The atmospheric river that came was truly an inundation. Torrential rain for days caused mudslides, rivers to swell and burst their banks, roads and bridges to dissolve into nothing, and waters suddenly rising to dangerous levels and consuming homes, farms, and land. As the news steadily poured in of this terrible disaster in my province, the nearby community of Abbotsford was the hardest hit.
I once said in a Wycliffe class that there were two types of people, either/ors and both/ ands, at which point a student interjected, “but Professor, I think I am both a both/and and an either/or,” which proved the point. It’s an interesting question for the College, which was built after all across the street from its sibling Trinity, today both Anglican and ecumenically evangelical, ministerial and doctoral, pastoral and development, etc. This hybrid quality is part of its strength and its interest.
A friend told me she once preached about discipleship. After the service, a parishioner came up to her and said, irately, “I am not a disciple. I am a member.” Oh well, I guess it was better than no reaction at all, and certainly better than, “Lovely sermon.”
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. Loneliness has emerged as the faithful companion to our grandparents’ rural migration from the land and the village, as we chose city, industry, specialization, and dwindling household sizes, while riding the cultural horses of dehumanizing technology and hyper-individualism.
I am now beginning my fourteenth year as an immigrant. In 2008, my wife and I, along with our young son, moved from the USA to Scotland to pursue my PhD. In 2012, we moved from Scotland to the southwest of England so I could take up my first teaching post in a theological college (then with two more children in tow). And most recently, this past summer we moved yet again to Canada where I now teach here at Wycliffe College.
Anne Hutchinson (ca. 1591-1643) was a courageous woman who fought for many of the freedoms we now take for granted.
I do not consider myself “a person of faith.” There, I said it. Are you shocked?
Yes, I attend my parish church regularly. I say the creed without crossing my fingers. I renew my baptismal vows at least once a year. So what could it possibly mean to say I am not “a person of faith”?
It never really occurred to me to not be vaccinated. On learning that effective vaccines against COVID-19 would soon be on the horizon, my initial reaction was: “Where can I sign up?” No doubt my eagerness can be explained in part by a sheer hunger for human connection, after months of lockdown existence. The lockdown had been taking its toll. I wanted to teach my students in person again, I wanted to meet up with friends at the pub, I wanted to travel. Receiving the vaccine seemed the simplest thing I could do to help make these things happen.
“One must not argue about opinions. A truth is a concentrated and serious procedure which must never come into competition with established opinions.” Alain Badiou, St Paul: The Foundation of Universalism (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2003), 15.
Sometimes incidents that are not very important in themselves can crystallize for us the importance of issues that are much more significant. That happened for me many years ago as a student at a campus mission event in Britain.
This blog post is the first in a series, in which Wycliffe theology professors consider the COVID vaccination debate. In the following, Ephraim Radner, Professor of Historical Theology asks, “How did the issue of vaccination so divide the church?”
