Canadian freeze

Christian theologian J.I. Packer threatened with suspension by global Anglican Communion | Edward E. Plowman

Regent College

Further evidence of the escalating crisis in the global Anglican Communion came in a recent letter threatening suspension for one of the world's most esteemed Christian theologians: J.I. Packer. The author of Knowing God and general editor of the English Standard Version of the Bible, Packer has been an ordained clergyman in the Church of England since the 1950s. But now the Canadian Bishop of New Westminster, Michael Ingham, in a February letter declared Packer, 81, "to have abandoned the exercise of ministry" after the Vancouver church where he is a member voted to separate from the diocese and join the Anglican Province of the Southern Cone under the oversight of Anglican Archbishop Gregory Venables.

The largest congregation in the Anglican Church in Canada (ACC), St. John's Shaughnessy has voted overwhelmingly to leave the ACC. A dozen or so other ACC churches across Canada also are in the process of leaving, or have left, and others are expected to join the exodus.