Harold Munn

Harold Munn was born in Victoria, B.C., and after graduating from the University of Victoria taught physics, biology and chemistry for three years to African high school students in Malawi, East Africa. He returned to Canada to study theology, not for ordination, but to find out how one could know if this loving God was real. It turned out one couldn’t, and Harold lost his faith, but in that disaster rediscovered how deeply he was loved. Harold was ordained an Anglican priest in the Yukon and served in mines and First Nations villages, and in Whitehorse, later in Edmonton and as Dean of All Saints’ Cathedral, and then as rector of a large downtown church in Victoria. In all his ministry he has been involved with First Nations, and with street, poverty and justice issues as well as with the arts. Harold has been active in movements such as Extinction Rebellion, pressing for societal change to avert climate collapse.
Since childhood Harold has been intrigued with the issues which science raises for belief in God and earned his Doctor of Ministry degree from a United Church college at the University of Alberta studying the world-views of non-believers, many of them professional scientists. He co-taught two courses on science and faith at the University of Alberta and is an associate of the international Society for Ordained Scientists founded by Arthur Peacocke, a biochemist who was also an Anglican priest and was a lecturer at both Oxford and Cambridge.
In 2024 Harold published “Faith in Doubt: how my dog made me an atheist and atheism made me a priest: An experiment in Faith” which proposes that one reason for declining church membership is the churches’ use of language which is no longer understood within our secular scientific culture. Examples from Harold’s personal life as well as a novel-like story of a budding romance between a believer and an atheist illustrate how churches could communicate the faith powerfully and effectively within the assumptions of our secular and scientific age. A sequel is underway focusing on the climate crisis and faith, using a similar format of personal stories and the ongoing romance in which the couple face challenges in their relationship and in their concern about the climate.
Now living in Vancouver in retirement on the campus of UBC, Harold taught Anglican formation at the Vancouver School of Theology and has been interim priest in several Vancouver-area churches. He and his wife of fifty years have two adult sons, one a priest and one a fire-fighter paramedic, and four grandchildren whom he claims can be scientifically proven to be the most delightful grandkids in the whole world.