CAN YOU REMEMBER a time when you were desperately thirsty? Maybe on a hot day working in the sun. Or after a long hike. Or maybe you’ve been stranded somewhere for a long time without water. Wha...

THE WORD “conversion” has taken a beating of late but a June conference in Toronto is not giving up on the term (full disclosure – I am one of the organizers of the Communion Partner...

EASTER is the most important festival for Christians, because it is the basis of our faith.

ON  NOV. 20, 2023, Bp. Andrew Asbil issued an “important liturgical note” to the Diocese of Toronto. His choice of date was intentional: he noted that it is was the “Trans Day o...

IN THE GOSPEL LESSON for this first Sunday in Lent, we have Saint Matthew’s account of the temptations of Jesus. This lesson is clearly intended to establish in our minds the meaning and the mes...

According to Jonathan Haidt’s and Greg Lukianoff’s book The Coddling of the American Mind, the spike in anxiety and depression is also related to “Great Untruths” that have spr...

HAVE YOU EVER been envious of the shepherds that first Christmas night – when they had all those angels speaking to them, telling them about God – or felt how wonderful it would have been...

IN THE FALL of 1857 New York City was still reeling from the failure of the New York City branch of the Ohio Life Insurance Co. Other banks crashed and over 5,000 businesses went under. Meanwhile, a s...

IT WAS A JOY to bring you independent news, features and commentary over the past year. We have been serving Canadian Anglicans since 2004 – and, uniquely, our constituency includes both the Ang...

A proud tree stands storey upon shopping- mall storey tall, set ablaze by red lights. Its image captured by pilgrims flocking in hope to make their days merry and bright.

“And that, knowing the time, that now it is high time to awake out of sleep.”   (Romans 13:11)

In his hands are the caverns of the earth and the heights of the hills are his also. (Psalm 95:4)

AS A university student in my early twenties, I protested the removal of rent control in Ontario, boycotted Nike, and experimented with radical feminist philosophy. Beyond that, my revolutionary spiri...

ANGELS are one of the stranger elements in many Bible stories. Yet it seems important to God to tell us about these frightening messengers. What’s the first thing angels often say in the Bibl...

The Prayer Book Society of Canada (PBSC) is deeply concerned by the rapid expansion in our country of “Medical Assistance in Dying” (MAiD), which is one of the world’s most permissiv...

I SNEAK into the church hall at St. Peter’s Cathedral, Charlottetown. It turns out all the chairs have been set up facing the entryway. As you can imagine, my stealth attempt is completely unsuc...

The General Synod has “authority and jurisdiction in all matters affecting in any way the general interest and well-being of the whole Church.”  -From Section 6 of the Declaration of...

Six-year-old Eva was dead. She had fallen from an upstairs banister. It was 1863, and the Reverend George Butler and his wife Josephine had lost their only daughter. Within a few years, the family mov...

THERE IS A weariness haunting some of our brothers and sisters in pews and pulpits across the nation. For decades they proclaimed, they articulated, the centrality and authority of holy Scripture to t...

Written as a letter to my nine-year-old daughter on the subject of Christmas and the Incarnation

With apologies to John Updike* * In 1960, the American man of letters, John Updike, published his famous poem, “Seven Stanzas at Easter.” Written some years before for a church poetry c...

WE HAVE A big story to tell. It is a story that changes everyone who truly hears it.  It is a story that convicts, heals, transforms and reconciles.  But, sadly, we are prone to being d...

THE DIOCESE OF TORONTO took its theme for synod this year from the Gospel According to St. John: “Cast the net” (21:6). It is a wonderful passage of Scripture to reflect on as a diocese. I...

“COME for the money; stay for the winter.” Extremely harsh northern Saskatchewan winters and Council of the North salaries, lower than in the south, were part of the deal. But for clergy w...

A FRIEND of mine has corrected me more than once when I’ve written about “our church.” It’s Christ’s church, he points out. At first, I thought he was being nitpicky, alt...

FOURTEEN BISHOPS – including nine of the Church of England’s 42 diocesans – have issued a 3,800-word paper that makes a theological case for preserving the Church’s historic do...

THIS IS an abbreviated version of the panel discussion that concluded the Mere Anglicanism Conference held Jan. 26-28 in Charleston, S.C. The theme of the conference was “Telling a More Beautifu...

THE GOSPELS teach us that Jesus is Lord, that having risen and ascended, he rules over heaven and earth. In the Nicene Creed we say that Christ is “seated at the right hand of the Father”&...

MY AGNOSTIC-LEANING-ATHEIST friend tells me he got up at 5:00 a.m. to watch the coronation of King Charles, and found it very moving. He talked about...

IF YOU COULD turn stones into bread, would you? If you could fly like a bird, would you? If you were offered all the money in the world, would you take it

PERHAPS GOOD FRIDAY should be called Good Death Day as it would keep before us the paradox of what is going on. What good is any crucifixion, especially this crucifixion? Christ’s crucifixion...