Aside from its work to create 125 affordable housing units, Bishop Shane asked the Communications Advisory Panel to think of ways that the 125th anniversary of the founding of the Anglican Diocese of Ottawa could be observed. “The guiding principle was that the commemoration should be forward-looking and not retrospective,” explained the panel’s chair Brian Cameron.
The first activity in a commemoration was the launch of the new diocesan brand at Synod.
The second is a series of anniversary lectures on four themes — Indigenous issues, affordable housing, the environment and reimaging church.
The first speaker will be Michelle Good, an Indigenous lawyer and author of Five Little Indians, which won the 2020 Governor-General’s Literary Award. Her lecture will take place online on Dec. 6 (See calendar on p. 16 for details) and is co-sponsored by the diocesan All My Relations working group.
In January, the series will feature the Rev. Dr. Jason McKinney, a Toronto priest whose lectures and workshops on the theology of land have been highly recommended by the Homelessness and Affordable Housing Working Group.
In February, the series will have a lecture or panel on the environment.
In March, the series will conclude with a lecture on the theme of Reimaging Church by Sam Wells, the Vicar at St.-Martins-in-the-Fields in London, U.K. Theologian Walter Brueggermann describes Wells as “having the liveliest, most agile, best-informed, critically disciplined mind in the entire Christian community.
The lectures will be live-streamed and available on the Diocesan YouTube channel afterward.
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