B.C. Anglicans hear about their church's links
MARITES N. SISON STAFF WRITER
Second part in a two-part series
While some dioceses (like Toronto, whose parish of San Lorenzo has as its incumbent Rev. Hernán Astudillo, above left) have done some work on addressing diversity in their parishes, much remains to be done..
[photo by MICHAEL HUDSON]
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A number of Anglican churches are slowly reflecting the multi-cultural face
of Canada.
For Patrick Yu, recently elected the first bishop of Chinese descent in the Anglican
Church of Canada, ministering to multi-cultural parishes in Toronto is “really
refreshing” because he can learn, without even leaving the city, how people
from other places practise Anglicanism.
For Rev. Cathy Campbell, parish priest of St. Matthew’s church in Winnipeg,
a congregation of aboriginal, Caribbean, Anglo-Saxon and Sudanese members, it
has meant “lots of call to mission.” She adds, “There’s
never a shortage of totally awesome things to do that are worthy and meaningful
and will make a significant difference in people’s lives and the lives
of communities.”
By welcoming new members, most of whom left behind a hardscrabble life and are
still struggling financially as newcomers to Canada, the parish has also been
forced to analyze the issue of stewardship. “We struggle to keep the parish
solvent … We live thin and therefore we live on faith,” says Ms.
Campbell.
The challenge, she says, is that “it’s easy to misunderstand each
other.”
Aside from language and cultural barriers in these congregations, lingering prejudices
and racial stereotypes also come into play, says Bishop Yu, whose former parish
of St. Timothy’s began as an exclusively English one until it successfully
integrated immigrants from the Caribbean, China and South Asia.
It is also a challenge “to find ways of expressing our faith in song and
prayer and preaching that are accessible to the whole,” says Ms. Campbell.
St. Timothy’s has simplified one service to make it more understandable
to non-English speaking newcomers. “These people have difficulty with English
and now we want them to follow a service in Elizabethan English. That’s
just impossible,” says Bishop Yu. Still, he adds, the parish is working
at finding a compromise between “comprehension and what we value to be
our (Anglican) treasures.”
Winnipeg’s St. Matthew’s has been able to make its multi-ethnic congregation
work because of prayer and, says Ms. Campbell, “opportunities for respectful
listening to each other, times to share our stories and perspectives so that
we don’t just come and go as independent people on Sunday mornings.”
Bishop Yu says people must be able to say “I’m going to reach beyond
what I’m used to and learn from others. Just as Jesus says, the road to
fulfillment, paradoxically, is by self-sacrifice and that happens in multi-culturalism
as well.”
A 1993 report commissoned by the Anglican Church of Canada challenged the church to "rejoice in the cultural richness of the worldwide Anglican Communion."
[photo by MICHAEL HUDSON]
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With Statistics Canada saying that about one out of five people in Canada or
between 19 to 23 per cent of the population could be a member of a visible minority
when Canada celebrates its 150th anniversary in 2017, and with the greying membership
of most mainstream churches (including the Anglican Church of Canada), some are
saying the country has become one vast mission field. In other words, the future
of the Anglican Church of Canada could very well lie with the diverse minorities
in the same way that people of British ancestry are no longer the majority in
the worldwide Anglican Communion.
Can non-white immigrants help stave off the church’s diminishing numbers? “It’s
a difficult question. The Anglican Church of Canada will die without new members,
period. I think God will bring those people in the church that God wants to bring
in the church,” says Bishop Yu. “And since Canada is such an immigrant
nation our growth must reflect part of that.”
The Canadian church has traditionally relied on immigrants who come already imbued
with the Anglican faith. Yet studies have shown that even as mainstream churches
struggle with issues of membership, there is a growing interest in spirituality.
This is palpable even at St. Timothy’s. There is no proselytizing involved
when immigrants come to learn English at St. Timothy’s, located in the
Toronto neighbourhood of Agincourt – sometimes called “Asiancourt,” owing
to its large Asian immigrant population.
Nevertheless, participants ask questions about the church. “We actually
found out that we, Canadians, are the ones who were very sensitive, but the Chinese
were very curious,” says Bishop-elect Yu. “The usual question would
be, what are you? Are you Catholic or Christian, which they mean Protestant,
or are you Orthodox? What do you do in church?”
In response, St. Timothy’s has launched a series called Christian Stories,
still with no particular conversion in mind. A typical evening would begin with
prayer, hymns, a reading of simple stories, drama and a discussion.
Since Canada is an immigrant nation, the church's growth "must reflect that" says one observer.
[photo by MICHAEL HUDSON]
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In 1993, the Anglican Book Centre published a study entitled No Longer Strangers,
which was based on a report, Ministry in a Multicultural Society, prepared
by the late Rev. Romney Moseley for the national program committee of the Anglican
Church of Canada. The Moseley Report, as it was known then, was presented
in 1992 to members of General Synod; it was based on a two-year study project
and a series of studies initiated by the diocese of Toronto “to make sense
of the rapidly changing urban scene” in Canada.
The report, endorsed by General Synod, called on Anglicans to “embrace
the Spirit of Pentecost and overcome their fear of their fellow citizens in the
household of God.” It also challenged the church to “rejoice in the
cultural richness of the worldwide Anglican Communion and cherish the links Canadian
Anglicans can have with the worldwide church through those who have immigrated
here.”
Today, nearly 14 years later, hardly any reference is made to the report. While
some dioceses have embarked on their own programs to address diversity in their
parishes, much remains to be done.
Ms. Campbell stresses that there needs to be “a lot of intentional work
in developing leadership, creating a variety of opportunities,” for visible
minority church members.
She cited a local case of the Sudanese young men who are the leaders of their
community but have not had the opportunities for formal education. “Like
many refugees, they are pushing hard to get through Grade 12 not because they’re
not gifted, but because they literally have not had the opportunity to have that
kind of formal education and therefore, have none of that paperwork,” she
says. “So, for them to become priests of the Anglican Church of Canada,
are we then to expect them to do seven years of university?”
Ms. Campbell says that the church’s current models for raising and training
ordained clergy are “not well thought out.” Simply sending immigrants
to theological schools is not the answer because “the models of education
that we have are not flexible enough to include people with English as a second
language,” she says. She adds that a dialogue on exploring new methods
of ordained ministry between theological schools, bishops and visible minority
groups could be a start.
Responding to new ways of ordained ministry “takes time and money,” adds
Ms. Campbell. “I think there are lots of people that are working in crisis
and a survival mode and I don’t think that’s faithful. I think God
gives us the time and the money that we need. And frankly, here at St. Matthew’s,
we work with considerably less of both of those and yet the rewards of taking
the time and making the financial commitments are immense.”
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