Michael Peers
The Most Reverend Michael Geoffrey Peers was Primate of the Anglican Church of Canada from 1986 till 2004.
Born in Vancouver, British Columbia in 1934, Archbishop Peers completed an undergraduate degree in languages at the University of British Columbia in 1956 and a diploma in translation at the University of Heidelberg in 1957: he had intended to embark on a career in diplomacy.
In the meantime an interest in religion which had begun in his youth after a non-religious upbringing increased and he decided to qualify for ordination. He entered Trinity College at the University of Toronto where he obtained a licentiate in theology. He was ordained an Anglican clergyman and served in the following roles:
- Curate of Holy Trinity, Ottawa, in 1963
- Rector of St. Bede's, Winnipeg, 1965
- Archdeacon of Winnipeg, River North Anglican Parishes, Winnipeg, 1972
- Dean of Qu'Appelle (Regina, Saskatchewan) and rector of St Paul's Cathedral, Regina, 1974
- Bishop of Qu'Appelle (Regina, Saskatchewan), 1977
- Archbishop of Qu'Appelle and Metropolitan of the Ecclesiastical Province of Rupert's Land
- Primate of Canada, 1986
Archbishop Peers speaks English, French, Spanish, German and Russian. He is married with three children and two grandchildren. He currently resides in Toronto, Ontario where he is Ecumenist-in-Residence at the Toronto School of Theology. In 2006 his Grace Notes: Journeying With the Primate, 1995-2004 (ISBN 1-55126-437-4), a collection of his monthly columns in the Anglican Journal, was published.
Ministry on the prairies
Having come from a background that might have suggested to prairie folk that he was an "eastern" élitist, Archbishop Peers quickly established himself as keen sympathiser with the ideals of prairie populism. Rural Saskatchewanians quickly perceived that Archbishop Peers was their ardent supporter — that the ideals of prairie populism were his own ideals — and that his obvious membership in the Canadian élite was entirely to their advantage. The life of a prairie bishop is one of endless travel along the highways and byways of the prairie hinterland: in the course of such travels Archbishop Peers made long and lasting friendships with many members of the Saskatchewan leadership, as with many grassroots Saskatchewanians, and these friendships amply informed the nation- and world-wide ministry of his primacy.
Major events of Michael Peers's primacy
Major events of Archbishop Peers's primacy include
- the introduction of the Book of Alternative Services (to supplement — but in effect replace — the Book of Common Prayer, and over the objections of the Prayer Book Society of Canada, which unsuccessfully litigated the matter in an ecclesiastical court over which Archbishop Peers presided;
- the achieving of full communion with the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada (in which he played a pivotal role);
- financial settlement with the federal government over aboriginal claims against native residential schools operated on the government's behalf principally by Anglican and Roman Catholic churches;
- the stand taken by the Anglican Church in 1986 in support of Canada's northern people, who depended on the seal hunt, against the international animal rights lobby; towards the end of his tenure,
- the emergence of the issue of the ordination of gay and lesbian clergy (which he supported); and
- his presidency of the Metropolitan Council of Cuba (a council that oversees the episcopal work of the Protestant Episcopal Church of Cuba, once a part of the Episcopal Church in the United States which is because of US government policy no longer able to take any role there);
- his cultivation of a much closer relationship with the Protestant Episcopal Church of the USA.
See also
External links
- Archbishop Michael Peers Biography http://www.anglican.ca/primate/peers/index.htm
- Anglican Journal (national newspaper of the Anglican Church of Canada) http://www.anglicanjournal.com/
- Anglican News Service [Canada] http://anglican.ca/news/