In a conversation with some students recently I made reference to Wycliffe College’s Six Principles, and was met with blank stares. I do not fault the students. The fact is that we don’t talk about the Principles nearly as much as we did when I began teaching here in the late 1990s.

Some time ago I visited a church in which the sermon, delivered by a guest preacher, concluded with the sentence “If you do this you’ll be happy, and your neighbour will be happy.”

In late October I attended a conference at Yale commemorating the centenary of Hans Frei (1922-1988), one of the leading historical theologians of our age, and the most important figure in the so-called “Yale School” of theology and scriptural interpretation.

Over the past few weeks I have had several long conversations with pastors who seem dangerously close to burn-out. They’re worried because some 25 to 30 percent of their congregations haven’t returned to church following the easing of pandemic restrictions.

I recently had the opportunity of spending two weeks in Rome as part of a course on Anglican Ecclesiology and Ecumenism. The course, ably taught by Prof. Matthew Olver of Nashotah House seminary and Dr.

The first time I encountered the term eating disorder I was about twelve and read a letter addressed to Dear Abby, a syndicated advice column published in many North American newspapers.

There’s a growing ache at the heart of many of our western societies. Its name is loneliness. And a stream of actors has been calling it out of late: psychologists, pastors, pandemistas, even politicians.

It never really occurred to me to not be vaccinated.

Eight years ago, our family moved into the heart of Toronto. One of the surprises that came with this move was being freed from my car; something I was completely dependent on while pastoring in suburbia. Now I was taking public transit every day as I travelled into Wycliffe College.

“Stuck at home”

stuck: “mired, glued, compelled, resolutely adhered, halted, saddled disagreeably”

home: “one’s place of residence, domicile, habitat”

How very good and pleasant it is

The word lenten, the Oxford English Dictionary tells me, is older than the word Lent.

One of the sure signs of “Covid-tide” in Anglican churches is the absence of the common cup at Holy Communion. The priest partakes of both the bread and wine, while the congregation receives the bread only.

We’ve all had enough, it seems. And yet we only want more. Shoulders curled forward, phones in our hands, eyes fixed to the screen, our brains wired to thumb endlessly deeper into the digital matrix: this is becoming the posture of humanity.

Dr. Joseph Mangina wrote the following piece for his parish, St. Martin-in-the-Fields, and agreed to share it here.

Esther was one of many gracious life-long members of our church. A real salt-of-the-earth type, who with her husband had raised three kids to be successful, fully-launched adults. She was now thoroughly enjoying a bunch of grandkids, most of whom were already teenagers.

This blog post is adapted and abbreviated from an article by Prof. Mangina that appeared in The Living Church, Jan. 1, 2012

I found Jesus a seven-minute walk from Wycliffe College. At first, I could not quite recognize him. Lying on a park bench, thickly covered with an old blanket, he was layered with snow. As I sat down on the bench beside him, though, I noticed his feet.

In a recent post on this blog (September 17), my colleague Peter Robinson set forth a basic explanation of the theological interpretation of Scripture, often referred to as TIS. In that article, he made some crucial points.

It began in my childhood home in northwest India. My father was a Canadian Anglican priest who, after serving as a padre during the horrors of the Second World War, went to minister to a leper colony and small Anglican parish in the foothills of the Himalayas.