The Main Wycliffe Blog

In the wake of anti-Black racism protests around the globe, people have been questioning the public statues and other works of art that surround us for the statements they make, overt or otherwise. In this blog post, Wycliffe student Sileen Phillips responds to news of a call to redesign one of the Queen’s highest honours, saying that the values it communicates are the epitome of evil.

There is a famed idiom that says, “a picture paints a thousand words.” 

Brittany Hudson is pursuing a Master of Theological Studies in Urban Community Development at Wycliffe College. She is also a community member of L'Arche Toronto. Passionate about justice-seeking, equality, and African-Canadian History, in her free time she plays the ukulele, guitar, and sings.

This is part two of Matthew Waterman's reflections on the subject of anti-black racism and the church. Read part one here. Matthew graduated with his Master of Divinity from Wycliffe College in 2020.

In the wake of events in Minneapolis, Wycliffe College Principal Stephen Andrews reached out to some of Wycliffe's black students to ask them how they are doing. One student, Matthew Waterman (who graduated from the Master of Divinity program at Wycliffe in 2020) took the time to jot down his thoughts, and he has given Wycliffe permission to share a portion of his reflections here. Matthew writes:

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

In the last few weeks, the coronavirus pandemic has introduced a new and deep anxiety and uncertainty into our lives. All kind of features of our daily lives that we formerly could rely upon have been radically altered and we have no idea about what the future holds.

In reality, of course, those last two sentences are total nonsense.

The biblical prophet Habakkuk lived during the troubled last decades of Israel’s southern kingdom. “The Chaldeans [also called Babylonians] that fierce and impetuous nation” threatened to destroy God’s people. They would eventually triumph over Judah in 605 BC and control them for the next 65 years (Habakkuk 1:6). Habakkuk was confused by what he was witnessing and, like Job, he questioned God’s justice:

In the midst of this present crisis one of the greatest gifts the church has for the world is prayer. Not prayer as a way of retreating from, or turning away from, the world, but prayer as means of being more present to the world in the midst of this crisis. In prayer, in worship, we begin with who we are; God’s people seeking to understand how to live out of God’s presence with us, for the world.

On Friday, March 13, 2020—just before the University sent out its directive moving all classes online—several students said to me over the course of the day, “I’ve never been through something like this.” The current global pandemic is unprecedented in the experience of almost everyone living. There have been, to date, greater death tolls (the 1918 flu pandemic killed 50 million worldwide, the 2009 swine flu pandemic killed 150,000 to 575,400 worldwide). There has been greater national and international devastation (WWI and WWII).