Inside Vancouver
A House Divided
By Jonathan Graham published Sep 1, 2008
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On a Sunday morning earlier this year, hundreds of Anglicans pour through the doors of St. John’s Shaughnessy Church. The stately grey building at the corner of Granville and Nanton is home to a well-heeled and diverse congregation: parents with a clutch of teenage sons, elderly women in wheelchairs, youthful couples. Sitting near the front with her husband is soft-spoken, 72-year-old Gail Stevenson, who has attended the church her whole life. Closer to the back, sitting all by himself, is 46-year-old Steve Schuh. Many of the parishioners sit in the same pew week after week—pews that may soon be pulled out from under them.
“ I need to say,” the rector of St. John’s, Reverend David Short, sermonizes in his Australian accent, “that some of us are anxious about our buildings right now. It seems our diocese wants to take them away from us. In the last weeks, there are congregations that, through court decisions, have been made to move out.” Indeed, in early June, an Anglican parish in Victoria had its building taken away after declaring its independence from the local diocese. “But here is the question for us this morning,” Short goes on, standing at the wooden pulpit. “Is St. John’s the building? Or is it you, the people?”
The question is not merely philosophical. The Anglican church’s growing acceptance of gay marriage is dividing congregations worldwide along liberal/conservative fault lines, and the physical churches are caught in the schism. In Vancouver alone, more than $20 million in property is at stake in the fight between the Diocese of New Westminster and its rebellious conservative congregations.
St. John’s Shaughnessy, one of four Vancouver parishes that have broken with the diocese over gay unions, occupies the epicentre of this country’s Anglican crisis: it is the largest, wealthiest Anglican parish in Canada, and it includes famed clergymen and high-profile parishioners—like locals MPs and former mayor Phillip Owen—who donate nearly $2 million to the church annually. St. John’s has abandoned the Anglican Church of Canada to join a parallel but distinctly more conservative organization of 18 churches: the Anglican Network in Canada, or ANiC.
These conservatives are welcome to leave the Anglican Church of Canada, New Westminster bishop Michael Ingham has said, but they should not expect to take the property with them. To Ingham and his chancellor—his legal counsel—the dispute is a simple property disagreement. But the conservatives frame it differently. According to Cheryl Chang, a member of St. John’s and ANiC’s chancellor, it is the congregation—not the diocese—that is upholding historical Anglican doctrine (i.e., treating homosexuality as a sin) and thus is deserving of the property trust. This specific fight may be over a piece of real estate in Shaughnessy, but its root causes, according to the conservatives, are written in the heavens.
“ In the end, brothers and sisters,” Reverend Short’s sermon concludes, “that is what it is all about. Whether we will stand on the foundation made for us in Scriptures. Whether we will trust Christ.” The conservatives describe it as a theological divorce. And, as in many divorces, the biggest fight is over who gets the house.
THE FIRST SERVICE of the future St. John’s was held in a small wooden building in the early 1920s, attracting perhaps a dozen people each week—as many as 50 at Easter. The church grew, and in 1925 a larger building was erected, with the then-bishop of New Westminster delivering its first service to a congregation of 200. The numbers climbed. A still-larger building with a capacity of over 500—the one being fought over today—was dedicated in 1950. The $200,000 construction costs were raised by the parish.
But things changed in December 1978, when Harry Robinson walked through the door. Attendance was stagnant and money short, with the church “running on bingo,” as Robinson puts it. So the newly hired rector, with his charisma and evangelical background, rolled up his sleeves and got to work.
Now retired and living on Mayne Island, Robinson says he would have been described 30 years ago as a “low churchman,” meaning he ignored Anglican orthodoxy and emphasized biblical teachings. He didn’t impress the old-school parishioners. A portion of the congregation—elder members, mostly—began to trickle out. Within a month of his arrival, the choir and organist had quit.
