Author: John Stonestreet, and S. Michael Craven
For over two thousand years, the church has carried three precious gifts to the bedside of the dying: repentance, hope, and the promise that Jesus Christ has conquered death. Specifically, the Anglican tradition—through confession, anointing, Holy Communion, and the commendation of the departing soul—has born witness that in life and in death, the redeemed belong to Jesus Christ.
Recently however, the Anglican Church of Canada authorized a trial-use liturgy for those choosing Medical Assistance in Dying (MAiD). Rather than proclaim God’s Word, this new liturgy revises it. Though one paragraph attempts to distinguish between blessing the patient and blessing the act of suicide, it’s difficult to see a substantial difference between the doctor administering a syringe and the priest anointing with oil.
Liturgy is never morally neutral. What the Church prays, the Church teaches. The communal worship of a church is theology in action. To surround a medically scheduled death with Scripture, confession, anointing, Eucharist, blessing, and prayers of commendation is not mere accompaniment. It tells the dying person, the family, the congregation, and a watching world how the act should be understood.
Among of the foundational doctrinal standards of the Anglican tradition is the Thirty-Nine Articles, which teaches that “it is not lawful for the Church to ordain anything that is contrary to God’s Word written.” That principle is not uniquely Anglican. It expresses the shared conviction throughout historic Christianity that the Church is to serve as a steward of divine revelation, never as its editor.
Thus, this controversy points to a much larger crisis. Across the Western Church, long-settled biblical teaching concerning marriage, sexuality, the sanctity of life, and the uniqueness of Christ is increasingly treated not as divine revelation to be received but as tradition to be revised. Increasingly, the Church behaves as though she possesses authority to reinterpret what God has settled. She does not.
The apostles never viewed themselves as innovators. Paul described himself as a “steward of the mysteries of God.” A steward doesn’t rewrite the master’s instructions. He faithfully delivers them. Likewise, the Church’s authority has always been ministerial, not magisterial. She speaks under God’s Word, not over it.
Whenever the Church blesses what God forbids—or refuses to distinguish between obedience and disobedience—she ceases to exercise Christ’s authority and begins exercising her own.
The deeper tragedy is not simply that therapeutic culture has influenced Christian theology, but that the Church has presumed to reinterpret what God has declared: that life is a gift from Him. “Whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord’s,” wrote the Apostle. Our lives belong not to ourselves but to the God who created us, redeemed us, and will one day raise us.
Of course, no Christian should minimize suffering. Jesus never did. He wept at Lazarus’ tomb. He healed the sick and comforted the broken-hearted. Christians should fight to strengthen palliative care, support families, relieve pain, and ensure that no one suffers alone. But compassion is not just the alleviation of suffering. It must remain tethered to truth. Love asks not only, “What relieves pain?” but also, “What honors the Lord in life and in death?”
Detached from truth, compassion first becomes sentimentality, and then rebellion disguised as mercy. The Bible calls this false worship. Israel’s gravest sins were often committed not by abandoning worship but by corrupting it. That same spirit is at work whenever the Church takes what God has instituted and bends it to serve what God has forbidden. Every great heresy repeats the question first whispered in Eden: “Did God actually say?”
But the wisdom of the age cannot save the age. The Church’s calling isn’t to improve upon divine revelation but to proclaim it faithfully. We don’t honor Christ by blessing what He forbids, nor do we love our neighbors by surrendering God’s truth to the spirit of the age.
The Church has been entrusted with a sacred stewardship. We’re not to rewrite the Gospel but to proclaim it, to call sinners to repentance, and to announce the lordship of Jesus Christ, not to sanctify human autonomy. That is our authority. And it is enough.