Debating Same-Sex Marriage in Canada: The Contribution of the Canadian Council

Abstract

When the Canadian Council of Churches (CCC) was initiated more than sixty years ago, the guiding vision was one of "full structural unity" for Canada's Christian churches. Within the global context, the World Council of Churches (WCC) similarly envisioned a full world communion of Christian traditions. The inaugural meeting of the CCC, held at Yorkminster Park Baptist Church in Toronto in May 1944, brought together ten Canadian church traditions. Four years later, in August 1948, the first meeting of the WCC was convened in Amsterdam with 140 traditions represented. At its 1950 convention in Toronto, the WCC produced The Toronto Statement, "The Church, the Churches, and the World Council of Churches." As the document laid to rest the utopian vision of "full structural unity" and explicitly repudiated the "super-church" model, the ongoing dilemma of the Christian ecumenical movement was identified: by what vision and means would it be possible to simultaneously respect each member tradition's uniqueness and foster ecumenical unity?