What follows is the testimony that I gave at my disciplinary hearing in March, which responded to a charge of defiance that was brought against me by the front office of Alliance Canada. I have since been declared guilty and had my license and ordination revoked. I am sharing this in the hope of reducing misapprehensions about my views and actions, and illuminating current realities for those who remain. The testimony is exactly as given, except for the removal of a few personal references and some information that may be covered by an NDA. These omissions are indicated by a four-dot ellipse.
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I am grateful to those who have gathered to seek truth in love today, and I am thankful for the provisions of the Policy on Discipline, Restoration, and Appeal for Official Workers (DRA Policy), which afford me this opportunity to respond to the allegations against me. Since I am charged with “defiance” related to three “directions” that were given to me by the President of Alliance Canada in the summer of 2025, what follows is my response to that charge, to be substantiated by my evidentiary documents and witness testimony. Because the President’s directives relate to what I considered to be a viable interpretation of Alliance policies on sexuality, I am also prepared to discuss the biblical, theological, and pastoral nuances of that issue as much as it takes for us to have a shared understanding. With regard to the charge of defiance, the reason I should not be found guilty is because I have tried to submit to the President’s directives within the provisions of the Alliance Manual. Allow me to elaborate on each directive.
Directive #1 instructed me either to “take down” or to qualify my online essay that explained my interpretation of Alliance policy – and the fact is that I offered to do so. There was some back and forth about this, of course, because I understood (and still believe) my essay to be a valid application of existing Alliance Policy, rather than a proposal to change it. In any case, when the directives remained, I did not defy the President’s determination but submitted to it by offering to redirect my concerns to the General Assembly according to the provisions of Call to Excellence Article 7, which says to “follow C&MA processes to bring change to ... policies.”
The reason I did not do this initially was because I had laboured to understand whether the position that I held required a change to policies, and discerned that it did not. Even though the General Assembly has not afforded much room for discussion in recent years, I was willing to approach the Assembly if it turned out that my approach to these issues was ruled out by policy and required an amendment in order to be sustained. I did not approach this question lightly but with many years of prayerful study, and I feel it is important that I relay some of that story here.
The issue of same-sex marriage did not come up in my licensing and ordination in the early 2000s, but in my first pastorate I preached about it and oversaw a church discipline case in which it was involved. I made mistakes and learned a lot from that, and subsequently intuited a position amenable to the one I have today: which is to say I upheld the denominational position but leaned toward encouraging same-sex couples to other churches rather than insisting they had no place. Over the years I heard this discussed over coffee, but not in any denominational event that I can recall. In 2014 I moved to England and spent five years teaching ethics in a trans-denominational setting, such that when I returned to teach at Ambrose and rejoined the Alliance, I was more informed and confident in the posture I had intuited before. In my discussion with Alliance peers, I found that some agreed and some differed on how we would apply ourselves to the question of same-sex civil unions and ecumenical same-sex marriages, but we saw room in the policy for local and pastoral discernment according to conviction.
As a professor at Ambrose, I abided by and instructed students how to hold the Alliance position, within the academically responsible practice of teaching the major positions fairly so that students can understand and discuss them in ways appropriate to their varied contexts. As a teacher I was called to treat students without discrimination, and to enable loving discourse by presenting arguments in their best light so that disagreement could be based on clarity rather than misrepresentation. When the Call to Excellence was updated to replace the call to “abide by” with the call to “endorse, teach, and advise” the Alliance policies, while I had unanswered questions about what exactly that entailed, I continued to teach the Alliance position alongside others, endorsing it not only for Alliance students but for others, and advising each according to their church commitments and convictions.
In 2021, a previous Alliance President invited me to a special committee that was considering the question of transgender identity, and I was glad to help.... That plan was scuttled due to the Board’s hesitancy to discuss difficult matters in an election year, but the time of study led me to sympathize with the arguments for accommodating transgender identity, convincing me that it would be irresponsible and unloving for us to pass judgment on this matter without prior consideration together in Jesus’ name. So, I was disturbed by the unilateral decision to put a moratorium on licensing transgender workers.
When I sought to express my concerns about this in line with the processes provided by the Call to Excellence – by offering and then asking to give what Robert’s Rules of Order call a “minority report”, first to the Board, and then to General Assembly – this was declined. Later, at Assembly itself, though I was told that everything in the Board’s Report is up for discussion, no opportunity or explanation was given, and my request to discuss it was put off and finally denied. Since I had signed an NDA to be on the committee .... the only option available was a “point of privilege,” which let me pose questions for consideration in a three-minute statement that would not be a motion. I was painstakingly careful in the way that I worded that statement, but the circumstances left me vulnerable to months of hearsay and misunderstanding, which I was not given an occasion to address. When my attempts to discuss this with the Board Chair and President were ignored for over 18 months, and then dismissed on the grounds of what the President had taken away from his listening circles, I was left to, as the Board Chair put it, “find a home within our ... position that allows you to serve with joy.”
By 2023 I was a tenured professor, and I continued to feel called to serve this church family as one of its few active theologians. As my wife and I prayerfully considered our place in the church family, we felt called to patient engagement, and realized afresh that taking time for contentious theological issues is exactly one reason why tenure and the university exist. Our families had given to this denomination and school for three generations, and we felt a deep responsibility to it. I felt the Spirit reassure me of this when our pastor was preaching the gospel story about the friends who tore up the roof of a crowded house to lower a man with a disability to Jesus. When she asked us to imagine where we were in that story, I chuckled about how my socially-anxious tendency to sit at the back would likely have put me on the street looking in with the outsiders. Then it struck me that people would have tried to stop them from tearing up the roof, and I saw myself: I was a bystander who believed that we should not prevent their audience with Jesus.
So it was that I continued to study these issues, and as I heard differences of approach in the denomination, I endeavoured to check what variances of conviction were available within the existing policies. In this redoubled effort to study not only the policies but the biblical and theological material, I came to be reassured of my earlier intuitions, and developed a stronger theology of marriage than I had ever held. As I worked to articulate and explain this, I presented my findings in multiple venues, including discussions with peers, .... district leadership, and two formal academic presentations before my colleagues. In these venues I encountered a variety of different approaches to the pastoral application of this issue, and I was sometimes cautioned about unnamed others who might be upset by my interpretation, but I was not told that it was out of bounds or directed toward processes of policy change. In fact, I felt fresh clarity about the “big tent” approach that I had come to appreciate about our denomination.
Arriving at this realization was a comfort to my wife and I, since we felt called both to hold these wider civil and ecumenical postures, and to remain with this church family in which we had both been baptised, educated and licensed. The first time I expressed anything publicly about this posture was in a Goodreads review in February 2024, where I said “I'm a member and official worker in a denomination that does not perform same-sex marriages, but this book reaffirms my conviction that I can and should support same-sex civil unions, and that I can and should remain in working fellowship with gay Christians and affirming churches.” I also wrote to Faith Today to suggest this was not a credal matter and needed more discussion in Canada. Although in both cases I expressed interest in dialogue, no one approached me until my name was up for nomination to the Board of Directors in July, when the Nominating Committee was apparently inundated with complaints about me – some of which quoted that Goodreads review. Since I did not consider my view disqualifying, I was glad to hear that I was deemed a member in good standing and allowed to let my name stand. Unfortunately, I was never allowed to respond to hearsay and misunderstanding, even when it came up on the floor of Assembly itself, but I took it as a hazard of being a tenured professor, and tried to trust leaders to direct questions my way.
In the months before and after Assembly 2024, despite ample opportunities to do so, no one approached me to suggest that my implied position was a breach of Alliance policy, or required Assembly permission. But because it seemed to be a matter of concern, and because I could do nothing about misunderstanding unless it was directed to me, I felt it best to carry on preparing to articulate myself for the sake of transparency, clarity, and accountability. I had been working on this for many months, but in early 2025 I honed my explanation as clearly as I could so that I could share it on my blog. To be doubly sure my view was okay, I sent the President a brief explanation of my interpretation when I signed the credentialing statements in early March, and waited almost two full months before I made the essay available online. The first time I learned there might be an objection to this was when I saw the President’s District report that claimed, without consulting us, that Ambrose faculty did not uphold a sexual code of ethics “that agrees with The Alliance Canada’s current policy” – even though several of us sign the Alliance’s statements every year, and all faculty agree to honour them. When this came out, I looked for an opportunity to discuss with the Ambrose faculty of theology, but was fired on May 14 before I got that opportunity. The first time the Alliance President asked me for a conversation was late July, while I still waited for the Ambrose Board to consider an appeal of my termination.
The reason I relay all this is so it is clear that I came to this place not from a spirit of defiance but, as Call to Excellence Articles 4-6 put it, from “striv[ing] to grow through comprehensive reading and through participation in professional educational opportunities,” as part of “lead[ing] a life of prayer, study, and meditation upon God’s Word.” In this I do not claim to have been perfect, but I have faithfully sought “integrity and truthfulness” by deliberating in careful and accountable discussion with my “fellowship of peers”, both ecclesial and academic. As it says in the Call to Excellence and was already implicit in my education, licensing, and ordination, in all of this I have sought to “exercise my teaching/preaching responsibilities ... so that my presentation will be biblically based, theologically correct, and clearly communicated.”
By referring to the Call to Excellence I mean to account not only for the way I have upheld it, but also to direct attention to the requirements it places on denominational leaders to make processes available by which workers can express concerns and seek change to policies. Though I did not intend to propose a policy change, when it was insisted that my position would require one, I submitted to that determination by requesting to be shown what processes I could follow to bring my position before the General Assembly instead. This is not defiance of my constituted authority; it is an appeal to the “ultimate authority” to which we are both responsible (as per Operating Bylaw #3 Article 2.6 and the preamble to the Policy on General Assembly). It is therefore my humble suggestion that the best resolution would be to show me a path to bring this to Assembly, at which point I could remove or qualify my online essay with an indication that I would be taking the matter to the Assembly for approval. The reason I need a path to be shown to me is because of a lack of clarity about directive #2, which I will now address.
Directive #2 presented a particular difficulty because it added words to the policies it claimed I was breaching. We can discuss these at greater length, but a telling example was the addition of the word “exclusively”. I took this to be an addition not only in word but also in spirit, sitting in tension with other parts of the Manual, and with interpretations that I know I was not alone in holding. In the back and forth over this directive I was not intending to be defiant but to explain that I thought the directive itself went beyond what policy required. Indeed, if those words had been there, I would not have been able to come to the interpretation that I did, would not have posted it online, and would have known exactly where to consider proposing amendments. For this reason – if the policies mean what those added words say they mean – I humbly suggest that the best resolution is to bring those additions to the Assembly as motions to amend, so that the delegates can either update the Manual to reflect that greater exclusivity, or elect not to, thereby retaining the range of pastoral and local applications that we appeared to have. I could instead bring my own proposals, but the reason I need a path to be shown to me is (a) because the processes have not been clear and (b) because it is very difficult to know what amendments to propose when the words that create obstacles to my interpretation are not currently there.
In order to respect the limits of time and the parameters of the specific charge brought against me, I will now move on to directive #3, but I am ready to discuss all this as long as it takes for us to come to an understanding. Directive #3 is difficult to comprehend because it holds me disproportionately “responsible” for what “a reasonable Alliance member” might “conclude” about my agreement with Alliance Statements, rather than directing us to seek mutual understanding as a fellowship of peers. As written, this directive seems to make me vulnerable to the foregone conclusions of people who never actually speak to me. As outlined already, I have gone above and beyond to speak and write in responsibility to my fellowship of peers in denominational and academic settings, where there can be accountable back-and-forth for the sake of understanding and correction. To ask me to recommit to write and teach with care and accountability would be fair enough, but to hold me responsible for the conclusions of anonymous and perhaps uninformed onlookers feels like a forgoing of Ecumenical Guidelines on “attentive discernment”, and of Call to Excellence Articles which direct us to receive and offer “responsible criticism” while “respecting” each other’s areas of authority. On this basis I feel it would be inappropriate to find me guilty of defiance, especially given the DRA Policy’s posture of “restoration” and its promise of “pastoral care”. Lamentably, since I was fired, I have been denied pastoral care from denominational leadership, and this discipline process interrupted my ability to pursue mediation with my former employer.
Thankfully, however, I have not been totally alone. In closing I want to thank my wife Angie, my advocate Norma, and the handful of family and friends who have supported me during this trying experience. I also thank the people who agreed to serve as witnesses for me today....
To sum up my response, then, it remains unclear how I can be held in defiance of policies that do not exist in the form that the directives have shown them to me, especially when I have offered to submit that to the processes called for by the Alliance manual.
Thank you again for your time and consideration. I pray we can rectify this situation justly and restoratively in Jesus’ name, and come together as a church to seek and speak truth in love.
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