James Ferry is a priest of the

Anglican Church of Canada The Anglican Church of Canada (ACC or ACoC) is the Ecclesiastical province#Anglican Communion, province of the Anglican Communion in Canada. The official French-language name is ''l'Église anglicane du Canada''. In 2017, the Anglican Church co ...

. In 1992 he was removed from his parish after it was revealed that he was gay and in a relationship with another man. Raised in the United Church of Canada, later a member of a Baptist congregation, Ferry joined the

Anglican Anglicanism is a Western Christian tradition that has developed from the practices, liturgy, and identity of the Church of England following the English Reformation, in the context of the Protestant Reformation in Europe. It is one of th ...

Church in his twenties. He studied at the

University of Toronto at Scarborough The University of Toronto Scarborough, also known as U of T Scarborough or UTSC, is one of the three campuses that make up the tri-campus system of the University of Toronto. Located in Scarborough, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, the campus is set upo ...

Tyndale University College Tyndale University is a Canadian private interdenominational evangelical Christian university in Toronto, Ontario, which offers undergraduate and graduate programs. Tyndale students come from over 40 different Christian denominations.CfAbout T ...

(then Ontario Bible College) and Wycliffe College. He was inhibited from functioning as a priest and later became affiliated with the Metropolitan Community Church, a gay and lesbian founded church which has taken an explicitly gay-affirming stance including the ordination of openly gay candidates for the ministry. He was later partially reinstated as an Anglican priest and now occasionally celebrates the Eucharist and preaches at the Church of the Holy Trinity, Toronto. Ferry published a book about his experience, ''In the Courts of the Lord'', in 1994. In 2006 Archbishop

Terence Finlay Terence Edward Finlay (May 19, 1937 – March 20, 2017) was a Canadian Anglican bishop. He served as Metropolitan of Ontario and Archbishop of Toronto from 2000 to 2004. He graduated from Huron University College at University of Western Ontari ...

, who had inhibited Ferry, married a lesbian couple in a United Church of Canada church, prompting Ferry to publicly demand an apology for Finlay's treatment of him. Finlay's successor, Archbishop Colin Johnson, reinstated Ferry's licence on 26 June 2011 and appointed him an honorary assistant priest at the Church of the Holy Trinity.Holy Trinity website
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References

Living people Canadian LGBT rights activists Canadian Anglican priests LGBT Anglican clergy University of Toronto alumni Canadian gay writers Canadian memoirists Year of birth missing (living people) {{LGBT-activist-stub