By Susan Brinkmann, OCDS
Staff Journalist
The head of the Anglican Church of Canada has confirmed that they will hold discussions this spring about whether or not to waive a 2,000 year-old requirement that only a baptized Christian can receive Communion.
Canada’s National Post is reporting that the issue will be raised when the House of Bishops meets in April.
“Official teaching is you have to be baptized first. But a number of clergy across the country feel strongly about this as an issue and many have approached their bishops about allowing for an ‘open table’ in which all could take communion,” said Archdeacon Paul Feheley, who is the principal secretary to Archbishop Fred Hiltz, head of the Anglican Church of Canada.
Even though traditional Anglicans regard the step as a dangerous idea, more liberal voices in the fractured communion say removing the requirement of baptism might help stop the rapid decline in the number of Anglicans who attend services. The latest figures show the Church losing 13,000 members a year with the average age of those remaining to be 60.
Rev. Gary Nicolosi, pastor at St. James Westminster Anglican Church in London, Ont., wrote in an article appearing in this week’s AnglicanJournal.com defending the idea, saying that if Jesus did not discriminate about who he invited to his table, then the Church should follow his lead.
“How, in our multicultural and pluralistic society, can our churches be places of hospitality if we exclude table fellowship with the non-baptized?” he asked.
“In Canada, a growing number of the population is not baptized. Included are people from different religious traditions or people with no religious affiliation at all. Quite likely, some are our grandchildren or great-grandchildren, whose parents neglected or refused to have them baptized.”
He claims many people come to church who are made to feel unwelcome because they are not permitted to receive Communion. It’s like inviting someone for Sunday dinner and not feeding them a meal, he said.
“If the teaching has been that baptism leads to communion, I don’t see why communion can’t lead to baptism,” said Rev. Nicolosi.
Rev. Ephraim Radner, professor of historical theology at Wycliffe College, an Anglican seminary in Toronto, told the Post he rejects the idea that changing 2,000 years of tradition will make the Anglican Church stronger.
“The Eucharist isn’t a welcoming exercise,” he said. “It is about Christ’s sacrifice on the cross. It’s not a meal like any other meal. It has been a clear and consistent practice through all of Christianity and shows that a baptized person has committed himself or herself to Jesus.”
Eliminating the requirement would water down what Christianity stands for, and he is concerned that leaders of the Church do not find the suggestion alarming.
“It’s dangerous,” he said. “It makes God and Christ not as holy and demanding and wonderful as the Church has taught.”
He is also concerned that this kind of change will only drive a deeper wedge between liberal and traditional Anglicans. Acceptance of female priests and same-sex marriage has already driven large numbers of traditional Anglicans into the arms of the Roman Catholic Church.
This isn’t the first time liberal Anglicans, in an effort to be “inclusive,” have tried to relax restrictions on who can receive Communion. An extreme example occurred last year with a female pastor gave communion to a four year-old German Shepherd.
“Communion is a symbol of the sacrifice of Jesus’s body; he died for all of us,” said Cheryl Chang, director of the Anglican Network in Canada, in defense of the outrage. “But I don’t recall anything from the Scripture saying anything about Jesus dying for the salvation of our pets.’’
The incident caused outrage among many, but the offending pastor, Marguerite Ray, was given little more than a slap on the wrist. Her bishop, Patrick Yu, made her apologize, and later called the event “a misguided gesture of welcoming.”
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