Letting God Take the Wheel

By Peter Stockland with Bruce Myers

April 25, 2016

In the 1990s, Bruce Myers was chasing political news stories as a member of the national press gallery in Ottawa. As of May, at age 43, he will be an Anglican bishop in Quebec, pastor of a small flock spread across hundreds of thousands of square kilometres. Myers tells Convivium Publisher Peter Stockland that, like a good reporter, he is confident he’ll be in the right place at the right time as Quebecers overcome their violent reaction to organized religion and let God into their lives again..

I think he’s helpfully named how we’ve gotten to this place we’re in, especially in the Quebec context, where the Church in many ways has lost its traditional place in society and where there’s much that the Church has traditionally taught and offered that people aren’t willing to accept or aren’t necessarily interested in BM: That’s partly what Taylor points out, too, and it’s my own experience as a parish priest in Quebec City and in the Magdalen Islands for a few years But the question is: How do you strike that balance between not renouncing your heritage as a Church with its roots in the Church of England while trying to express to the predominant culture, which in Quebec is francophone, that you’re not locked into that history and that there’s a place for people of all different linguistic and cultural backgrounds within Anglicanism? Partly what you need in order to do that is to have indigenous, with a small i, faithful and, in our case, clergy, too But I think a lot of people who aren’t involved in any kind of faith community are curious and interested and find it compelling when they hear a story of someone who’s left a successful career to do something that’s less obviously success-oriented, such as become a priest and subsequently serve as a bishop There were people in the listenership of CJAD who were convinced I’d become a separatist because I spent too much time in Quebec City or in the presence of the PQ, and I was somehow being moulded into sympathy with the cause BM: Yes, and that number is spread out across the diocese but concentrated in certain regions, so there’s a concentration of Anglicans in the Eastern Townships, another concentration around Quebec City, another in the Gaspé and Magdalen Islands and another in the lower North shore BM: I’ve seen first-hand how being open and erring on the side of grace in those situations isn’t just the pastoral thing to do; it’s in fact drawn some people into the life of the Church in a very meaningful, helpful way for them It’s no secret that cults have become a part of the landscape, too, everywhere; but there have been some notable examples in the last 20 years or so in Quebec BM: I was elected last November to become the next bishop of the Diocese of Quebec for the Anglican Church of Canada While it’s theoretically possible I could remain the Bishop of Quebec until retirement, there’s also the possibility that it might seem right for everybody involved that I move on to another ministry While it’s theoretically possible I could remain the Bishop of Quebec until retirement, there’s also the possibility that it might seem right for everybody involved that I move on to another ministry

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