Anglican Network in Canada bishop visits LCC office

Bishop Harvey and President Bugbee

WINNIPEG – On March 12, 2012 President Robert Bugbee of Lutheran Church-Canada (LCC) welcomed Bishop Donald Harvey to LCC’s office for a morning of informal discussions on the relationship between biblical Anglicans and Lutherans in Canada. Bishop Harvey is Moderator of the Anglican Network in Canada (ANiC) and a bishop of the Anglican Church in North America (ACNA), a group which broke away from the Anglican Church of Canada (ACC) and the Episcopal Church – USA over questions of biblical authority, including most visibly the subject of homosexuality.

“One of the remarkable results of the formation of ACNA was the number of dialogues and discussions we were invited to join because others recognized our biblical faithfulness,” said Bishop Harvey. “The inspiring morning I spent with President Bugbee and his staff in Winnipeg is, I feel, the start of a long and lasting relationship as we share ways whereby together we can ‘know Christ and make Him known’ throughout our country.”

The ACNA is in full communion with a number of Anglican churches around the world. At the same time as it functions as a diocese of the ACNA, the ANiC remains under the jurisdiction of the Anglican Province of the Southern Cone, a recognized member of the worldwide Anglican Communion.            

Bishop Harvey formerly served as bishop of Eastern Newfoundland and Labrador in the Anglican Church of Canada (ACC) from 1993 until his retirement in 2004. In 2007, Bishop Harvey relinquished his license in the ACC and was appointed a bishop of the Anglican Province of the Southern Cone. He resumed full-time duties, providing episcopal oversight to Canadian Anglican churches disaffected by the increasing liberalization of ACC theology.

“I am grateful to God that there are Anglican clergy and people in Canada like Bishop Harvey and ANiC who take a high view of the authority of Holy Scripture, including a commitment to the Church’s historic teaching on marriage,” President Bugbee said. LCC has recently engaged in theological discussion with ACNA, in conjunction with The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod. To date, three dialogues have taken place with a fourth scheduled for this spring at Nashota House, an Anglican seminary in Wisconsin.

Friendly relationships between LCC and ANiC have begun to develop at a grass roots level as well. Bethlehem Lutheran Church in Vancouver, for example, welcomed disaffected Anglican congregation St. Matthias and St. Luke’s Church to share its facility after the congregation lost its property to the ACC.

Bishop Harvey thanked Bethlehem Lutheran for their generosity and hospitality, suggesting that the mutual congeniality between LCC and ANiC “comes from the discovery that our faith is built upon the same basic principles.”

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