Matthew Anderson
Matthew is the author of six books and is currently working on his seventh, a murder mystery (historical fiction) set in Bethlehem during the final days of the Roman Empire. Matthew began teaching as a sessional lecturer at StFX in the fall of 2022. In 2023 he was awarded the Gatto Chair of Christian Studies, a research and creation post he will hold until July 2027. He is also an Affiliate Assistant Professor in the Department of Theological Studies at Concordia University, Montreal, where he taught for twenty years prior to coming to Antigonish. He is frequently asked to lead summer, sessional, and online courses for Montreal Diocesan College, the Vancouver School of Theology at UBC, and the Atlantic School of Theology at Halifax. Matthew is married to Dr Sara Parks, a professor in the Dept. of Religious Studies at St FX. He has three adult children and one grandchild. He has published many journal articles, scholarly book chapters, and public pieces on decolonizing settler-Indigenous relations, on pilgrimage studies, and on gender and masculinity, with a special interest when these intersect the world of the ancient Mediterranean. Matthew is committed to accessible scholarship and to public, intersectional, feminism. He blogs at www.somethinggrand.ca and podcasts at Pilgrimage Stories from Up and Down the Staircase. His PhD in Rhetoric and Pauline Studies is from McGill University
The Apostle Paul, Ancient and Contemporary Pilgrimage, Pilgrimage as Pedagogy, as “Place-Making,” and as Political Action, Mediterranean Christianity and Judaism, Apocalypticism, Aware-Settler and Settler-Colonial Approaches, Biblical Studies, Christian Origins, Early Christianity, Early Judaism, Gender, Gospels, Hermeneutical Lenses, Historical Jesus Research, Violence and the Bible, Modern Reception of the Bible, New Testament Studies, Late Roman History, St Paula, St Jerome, Leonard Cohen.
Recent StFX and Antigonish Highlights
On March 31, 2026 I was the organizer, grant Recipient, interviewer and co-host for a Gatto Webinar I called “Novel Research: Meeting Four Historians of Ancient Religion Who Also Write Fiction,” moderated by Dr. Sara Parks from StFX. The recording of this fun event is here.
On Nov 20, 2025 I was an organizer, grant Recipient, interviewer and co-host for a StFX Religious Studies Global Religions panel titled: “Indigenous Christians on Turtle Island.” You can see the panel’s guests here.
On June 18, 2025 I was proud to be featured in a StFX Online newsletter article celebrating my win of the Saskatchewan Book Award for The Good Walk: Creating New Paths on Traditional Prairie Trails (University of Regina Press, 2024). The article is here.
On the evening of April 28, 2024, I gave a talk to a full house at the Antigonish Heritage Museum, titled “The Mystery of Ninian,” part of my research for my locally-themed book: Someone Else’s Saint: How a Scottish Pilgrimage Led to Nova Scotia (Potterfield Press, 2025).
Together with StFX Art Gallery Director Dr Andrea Terry I co-curated the exhibition “1001 Lights,” a multi-track video dance installation from Mouvement Perpétuel, a Montreal based artistic company. This included organizing the show and finding internal and external funding of $8437.00 to sponsor an interactive artist’s talk Thurs Nov 23, 2023, followed by the exhibition at the Gallery.
Below you’ll find just some of Matthew’s more recent publications, book awards, and media appearances. For a fuller listing, including keynote addresses, academic presentations, grant capture, and service, see the tabs at www.somethinggrand.ca
Books:
Someone Else’s Saint: How a Scottish Pilgrimage Led to Nova Scotia. Pottersfield Press, April 2025. (Winner of a Pottersfield Prize for Non-Fiction 2024.) CBC Radio One Montreal interview here; CBC Cape Breton interview here.
The Good Walk: Creating New Paths on Traditional Prairie Trails. University of Regina Press, 2024. (Winner of the Creative Saskatchewan Book Award for Publishers 2025; Best of Non-Fiction 2024 Pick by The Miramichi Reader.) Miramichi Reader review here. Winnipeg Free Press article here.
Prophets of Love: The Unlikely Kinship of Leonard Cohen and the Apostle Paul, McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2023. Finalist for a SSHRC National Book Award and a Koffler Vine Canadian Jewish Book Award. Finalist for the Humanities and Social Sciences Canada Book Awards 2025. Supported by a SSHRC Publication Grant. CBC Montreal interview about the book here. 2025 University of Toronto Quarterly review here. 2025 Catholic Register article here. Literature and Theology review here.
Our Home and Treaty Land. Revised and Expanded Edition. (co-authored with Dr. Raymond Aldred). Friesen Press, 2024.
Our Home and Treaty Land: Walking our Creation Story. Wood Lake Books 2022.
Apocalypse et gin tonic. (translated by Sabrina DiMatteo) Novalis 2022.
Pairings: The Bible and Booze. Novalis 2021.
Select Media Appearances
2025 CBC Radio One National “The Cost of Living” with producer Leah Hendry, about Advent and Calendars rebroadcast as a segment in Montreal, Saskatchewan and other CBC morning shows.
2025 CBC Radio One Quebec City afternoon show “Breakaway,” with host Alison Brunette, on the history and theology of Advent Calendars
2025 The Catholic Register interview on Prophets of Love. 2025 CBC Radio One Cape Breton Main Street interview with host producer/host Wendy Bergfeldt.
2025 CBC Radio One Montreal All in a Weekend with host Sonali Karnick, “Matthew Anderson on the Saint Ninian Connection.”
2025 The Camino Podcast, with Dave Whitson: “Episode 92: Two Pilgrimages Through Canada’s Histories.” January 2025.
2024 The Author Journey, by OC Publishing, host Anne Louise O’Connell: “Interview with Dr. Matthew Anderson” livestreamed Dec 10, 2024.
2024 CBC Radio One Saskatchewan Blue Sky (noon show) with Leisha Grebinski: “The Good Walk: Prairie Pilgrimages with Matthew Anderson” May 13, 2024.
2024 CBC Radio One Saskatchewan Morning Edition with Stefani Langenegger, “The Good Walk Author Chronicles Journey Across Prairie” April 26, 2024.
2024 [TV interview] CTV Montreal Pulse News interview with Mutsumi Takahashi on pilgrimage March 4, 2024
2024 Canadian Society for the Study of Religion. Webinar Series. Prophets of Love: The Unlikely Kinship of Leonard Cohen and the Apostle Paul.
2024 Beer Christianity Podcast, with host Jonty Langley: “Leonard Cohen and Saint Paul with Matthew Anderson Pauline Scholar.”
2023 What Matters Most Podcast, with host John W. Martens: “A Conversation with Matthew Anderson.”
2023 CBC Radio One Montreal All in a Weekend with host Sonali Karnick, “Prophets of Love: The Unlikely Kinship of Leonard Cohen and the Apostle Paul.”
2023 Je Marche Partout, Radio Ville Marie avec Denis Chagnon: “Épisode 1 – Vers la réconciliation : le pèlerinage de décolonisation" 2023.
2021 CTV Montreal News: TV Interview.
2021 Winnipeg Free Press “Drinking in Scripture” (feature religion article)
2019 Jad Abukasm, “Physical Recognition of the Land: A Pilgrimage to Montreal,” The Concordian.
2016 [invited feature radio interview] CBC Radio One “Cinq à Six” with Nantali Indongo, “One Hour with Pilgrimage Leader Matthew Anderson, Montreal Creative.”
2016 CBC Radio One All in a Weekend “Interview from the Pilgrimage Trail in Iceland.”
2014 CBC Radio One All in a Weekend “The Joys of Pilgrimage with Matthew Anderson.”
2014 CBC Radio One All in a Weekend “The Joys of Pilgrimage with Matthew Anderson.”
Public-facing articles (selection)
2025 “The Surprising Theology Inside Today’s Advent Calendars,” The Conversation Canada, Dec 12, 2025.
2023 “I’m your man: How Leonard Cohen’s life, poetry and song make him a prophet of love in a particularly dark midwinter,” The Conversation Canada, Dec 13, 2023.
2021 “Apocalypse, Booze and Christmas: An Ancient ABC.” The Tyee.
2020 “’Life of Brian’: Terry Jones’s Legacy of a Surprisingly Historical Jesus,” The Conversation: Canada.
2020 (co-authored with Christine Jamieson) “The Good Place: Ethics Comedy Asks if There’s a Second Chance at Life,” Salon.
2019 “Learning the Land: Walking the Talk of Indigenous Land Acknowledgements,” in The Conversation: Canada.
2019 “A Blanket Argument for Empathy.” Friends of Canadian Broadcasting. (Runner-up for the Dalton Camp Award.)
2019 “The Man Who Painted Jesus,” ArtCritique
2019 “Why Canadians Need the Right to Roam,” The Narwhal.
Chapters in Edited Volumes
[forthcoming] "The Historicity of Acts 20:16 and a Shavu'ot Setting for the Pauline Collection," in Dreams, Visions, and Authority: Studies in Early Jewish and Christian Apocalypticism and Messianism, eds. David Basham, Jean Maurais, and Carla Sulzbach.
2026 "The Violence of North American Settler Use of Biblical Texts." In The Bible and Violence: Volume II: Violent Uses of the Bible, edited by Chris Greenough, Johnathan Jodamus, Johanna Stiebert and Mmapula Diana Kebaneilwe. T&T Clark, 2026. http://dx.doi.org/10.5040/9780567709134.038.
2025 “Judeophobia and Pauline Scholarship,” in Judeophobia and the New Testament, eds. Sarah Rollens, Meredith Warren, and Eric Vanden Eykel. 59-70. Eerdmans, 2025. The book won First Place in Scripture – Academic Studies, at the Catholic Media Awards, 2026.
2024 “Failed Connectivities: Paul’s collection and his final pilgrimage to Jerusalem,” in Pilgrims in Place, Pilgrims in Motion: Sacred Travel in the Ancient Mediterranean, eds. Anna Collar and Troels Myrup Kristensen. 159-178. Århus University Press, 2024.
2024 “’Unhomeness’ and Pilgrimage,” in Pilgrimage in the Twenty-First Century: A Kaleidoscopic Inquiry, eds. Ian S. McIntosh, Dane Munro, Alison T. Smith, and Susan Dunn-Hensley, 34-51. Cambridge Scholars, 2024.
2024 [reprint] “’One of the Boys’: Jerome’s Fabulous Frontier Masculinity,” in Constructions of Gender in Religious Traditions of Late Antiquity, eds. Shayna Sheinfeld, Juni Hoppe, and Kathy Ehrensperger, 161-194. Lexington Fortress, 2024.
2023 “The Promise and Peril of Walking Indigenous Territorial Recognitions carried out by Settlers,” in New Pilgrimage Routes and Trails, eds. Ian S. McIntosh, Daniel Olson and Dane Munro, 98-120. Lausanne: Peter Lang, 2023.
2021 « De Concordia à Kahnawà:ke en passant par l’Europe et la Saskatchewan. » in Pèlerinage, marche pèlerine et marche de longue durée au Québec, eds. Éric Laliberté and Michel O’Neill, 141-163. Les Presses de l’Université Laval, 2021.
2020 “Settler-Aware” Pilgrimage and Reconciliation: The Treaty Four Canadian Context,” in Peace Journeys: A New Direction in Religious Tourism and Pilgrimage Research, eds. Ian S. McIntosh, Nour Farra Haddad and Dane Munro, 98-120. Cambridge Scholars Press.
Journal Articles
2026 “Mortality and Death in the Bible,” Touchstone 44:1 (Winter 2026): 14-23.
2025 “Critical Theology and a Radically Reinterpreted New Testament,” Critical Theology 8, 1 (Fall 2025): 10-13.
2024 “Walls, Paths, Gardens, and a Gravediggers’ Pub,” CrossCurrents 74, 1 (2024): 36-47.
2022 “’One of the Boys’: Jerome’s Fabulous Frontier Masculinity,” The Bible & Critical Theory 18, 1 (2022): 1-25.
2022 “Ecumenism and the ‘Balloon Theory’ of Christendom,” One in Christ 55, 2 (2022): 177-180.
2022 “Le pèlerinage comme expérience de repentir à travers l’apprentissage corporel,” Échanges 6, 6 (novembre 2022): 14-19.
2021 (with Ken Wilson), “The Promise and Peril of Walking Indigenous Territorial Recognitions carried out by Settlers,” International Journal of Religious Tourism and Pilgrimage. 9, 2 (2021): Article 7.
2019 “‘Aware-Settler’ Biblical Studies: Breaking Claims of Textual Ownership,” Journal for Interdisciplinary Biblical Studies 1, 1 (2019): 42-68.
2019 “Strangers on the Land: What “Settler-Aware” Biblical Studies Learns from Indigenous Methodologies,” Critical Theology 1, 2 (2019): 10-14.
2019 “Walking to be Some Body: desire and diaspora on the St-Olaf Way,” International Journal of Religious Tourism and Pilgrimage 7, 1 (2019): 63-76.
2019 “Luther and the Trajectories of Western Pilgrimage,” International Journal of Religious Tourism and Pilgrimage 7, 1 (2019): 53-62.
2018 “Post-Reformation Christian Pilgrimage and the Globalization of Sentiment,” Theoforum 48, 1-2 (2018): 11-22.
2017 “The Tough Wedge: Reformation Now and Onward,” Consensus 38, 2 (2017): 5.
2015 “The Curious Voyage of Christ: katábasis, anábasis, and the New Testament,” Les Études Classiques. 83, 1 (2015): 385-396.
2008 “Schweitzer and a Mystical Ecology in Paul,” Consensus. 33, 1 (2008): Article 2.
Commentaries, Encyclopedia, and Pedagogical Resources
2025 “2 Corinthians 11:21b-30: Credentials of God’s Calling,” Visual Commentary on Scripture, 2025.
2024 “Aware-Settler Hermeneutics,” Bible Odyssey, September 2024.
2020 “Paul and Pauline Epistles,” (solicited article) for The Encyclopedia of Ancient History. Wiley Online Library.
Documentary Films directed and produced
2013 Under the North Star
2012 Something Grand
Podcast Series directed and produced
2019 - Pilgrimage Stories from Up and Down the Staircase.
Radio Drama
2004 “The Most Beautiful Thing.” CBC Radio One; broadcast on Outfront. Winner: New Voices Contest (CBC/Playwrights’ Workshop). Producer: Bill Lane. CBC, Toronto.
Book Awards
2025 Saskatchewan Book Award for Matthew Anderson, The Good Walk: Creating New Paths on Traditional Prairie Trails. URP.
2025 National Book Award finalist, SSHRC, for Prophets of Love: The Unlikely Kinship of Leonard Cohen and the Apostle Paul. MQUP.
2024 Pottersfield Creative Prize for Non-Fiction, 2nd Place for Matthew Anderson, Someone Else’s Saint: How a Scottish Pilgrimage Led to Nova Scotia. Prize included publication.
2024 Koffler Vine Canadian Jewish Book Awards (one of three shortlisted in the nonfiction category), for, Prophets of Love: The Unlikely Kinship of Leonard Cohen and the Apostle Paul.
Short Fiction Awards
2024 Runner-Up in “Nova Writes” – Writers’ Federation of Nova Scotia Short Fiction Competition for “A Life in Its Pieces.”
2014 Finalist, CBC/Quebec Writers Federation QWF) Short Story Competition for “The Backhoe,” Salut King Kong. Véhicule Press. ed. Elise Moser.
2011 Honourable Mention, Short Fiction Category, Prairie Fire-McNally Robinson competition for “A Street Called Generous,” Prairie Fire.
2005 Winner, Dramatic Monologue, Short-Grain Contest for “Boo,” Grain Magazine.
2005 Finalist: CBC/QWF literary competition for “Marathon of Hope,” Short Stuff: New English Stories from Quebec. Claude Lalumière & Elise Moser, eds. Montreal: Véhicule Press.
2004 Finalist: CBC/QWF literary competition for “Europa,” Short Stuff: New English Stories from Quebec. Lalumière, ed. Montreal: Véhicule Press.
2004 Second place, Maisonneuve literary competition for “Yard Art Love,” Maisonneuve Magazine, Nov 16, 2004.
2002 Winner CBC/QWF Short Story Competition (also broadcast, CBC Montreal) for “Encomium,” Telling Stories: New Fiction from Quebec Writers. Lalumière, ed. Montreal: Véhicule Press.
Poetry Awards
2026 Finalist (short-listed) for the Rita Joe poetry award, part of “Nova Writes” – Writers’ Federation of Nova Scotia. For the collection “The First Frost: Poetry from the Stroke Ward.”
