WELL THE LONG-AWAITED fracture is now beginning to take place. In February, 15 churches have determined that their future does not lie in the Anglican Church of Canada. Churches both in the Diocese of New Westminster as well as others across the country have now voted to leave their dioceses and subsequently the national church and come under the leadership of the ecclesiastical Province of the Southern Cone. What will come of all of this remains to be seen. But it is undeniable that the church is now facing a critical time. Or is it?

If the various church leaders of the ACC are correct, there is no crisis. Relying on statistical analysis, which makes no distinction between St. John’s Shaughnessy, Canada’s largest Anglican congregation and many of our well-loved, yet scarcely-populated country parishes, the line has been that this is a blip, a regrettable blip but a blip none the less, and that there is no crisis. Is this simply an attempt to diminish the significance of the fracture in our church, or does this sort of response signify something much more serious -- that our leadership does not have a realistic assessment of the situation at hand. Let’s look at the facts.

First, is it indeed, as the Primate states just “a few parishes.” At present there are 15 member churches of the Network, still a small number relative to 2300 parishes across the country. But these are predominately large parishes. Consider this: the combined average Sunday attendance of these 15 churches adds up to somewhere between 2500 to 3000 people. These 15 churches represent approximately all of the Anglicans worshipping in the province of Saskatchewan on any given Sunday. This should put things into perspective.

We are not at present able to calculate our decline in membership on an annual basis, but anecdotally, we recognise that a great many more have left the church in recent years. The Bishop of Montreal in his charge noted that in the last decade, Anglicans on the rolls in the Diocese of Montreal had declined from 23000 to 13000. That is a decline of about 45%. It is unlikely that this is isolated to his diocese; in fact from what statistics we can gather, this seems fairly in line with the National Church average. Not all of this can be laid at the door of the advancing revisionist agenda, but it must be clear that a great many people within the church are not interested in the direction the church is going.

But is it just the numbers that our leadership is unrealistic about? Look at the incredible fracturing of our Anglican Communion. The Primate in his recent statement said that our church is resolved to remain a partner in the Anglican Communion. Yet repeatedly the message from the Anglican Communion is if we persist with this agenda, then we are not welcome in the Communion. With only months to go before Lambeth, Bishops and Primates representing nearly half of the Anglican Communion have either failed to register or have indicated that they will not be coming due to the presence of the North American Bishops who have departed from the clear teaching of Scripture. Is our church leadership realistically appraising the requirements of remaining a partner in the Anglican Communion?

Finally, you have to wonder if our national leadership has a realistic understanding of the situation within our church. In both his Advent Letter and his Feb. 28th YouTube address, the Primate failed to recognise the real source of division in our church. Despite General Synod 2007’s clear message that as a church we wish to deal with the matter at a national level, no action has taken place to end the blessing of same-sex unions in Canada, and there has been no admonishment of those diocesan synods which have indicated that they wish to go ahead on their own. Instead of recognising that these actions are the source of schism in our church and disciplining such synods accordingly, our Primate gives tacit approval, merely stating that he believes “…due process was followed….” The due process for a motion that falls outside of the scope of a diocesan synod’s authority is that it is ruled out of order. Yet another sign that our national leadership does not have a realistic assessment of what is going on in the church.

We do not necessarily endorse the recent actions of the Anglican Network in Canada - what we are arguing is that their recent actions are not the problem - these actions are simply a symptom of the real problem within our Church. It is increasingly clear that the vision of our national leadership does not have a realistic assessment of the growing fracture of the church nationally or internationally nor can they see clearly to ensure that the church that does remain deals with the matter at hand in a fair manner. This inability to face honestly the crisis in the church represents almost as significant a crisis in leadership.  It is time for our leadership to stop the encyclical madness of the last year, and confront fairly and honestly the crisis at hand.