(David) It's hard for anyone committed to ecclesiastical purity not to view J.I. Packer's recent departure from the Anglican Church of Canada through jaundiced eyes.
Dr. Packer, at age 81, finally finds a cause worth quitting Anglicanism over. According to Packer, "poisonous liberalism" has consumed the Anglican church in the form of her recent dalliance with homosexuality. Packer leaves the Anglican Church of Canada for the extra-territorial "Province of the Southern Cone" based in South America.
Our appreciation for Dr. Packer's opposition to homosexuality is tempered by the realization that his stalwart support for Anglicanism influenced many into the Anglican church despite its long history of opposition to Biblical truth both corporately (women's ordination, authority of Scripture) and personally by its officers (Williams, Robinson, Spong, et al).
Indeed, as with Dr. Stott, the die was cast as early as 1966 when Martyn Lloyd-Jones warned Stott, Packer and other Church of England stalwarts of the need to break with their denomination at the annual meeting of Great Britain's Evangelical Alliance--a warning scorned by Stott and ignored by Packer. It's to Dr. Packer's credit that he actually leaves--something Stott never did. But it leaves a sour taste in the mouth to know that neither Stott nor Packer have ever acknowledged the slightest debt to Llloyd-Jones for his 1966 warning, or the slightest error in ignoring it for so many years.
