Back to the Garden

*** Speaking of the Anglican church, this past Monday, my bishop issued an open letter on climate change. That letter began thusly: “The Archbishop of Canterbury has recently said that “As Christians we’re called to protect God's creation, and the billions of people whose lives are at risk”. Speaking about climate-related migration he said “In the past…civilisations have…risen and fallen, as a result of movements of people. What we are seeing in climate change is something that will move people on a scale that we have never dreamt of in the history of human kind." We do not all assess the scientific evidence concerning the climate crisis in the same way. But as a public leader and as your chief pastor I cannot in good conscience ask you to ignore that evidence. I am deeply troubled by the climate crisis, as a great many, perhaps as most, of you are. I know that you are gravely concerned for the suffering of millions of people already caused by climate crisis, especially...

Intro One of the many peculiar graces of my upbringing was the opportunity to grow up in a community that put a high value on reading the Bible. Now, keep in mind, I grew up in a pretty small town, and there weren’t a lot of things to do, but I remember one evening being invited over to my friend’s house where we sat around in a circle and read through the 4 gospels aloud out of a chronological bible my one friend had. Who does that kind of thing? Well, we did. You see, one of the programs our church offered was something called “Bible Quizzing,” and yes, it’s exactly as nerdy as it sounds. Essentially, we were given portions of the new testament every year that we were supposed to memorize. Every week we would learn a new chapter of the material and then every few months we would get together with teams from other churches all across the Prairies for Quiz Meets where we would be tested on our bible memorization. The “game” aspect of quizzing was sort of like “Reach for the Top.” T...