We live in a time of repeated scandals in which prominent church leaders turn out to be hiding egregious sinful behaviour.

I joined the faculty at Wycliffe in 2019 only a few months before the start of the pandemic. I was in Toronto first, and visited a number of churches in-person, but by the time my wife joined me the city was in lockdown.

I’ll be retiring next summer.  People ask me “why now?”.  Lots of reasons, probably: let someone younger have a place at the faculty table; family responsibilities; health; fatigue; out of synch with the culture; “work is done,” “new things to do,” generational stage of life; and so on.

The struggle for justice seems never to be won, and it is easy for those who fight for it to become weary.  

The following comments were transcribed from opening remarks by Professor Ephraim Radner delivered at Morning Prayer in the Wycliffe College Founder’s Chapel, on Thursday, Dece

“One must not argue about opinions.

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?”

My first degree was in history. I was educated at the University of York in England by professors who were by and large resolutely unimpressed by notions of human progress.

My wife Annette and I own several charcoal and wash drawings by a wonderful artist, Churchill Davenport. We acquired them when we were married in the late 1980’s.