IN THE LAST week of June, over two hundred delegates to the General Synod of the Anglican Church of Canada met in London, Ontario to consider ways to rethink and restructure their denomination.

Governance of the top-heavy but financially-depleted body has become a priority since the church is one-quarter of its former size and shrinking.

Iain Luke from the Diocese of Saskatchewan argued that while the national church from the 1960s to the 1980s led from the centre, “today the engine of the church is the local church, so our energy and resources should be focused there.” 

As canon law stands now Shane Parker, the new Primate, must, within 90 days of his election, give up his role as diocesan bishop of Ottawa and reside near the denomination’s head office in Toronto.    

Synod passed a motion that the Council of General Synod (CoGS) examine how to modify the canon so that a Primate could continue to reside in their home diocese upon election to the primacy.

As a background note explained: “In the world-wide Anglican Communion, the Anglican Church of Canada and The Episcopal Church (USA) are the only two Primacies which do not maintain the role of Diocesan Bishop for the Primate. This has been the case in the ACoC since 1970; prior to 1970 the Primate maintained their previous role as Diocesan bishop.

“Maintaining the prior diocesan role keeps the bishop grounded in the life of a diocese, the basic building block of the Anglican Communion. It avoids creating a ‘fourth order’ of ‘CEO,’ a concept which is foreign to the history of the church catholic as an organic body. A bishop presides, preaches, teaches, raises up, ordains; and needs the diocesan life to maintain that life with a degree of coherence.”     

Even the figurehead of the Anglican Communion is the diocesan bishop of Canterbury. To help a Primate give sufficient attention to their diocese, a suffragan bishop would be appointed. The arrangement would allow bishops who did not want to uproot their families from their home towns, or who could not afford to live in Toronto, to consider standing for primate.     

The revised canon would read: “The Primate may at their discretion retain any Episcopal and Metropolitical offices held at the time of election to the Primacy….”

It will take two synods to change the canon but holding a constitutional convention could hasten its approval. 

Synod voted to create a working group to develop a proposal for a new organizational structure of the denomination and the convening of a Constitutional Convention.

Synod voted to ask that the Primate and the next Officers and Council of the General Synod report at least annually on steps taken regarding the six pathways outlined in Creating Pathways for the Transformational Change of the General Synod with a cumulative report to be delivered to the next General Synod in 2028.

There wasn’t much debate about the six Pathways themselves, but Synod voted overwhelmingly for the allocation of up to $2 million in unrestricted funds for the purpose of pursuing them, and stipulated that “Any such allocation is to only happen consistent with principles of good financial stewardship.” The funding motion had been amended to include caveats—seemingly in light of the news of the signing of a $9 million lease for the relocation of Church House (a move that had not been vetted in advance by the church’s national Finance Committee).

NDAs

When a motion concerning non-disclosure and non-disparagement agreements (NDAs) came to the floor, Chancellor Canon Clare Burns moved for a Committee of the Whole to allow for discussion of some legal complexities.  

The resolution asked in part that Synod “Direct the Primate and Officers of General Synod not to execute any future contract that includes a non-disclosure or non-disparagement agreement with the purpose or effect of concealing details relating to sexual misconduct, or an allegation of abuse, assault, exploitation, or harassment” except under certain conditions.

It also requested that the Primate and Officers of General Synod, “report publicly on the number of NDAs that have been entered into by the General Synod of the Anglican Church of Canada since 2000.”

The chancellor said she had experienced “secondary trauma” in her secular work dealing with over five thousand child protection cases. Yet she also knew the dangers of “specious and unsubstantiated allegations.”

Terry Holub from Diocese of Niagara who has worked for Corrections Canada said he was “fully supportive of the intent” of the resolution but that, as it stood, it was “practically unenforceable.”   

Finn Keesmaat-Walsh from Diocese of Toronto told of a friend who “went through hell at the hands of this church.” To see the final report of her case, the friend had to sign an NDA. The friend told Keesmaat-Walsh, “Don’t let them say they don’t use them. They do.”    

“Victims need the freedom to speak about substantiated abuse,” said Sandra Fyfe, Bishop of Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island, who seconded the motion. “We don’t silence victims or protect abusers.” Reading from the background material she said: “The misuse of NDAs to silence, supress, or shield wrongdoing contradicts the Gospel.”   

The motion was eventually referred to CoGS for “priority review.”    

Youth

Two motions passed overwhelmingly to increase the involvement of youth (16- to 24-year-olds) in the councils of the church. The first was to endorse the creation of a National Youth Council to serve as an advisory board for CoGS. The second was to allow the election of two youth members per Ecclesiastical Province onto CoGS, which would raise the number of youth on Council from 4 to 8. Those speaking in favour of the motion stressed the diversity of youth and the need to combat tokenism.

Creation Care

Environmentalists were pleased with two approved motions. The first was to encourage dioceses and individual Anglicans to “reduce the emissions of greenhouse gases (GHG) from their buildings to zero as quickly as possible, and as safely and realistically as possible, and by 2035 at the latest.” 

It passed in a close vote (109 to 103) with this amendment:

“And, be it resolved that this General Synod acknowledge the challenges present in remote communities, especially the North, and encourage dioceses with historic wealth obtained via fossil fuels investments to share that wealth to support this transition.”

The second motion requested that the Primate, on behalf of the denomination, sign a letter for a Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty https://fossilfueltreaty.org/faith-letter#faith-letter. The treaty lays out a binding global plan to: end expansion of any new coal, oil or gas production; phase out existing production of fossil fuels in a manner that is fair and equitable, and thirdly, ensure a global just transition to 100% access to renewable energy globally. Over one third of the delegates thought it was an idealistic but not realistic plan for creation care. It passed 140 to 76.

Read it all in The Anglican Planet