In 2021, drawing on the Christian literary heritage from the Old Testament to the Inklings, we together explored how storytelling shapes us and may bring us towards a better faith, hope, and love.

Professor Judith Wolfe, of The University of St Andrews, spoke on Inklings of Heaven: Hope and Storytelling in Lewis and Tolkien. Joy Clarkson, a doctoral student at the Institute for Theology, Imagination and the Arts at The University of St Andrews, delivered a talk entitled, Practice Resurrection: Literature, Formation, and Christian Hope. Professor Iain Provan, of Regent College, Vancouver, gave our final keynote address, I Saw a New Heaven and a New Earth (Rev. 21:1): A Biblical Perspective on Faith and Hope.

In addition to these outstanding keynote addresses, various other speakers gave wonderful short talks exploring the theme: Faith, Hope, and Art (Alastair Gordon), Faith, Hope, and Spiritual Reading (Sharon Jebb Smith), Faith, Hope, and Fiction (Kirstin Jeffrey Johnson), Faith, Hope, and Politics (Krish Kandiah), Faith, Hope, and the Environment (Richard Murray), and Faith, Hope, and Music (Jeremy Begbie).

In breakout rooms, workshops, and Q&A sessions, we met together online, a gathered temporary community, to discuss and share all we learned.  A memorable “Open Mic” afternoon, entitled, “Watching, Waiting, Listening,” saw the poets and writers among us share their work.

You can learn more about our speakers at their websites, linked here:

Judith Wolfe Joy Clarkson Iain Provan

Alastair Gordon Kirstin Jeffrey Johnson Sharon Jebb Smith Jeremy Begbie Krish Kandiah Richard Murray

 Take your everyday, ordinary life – your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life – and place it before God as an offering. (Romans 12:1-2, The Message)

In 2019 we asked what, in a culture of exceptionalism and Instagram perfection, it might mean to recognise our common life as “a spiritual act of worship.” What does the humanity of Jesus have to teach us about the way that God works? How might the kingdom of God break through in (and not despite) the sacred ordinary? With Julie Canlis, Malcolm Guite and a number of workshop leaders, we looked closer at the glory of everyday life and called it "good."

In 2018, we thought about creativity. Is it an important part of our being made in the image of God to be boldly creative in our lives, churches, and work? Are we all meant to be creative? We reflected on the subject of creativity and its role in the Kingdom with Iwan Russell-Jones and Sharon Jebb Smith as our plenary speakers. Through other makers and creatives, we engaged with, and involved ourselves in, the creative process in action.

The Abbey School 2017 faced the present predicament of individualism, and the ways in which it has made itself comfortable in the church. By following the lives of two men who started off as hermits - and then went on to found Eastern and Western monasticism - we watched their personal and theological transformation from isolation to community. 

Communion at St. Anthony's

Matt and Julie serve the bread and wine
as they have often done,
as they will do again nearer sea level.
Sacraments explain
themselves, they offer us a holy sign
of how in Christ we’re one
with him. So throw your mobile at the devil,
this is God’s domain,
and God is real, not virtual love; he knows
our joy and pain, his name is friend, not fate,
think poetry, not prose;
for in his Son he occupied our state,
he wore our dusty, ordinary clothes
to make us somehow great.

- Jock Stein, July 2017

Amidst growing questions about human personhood, The Abbey 2016 explored the Christian vision of being a human being ‘fully alive’, addressing the richness of our being embodied creatures in light of particular challenges to that way of living in the 21st century – challenges as ‘simple’ as how we live with technology, and what we eat. 

Abbey Summer School 2016 Video

Faith Walking

Today we travel subliminal walkways
through the stone history of Edinburgh.
Releasing stress from two great talk days,
now we journey off piste. First, Matt
shares a four-faced blessing at Steadfast
Gate. We follow, follow the path
as it folds us gently into the past,
leading upstream to St Bernard’s Well.
Across the Water of Leith the Colony,
artisan houses, built, inspired
by Begg and Chalmers’ testimony.
We emerge in the Village of Dean,
find Gallery Two, the scene
set for the Lord’s green table,
al fresco, where we are able
to cock a contemporary snook
at the militant atheist hook,
“There will be no miracles here.”
Such artwork seems austere
and even dramatically odd
in the light of the presence of God.