Peter Schuurman

Peter Schuurman has a PhD in world religions and investigates faith matters as an ethnographer—being guested and interviewing people about their spiritual lives. With Dutch-Canadian Christian roots and a role as executive director in a small global charity, he has written about megachurches, charismatic leaders, world Christianity and most recently, the deconstruction of faith in Canada.

He was a campus chaplain at Brock University for eight years and learned to dialogue and debate with Jews, Muslims, Bahai, atheists and others. Within his own Christian camp, he has spent time with the Baptists, Roman Catholics, Brethren, Mennonites, and of course, his own Reformed roots.

He has been especially interested in the role of humour and play, and how it relates to religion. Like religion, play involves imagination, rituals, and getting caught up in a world that is more than just the world. Some even claim that laughter was the pivotal event in the origins of the Abrahamic faiths. Theologian Reinhold Niebuhr once said that “Humour is, in fact, a prelude to faith; and laughter is the beginning of prayer.”

He lives in southern Ontario with his family and golden doodle, Blaze.