Thank You Stuart! A tribute to a career of service and insights.
We, at Ministry Forum, are paying tribute to the upcoming retirement of The Rev. Dr. Stuart Macdonald, Professor of Church and Society, with a few tidbits we expect would be right up his alley—no, not about witches—DATA about faith and religion in North America.
But before we get there, allow me a moment of personal reflection.
As I begin this post, I’m mindful that my two full engagements with Knox College—both as a student and now as an employee—have been flavoured by the concluding seasons of faculty who dedicated the lion's share of their lives in service to equipping leaders for the Church and advancing theological education more broadly. Back in the mid to late 1990s, it was names like Nicol, Smith, Humphries, Pater, and Goggin who shaped this square peg into the round hole of the MDiv curriculum. Each of whom would retire not long after my being released on the PCC. Fresh-faced scholars like Macdonald and Fensham had barely begun to shake the proverbial tree of the place, with only Macdonald getting a chance to sand off a few rough edges of the young theologian named Borthwick. Dr. Charles Fensham retired late last year, and now Dr. Stuart Macdonald will bid adieu, too. We will miss you, Stu.
Listen in on Rev. John’s conversation with Dr. Rev. Stuart Macdonald on the Ministry Forum Podcast
Stuart’s journey to Knox was hardly linear. In our recent Ministry Forum Podcast conversation, Stuart shared his surprise at ending up as a professor at all. Ordained in 1985, he spent over a decade in congregational ministry before joining Knox in 1996. What surprised him most about the academic world? Clarity. “Everyone in my congregation thought they knew what my job description was,” he said. At Knox, he found a vocational clarity he hadn’t known he was longing for.
That clarity, paired with his deep love for the church and a historian’s mind, allowed Stuart to dig deep into the data and into our shared story. Over the years, he’s become one of our foremost interpreters of Canadian religious life, challenging common assumptions with careful research and bold honesty.
Whether it is PEW reports (not pew, pew… 😉 … just Pew!) or the Censuses (or is it Censi?) or yet another sociological survey, Stuart has spent a lot of time sifting through the numbers to tell the story of who we are as Canadian Presbyterians. He has often stood out as one whose particular take on the data differed from the popular creative spin. You can encounter this in his co-authored work with Dr. Brian Clarke, Leaving Christianity: Changing Allegiances in Canada since 1945—a work that should be essential reading for anyone trying to make sense of the cultural shifts within the Canadian religious landscape.
And now, just in time for his retirement, Stuart offers us a parting gift: his latest and most personal project, Tradition and Tension: The Presbyterian Church in Canada, 1945–1985. This book explores the same period that Leaving Christianity helped us quantify—only this time, he draws from denominational reports, session records, and the lived experience of our congregations. The result is a textured, honest, and often sobering account of our recent past.
Here's the official description:
In 1945 the Presbyterian Church was one of Canada’s largest and most culturally influential churches… Yet the denomination’s greatest challenges lay in the decades that followed… Amid the cultural aftershocks of the 1960s, and as membership growth stalled, arguments about who was responsible for the church’s waning influence widened the rift between modernizers and traditionalists. Their common vision was lost.
Tradition and Tension examines how the Presbyterian Church consciously sought to reflect these changes—and how it was transformed and even overwhelmed by them.
You can pre-order the book here. It belongs in your library, your Church’s library, or perhaps even in the hands of that hard-to-buy-for elder who still wonders what happened in 1967.
This is not a farewell wrapped in nostalgia. It’s a thank-you grounded in gratitude for a life of service, scholarship, and song (did I mention Stuart plays music too?). Thank you, Stuart, for your dedication to teaching, your pastoral heart, and your commitment to telling the truth—even when it's uncomfortable.
In our next post, we’ll pick up the thread of data—exploring what recent surveys, including work from Barna, PEW, and StatsCan, are telling us about the current state of pastoral ministry in Canada. Spoiler alert: it’s not all good news. But neither is it without hope.
For now, let’s simply say: well done, good and faithful servant. We are better for your presence among us.