Rev. Sonya Lewthwaite was born in Oamaru, and grew up between North Otago and the North-West Frontier Province of Pakistan, where her parents worked in development. Her family also spent some of her formative years in Tunbridge Wells, UK.
A need to grapple with deep questions of life and faith led to tertiary study in Theology and Political Philosophy through Otago, with periods at Durham University and The University of Tübingen. After completing her Masters in Theology in 2016, Sonya taught Biblical Theology at The Salvation Army Booth College of Mission. She also served for several years as a Chaplain at Te Herenga Waka, Victoria University.
Sonya has a strong love for the church and a desire to see it grow in love for its Lord, and in the hope we have been given. She is an ordained Anglican priest, and ministers at St David’s, Lower Hutt. She and her husband Jon and their three young children live in Naenae, where they enjoy bush walks, gardening, and the odd night of decent sleep.
Some years ago, I asked a retired priest whether he could tutor me on the meaning and practice of the Anglican liturgy. Why do we gather and worship as we do?
We live in a world that is obsessed with freedom from constraint, a world in which commitment is seen as the enemy of choice, and where we are encouraged to keep options open at all costs.
I began Advent early this year by listening through the album of that title by The Porter’s Gate, especially its third track, “He Comes”.
There is a posture we can take toward writings from the past that opens us to being changed by what we encounter and, simultaneously, keeps us radically realistic about the ways in which what we read will fall short of the mark.
One of the quirks of celebrating the church calendar in the Southern Hemisphere is that the season of Lent (observed in the Northern Hemisphere during the bleak end of the winter months) takes place against the backdrop of our most abundant time of the year.
One of the quirks of celebrating the church calendar in the Southern Hemisphere is that the recent season of Lent (observed in the Northern Hemisphere during the bleak end of the winter months) takes place against the backdrop of our most abundant time of the year.
Reflecting on her first experience of reading theology, a friend of mine recently recalled her surprise at the attention theologians gave writers of the past.