ATC Speakers 2026
The Sublime Sermons of Anglican Poet-Priests
Paper 1: George Herbert
Dr. John Baxter is Professor Emeritus of English at Dalhousie University. He is author of Shakespeare’s Poetic Styles (1980; rpr. Routledge, 2005) and co-editor of Aristotle’s Poetics by George Whalley (McGill-Queen’s, 1997). Recent articles include: “Learning to Spell: ‘Church-monuments’ and the Art of Reading,” The George Herbert Journal, Volume 44 (2023): 63-83; and “George Herbert’s ‘The Church-porch’ and the Native Plain Style,” The George Herbert Journal, Volume 46 (2025): 55-76.
Speaker
Dr. Christopher Elson serves as a Professor of French and Canadian Studies in the King’s-Dalhousie Joint Faculty. He is a King’s-Dalhousie Carnegie Professor. Dr. Elson began his post-secondary education in the Foundation Year Program at the University of King’s College and graduated magna cum laude with a Joint Honours in Philosophy and French in 1986. After a year teaching in a French lycée in Lille, he completed an MA in Dalhousie’s Department of French. He honed his teaching skills as a tutor in the Foundation Year Programme from 1989-1991, and subsequently resumed his graduate studies at the Université de Paris IV (Sorbonne), where he focused on the relation of contemporary Poetics and Ethics. He also studied at the Collège International de Philosophie and received his Doctorat de Troisième Cycle (nouveau régime) in 1995.
Respondant
Paper 2
Fr. David Curry is a graduate of King’s College, Dalhousie University, Hfx, NS, Harvard University, Cambridge Massachusetts, and Trinity College, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON. He was ordained to the priesthood in 1982. He has taught at Trinity College and the University of King’s College and for 28 years was Chaplain at King’s-Edgehill School, Windsor, NS where he taught English and Philosophy in the International Baccalaureate Programme (retired June 2025). He has served at the Church of the Advent, Boston, Massachusetts, in the Combined Parishes of Liscombe and Port Bickerton, NS., and is currently Rector of the Parish of Christ Church, Windsor, NS. He has lectured and published on matters of theology, literature, history, and liturgy and has been a frequent contributor to the Atlantic Theological Conferences for decades. He and his wife Marilyn live in Falmouth, NS. They have three children and currently four grandchildren.
Speaker
Fr. Gethin Edward was born and raised on Prince Edward Island. A cradle Anglican, he grew up attending St. Peter’s Cathedral in Charlottetown, where his faith was formed and fostered by the Common Prayer tradition. During his teens, encouraged by the communities he found at the St. Michael’s Youth Conference and the chapel at King’s College, Halifax, he discerned a vocation to the priesthood, and after marrying his wife, Meg, in 1999, entered the divinity program at Wycliffe College, Toronto. He was ordained a priest in 2010, in the Diocese of Saskatchewan. Having returned to PEI in 2021, he is now priest-in-charge of the parish of Georgetown, and also a spirtual care provider at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital, in Charlottetown.
Respondant
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Paper 3: John Donne
Speaker
The Rev. Canon Alistair Macdonald-Radcliff is the XVIIth Rector of The Church of the Advent, in Boston’s Beacon Hill. A former Dean of All Saints’ Cathedral in Cairo Egypt, in the Province of Alexandria, North Africa and the Horn of Africa. Canon Alistair has a worked extensively on interfaith matters and ecumenical dialogue and served as Senior Advisor to the World Economic Forum where he also developed its Council of One Hundred Leaders West-Islamic Dialogue, later known as the C1 World Dialogue of which he was Director General. Having worked for Lord Carey the 103rd Archbishop of Canterbury he later served as Senior Advisor to the King Abdullah International Center for Interreligious and Intercultural Dialogue (KAICIID) in Vienna, Austria.Canon Alistair originally studied Ancient History and Philosophy before undertaking advanced degrees in Philosophy of Religion and Theology, studying in London, Oxford, and Yale where he was a Research Fellow and also took a degree with International Relations and Islam.
In 2024 he was admitted to the Most Venerable Order of the Hospital of St. John of Jerusalem. He is a Board Member of Prayer Book Society of the United States, The Elliott House of Studies, and of Communion Partners and he is the Editor-in-Chief of The Anglican Way, the journal of the Prayer Book Society USA.
Dr. Patricia Robertson holds a BA from the University of Winnipeg, a Master’s of Christian Studies from Regent College in Vancouver, and an MA and PhD from the University of Ottawa. Her doctoral thesis was on the sermons of John Donne; she has published on Donne, Milton, and Joseph Conrad. She taught in the Foundation Year Programme at the University of King’s College, and then was the King’s Registrar for 12 years. She is currently teaching in the English department of Dalhousie University.
Respondant
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Paper 4: John Keble
Fr. George Westhaver is the Principal of Pusey House, a Fellow of St Cross College, and a member of the Faculty of Theology and Religion at the University of Oxford. George’s research focuses on E B Pusey and the Oxford Movement, sacramental theology, the allegorical interpretation of the Bible, and the artistic expression of Christian doctrine. He is a contributor to The Oxford Handbook on the Oxford Movement, The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, and an editor and contributor to three Pusey House conference collections: A Transforming Vision (SCM 2018), Christ Unabridged (SCM 2020), and The Dove Descending (James Clarke & Co, 2025).
Speaker
Fr. John Matheson is the Rector of the Parish of Saint Andrew and the Archdeacon of Southwestern New Brunswick.
Respondant
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Paper 5: Austin Farrer
The Revd Canon Patrick Curran, B.A. (Vind. 80), B.Th. (South. 85), was ordained priest in Exeter Cathedral in 1985 after training for the ministry of the Church of England at Chichester Theological College (1980-1983). In 1983/84, he studied theology at the University of Munich, attending lectures and seminars in both the Protestant and Catholic faculties. He served his title at St Michael and All Angels, Heavitree, Exeter (birthplace of Richard Hooker), followed by his appointment as Bishop’s Chaplain to Students in the Diocese of Bradford (1987-1993) and then as chaplain first of St Boniface, Bonn, and All Saints, Cologne, Germany, and subsequently as chaplain of Christ Church, Vienna, Austria (2000-2025), both in the Diocese in Europe. For thirteen years, he was also the Archdeacon of the Eastern Archdeaconry. For a time, he was both the senior archdeacon in the diocese and the Chair of the House of Clergy. In Austria, he was a member of the Standing Committee of the National Ecumenical Council of Churches for twelve years and has been supportive of the Christian-Jewish Coordinating Council and the Austrian Bible Society throughout. During his time in Germany he was instrumental in setting up the Council Anglican and Episcopal Churches in Germany (CAECG). (Romans 12:10) He lives in Vienna, Austria and is married with two daughters and two grandsons.
Speaker
Alan Hall lives in Fredericton NB with his wife, three children, and his dog, Tuckerman. He has been teaching in the Great Books Programme at St. Thomas University since 2008. Before that was a FYP Tutor and also taught in the History of Science and Contemporary Studies Programmes at the University of King's College. He studied at King's and at the University of Toronto. He is currently a postulant in the Diocese of Fredericton and is working on a MTS at Wycliffe College.
Respondant
Paper 6: Robert Darwin Crouse
Dr. Neil G. Robertson is Professor of the Humanities and Social Sciences at the University of King's College in Halifax, Canada, serving as Director of its Foundation Year Program. He was also the founding Director of the Early Modern Studies Programme at King's. He did his undergraduate degree at the University of King’s College and his doctorate is from Cambridge University in Social and Political Sciences. His publications include Leo Strauss: An Introduction (2021) and, as co-editor, Hegel and Canada (2018), Descartes and the Modern (2008) and Philosophy and Freedom: The Legacy of James Doull, (2003). His writings focus on the question of the nature of “modernity”; he has written on Augustine, Dante, Luther, Hooker, Shakespeare, Descartes, Locke, Montesquieu and Rousseau, as well as more contemporary thinkers such as George Grant, Leo Strauss, and John Milbank. He is a series of editor of the Works of Robert Crouse publication project and a co-editor of Robert Crouse, A Theology of Pilgrimage (forthcoming). Very much as an amateur, Neil sings opera and has sung bass roles such as the Commendatore in Don Giovanni and Sarastro in The Magic Flute.
Conference Preacher
The Rev’d Canon LCol (Rtd) Dr. Gary Thorne, Dunelm, M.M.M., grew up in Saint John, NB, Canada, in the 1950s in an urban poverty from which he took refuge in the inner life. Before retirement, concurrent with twenty-three years as chaplain in the Canadian Military, Thorne served as rector of rural and urban parishes for twenty-five years, and as university chaplain for sixteen years. Thorne came to know divine friendship and the continuing conversion of the soul through the sermons of Dr Robert Crouse in the late 1970s. In response, he currently promotes the legacy of the teaching of Robert Crouse for the renewal of the Church.