St John's Shaughnessy votes to realign with Southern Cone

Members of what is described as the largest congregation in the Anglican Church of Canada voted strongly Wednesday to split with Vancouver-area Bishop Michael Ingham over his support for same-sex blessings.

"It means that the community speaks with one mind," said  St. John's Shaughnessy Anglican Church spokeswoman Lesley Bentley, after a preliminary count showed that out of 495 ballots cast, only 11 opposed the split and nine abstained.
"What it is is very uniting."

The vote means the church, which has more than 700 members, will break with Ingham and join with the conservative Anglican bishops of the Diocese of the Southern Cone, which includes Argentina and Paraguay.

The Vancouver Sun has an article

Primate Hiltz has a letter here.

'Anglican Communion Network' has a press release here

Excerpt:

St John’s (Shaughnessy) Vancouver, the largest Anglican Church in Canada, voted overwhelmingly on February 13 to accept the episcopal oversight of Bishop Donald Harvey, Moderator of the Anglican Network in Canada, under the Primatial authority of Archbishop Gregory Venables and the Anglican Province of the Southern Cone. The largest congregational meeting ever, voted 97.7% in favour of the motion. Of the 495 votes cast, 475 were in favour, 11 were against and 9 abstained. Other provisional votes are under consideration and may impact the final vote.

The congregation has been in “serious theological dispute” with the Diocese of New Westminster since June 2002, when the bishop approved same sex blessings after the diocese voted 62.5% in favour of the practice. The diocese’s unilateral actions were in clear defiance of the overwhelming majority of the global Anglican Communion, which had stated at the1998 Lambeth Conference (a decennial gathering of all Anglican bishops in the world), in Resolution 1.10, that such practice was contrary to scripture and could not be legitimized. St. John’s has been seeking alternative episcopal oversight ever since.

 Update from the Anglican Journal here.