This spring, Archbishop Shane Parker appointed the Rev. Dr. Christopher Brittain, Dean of Divinity at Trinity College at the University of Toronto, to the Cathedral Canonry of St. Anslem and as Canon Theologian for the Anglican Diocese of Ottawa.
As Bishop of Ottawa at the time, Parker noted “Canon Brittain is a respected scholar of our Church, with published research and expertise concerning relations within the global Anglican Communion, theological responses to crises, political theology, and ethics. He is resident in the Diocese of Toronto and has graciously consented to share his wisdom with our diocesan church when we require learned counsel on complex theological matters.”
Canon Brittain will be formally installed and offer the homily at the opening Eucharist service for the 145th Session of the diocesan Synod on Oct.23. He generously made time to meet with Perspective just as the new academic year was beginning.
How are things at the Faculty of Divinity this year? As the church shrinks is enrollment down?
The number of students applying for the Master of Divinity has been going down in North America for quite some time, for a decade at least, if not more. And that’s across the board, that’s not just at my college. Now, we’re still trying to figure out what the future is. This year, our student numbers are up….We’ve admitted more students to the MDiv this year than we have since I’ve been dean, and I’ve been dean eight years. I don’t quite know what to make of that. Is that a blip? Or is that a sign that the trend is not totally taking over? But certainly, one of the challenges I think most theological schools have is declining enrollment of some kind.
We do have one program at the Toronto School of Theology that’s increasing, but it’s not really preparing students for church ministry, it’s more preparing for them to work as chaplains in public health or as psychotherapists. That’s where, at the moment, there seems to be a growing interest among theological students, but who knows if that’s a momentary blip or going be a growing trend. But sure, there is an impact in slow shrinkage in church attendance and church membership, there’s going to be most likely a shrinkage in the number of students studying in theological programs proportionally.
Would you tell me a bit about Trinity’s Innovative Leadership for a Post-Christendom Church Ministry and its approach?
It’s a five-year program and we’re about halfway through it. We got a large grant to support it, and it has four components that are chiefly focused on training for church leadership. These focus on encouraging a more ‘missional’ and creative imagination among our students, supporting students new to the Anglican tradition, greater attention to issues of diversity and difference, and deepening spirituality for our students as they face the challenges of a rapidly changing society.…As we think about what the future of the church is and what the future needs in leadership will be, we don’t really know what the future will be. … In order for change to happen, we need to let some things go and we need to try new things, … alter or modify or even just ignore some former ways of doing things…. So, it’s sort of an experimental mentality that we’re trying to encourage.
Is decolonialization an element of that change?
That’s part of this project. A big piece of that is expanding the horizons of who is included in our imagination, in our practices in the church, and how we go about things. In one of our courses on issues of race and ethnicity, I have a guest come every year. She is a priest in Barbados, and she describes trying to be a priest in Toronto [15 or 20 years ago] and the politics of coffee hour. You don’t mess with the traditional coffee and cookies model even though it makes no sense from other cultures. If you’re from the Caribbean, you might want to have something else. She just described how that was not permissible….We don’t often recognize how rigid our way of being is at church, right? And the real sticky points are sometimes that mundane, … like what happens at coffee hour after church? We don’t realize how laden that is with tradition and ethnic assumptions and preferences and so on.”
Are there ways of preparing church leaders for ministry in a largely secular society that can also help renew the Church?
Absolutely, part of existing as a thriving, healthy church in a largely secular context, or part of our learning how to do that, is stop acting like we’re the norm. There’s been this sort of cultural presumption that what we do in church is largely an extension of the wider society or that the wider society is familiar with what we do, understands what we do, sometimes even appreciates what we do.
And it’s not imagining the secular society as somehow antagonistic to us, but we still presume that it understands us… And so part of nurturing a future not just church leadership, but also a way of being as a church is just being a little more focused on who we are, [and] … and being better at articulating our self-understanding and our values and what we think our mission is to people who aren’t very familiar with what we’re about. And that’s not been a skill set that we’ve really been teaching and encouraging.
And nor has it been up until recently where most of our students in theology come from. They’re coming from church contexts .. have largely been raised in the church and know the culture and are familiar with it, and so they’re not necessarily really equipped or used to or comfortable with explaining why they’re a Christian or an Anglican and why we do what we do to people who have no idea what we’re talking about.
In the past, you could assume most people had a basic knowledge of Christianity. Right, and increasingly that’s gone in our society, and increasingly my students showing up at Trinity College are relatively new Christians and even newer Anglicans.
So not cradle Anglicans anymore?
Exactly. We still have some of course, but more and more are not. And so that’s an interesting opportunity. It’s also like sort of a unique challenge too. Where do we start and what is our role in helping prepare them for life in the church and ministry in the church? …. They’ve got a different kind of learning curve than the students we’ve had in the past.
We’re looking forward to your visit to Ottawa and our Synod soon.
I’ve been to Ottawa many times. I have some family in Ottawa, and I have met students at Trinity from Ottawa, but I don’t know the diocese really well. I’m really looking forward to getting to know it better in its current challenges and gifts and hopes and vision.
St. George, Portage-du-Fort — Deanery of West Quebec