How sad that I would be unfit as a priest in Arctic today.

Dear editor,

Re: Arctic may ask clergy to denounce gay unions (February Anglican Journal). Where is the Anglican church I thought I belonged to? How sad that I would no longer be an acceptable priest in the Arctic today!

I speak of the church which used not to regard itself as a "confessional church" in which you must proclaim your acceptance of codifications rigidly drawn up. Rather we regarded ourselves as followers of Jesus Christ living together in community, with varying ideas about how best to serve our Lord, but trusting each other, and accepting that all are endeavouring to listen to how the Spirit is guiding them. And this openness to others we regarded as a virtue and not a weakness.

Fifty years ago, I, a rather liberal catholic Anglican priest, went to Salluit in Nunavik at a time when most of the other clergy in the Arctic were conservative evangelicals. I was warmly welcomed by the diocese, and certainly by the open-minded and open-hearted Inuit of Salluit, Ivujivik and Kangiqsujuaq, where I ministered.

I was the first Anglican priest to live on the northern coast of the Ungava peninsula. I certainly never thought, as I built the first Anglican mission house and church building on those shores, that it would come to this. Today, since I could not possibly sign my name to a particular document drawn up by a number of conservatives, I, apparently, am considered an unfit person to be in their midst.

How very, very sad.

Things will indeed spiral downwards and fall apart in the Anglican community, if we propose to treat each other in such un-Anglican ways.

Archdeacon David Ellis

Banff, Alta.