Dr. Packer together with the other clergy at St. John's have been served with a Notice of Presumption of Abandonment of the Exercise of the Ministry under Canon XIX

(Look up the indexes on our website to find the original article).

To this Nathan responded:

If all that is a fair representation of the happenings, it seems to me that it is an exceedingly tragic and stupid response on the part of the Anglican Church of Canada. It is the kind of heavy-handed response that can only serve to undermine the credibility of the position they have have taken on the issue at hand.

While I would be a supporter of the policy that JI Packer and St John's have opposed, I would still want to defend their right to oppose it. Such a use of coercion to try to gain conformity reminds me of why I am proud to be a Baptist, and especially proud to be part of state Baptist Union which has a very good record of behaving baptistly on these sorts of issues by affirming a diversity of opinion on the basis of our Baptist convictions about freedom of conscience.

It is always important for people who hold the sorts of views I hold to remember that our right to remain in the fold while holding a minority view is premised on exactly the same freedom as the right of those at the extreme other end of the spectrum to remain in the fold while holding their view. If we ever advocate lopping off one end of the spectrum, it will probably result in lopping off both ends of the spectrum, and those left in the middle will be all the poorer and blander for the loss of the provocative thinkers from both ends.

March 4, 2008