Right Rev. Michael Ingham, Anglican bishop of the Diocese of New Westminster, was recently awarded an honorary degree from Simon Fraser University.
Ingham is among a group of 10 people the university recognized with honorary degrees this year - in his case, with a doctor of laws, Honoris Causa, for his outstanding contribution to the community.
"He's helped shape Vancouver, and his contributions to the poor and the needy and disenfranchised in our city and globally has been very significant, and certainly deserves our praise for that," said pastor Victor Thomas, director of the interfaith centre at SFU, who introduced Ingham at the convocation ceremony on June 14.
Ingham was elected as bishop in 1994. He made international headlines in 2003 for being one of the first leaders within the Anglican Church to authorize the blessing of gay and lesbian relationships - three years before same-sex unions became legal in Canada.
"A large majority of Anglicans in the Lower Mainland agreed this was the right thing to do and we should be doing it for the sake of justice and human dignity," Ingham said. "There were some who objected, but they were in the minority and an even smaller minority left."
Ingham was named the third most significant newsmaker in Canada after Paul Martin and Larry Campbell in 2003 and was the subject of a full-page profile in The New York Times that same year.
In 2008, Britain's Daily Telegraph named him one of the 25 most influential Anglicans in the world, and in 2012, Vancouver Magazine named him one of the 45 people who "made Vancouver better."
Born in Yorkshire, England, Ingham studied politics, philosophy and theology at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland, where he received an M.A.
He trained for the priesthood in the Scottish Episcopal Church before doing postgraduate work at Harvard University and spent a semester studying Judaism at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem.
He was ordained in Ottawa in 1974, later working as a priest at Christ the King (now St. Timothy's) in Burnaby. He was also a part-time chaplain at SFU's interfaith centre.
He is currently the longest-service Anglican bishop in Canada, and is set to retire on Aug. 31.
"It's been a very demanding role," he said. "It's very rewarding, but it's also pretty stressful. I look around me, and there's lots of capable leaders waiting in the wings. One of the things leaders have to do is know when to step aside and when the organization needs fresh energy and initiative, and I think we're at that stage now."
