolerance.

The suppression of the Prayer Book is only part of a broader picture. I once asked a colleague in the priesthood what she considered to be the principal issue facing the church today. She replied in four words: “Old church, new church.” Bishop Stephen Neill’s classic work, Anglicanism (Oxford University Press, 1982), is out of print, and I know of no plans to reissue it.

The King James Version of the Bible, which many consider to be the greatest work in English literature, is rarely heard in Anglican churches today. Last year, when I told a Trinity seminarian that I would be giving a course on the Elizabethan Church, to mark the 400th anniversary of the Queen’s death, he asked, in all simplicity, “Was Elizabeth important?” Finally, while I was serving on the joint commission convened by Dean Duncan Abraham to discuss the two service books, I put the question to my BAS colleagues: “Is there nothing in four centuries of Anglican history which you would consider worth preserving?” After a long, embarrassing silence, the Dean interposed, “We shall have to think about that.”

What could possibly explain or justify this apparently suicidal act of turning our back on our Anglican past? The answer, we are told, lies in the end of denominationalism. People today, it is asserted, no longer care whether their church is Anglican, Presbyterian, Lutheran, or non-denominational. What they are looking for is good liturgy, good preaching, a good outreach programme (preferably with a food bank or soup kitchen attached), and daycare. Anything else is unimportant.

Only time will tell whether our church will prosper by turning its back on its own history. But as someone who is still nourished by that history I am as concerned with those who would suppress or ignore it as I am with those who would use it to promote intolerance and division.

October 9, 2005

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