Art Babych and Jesse Hair write for the Anglican Church of Canada:
About 130 young people gathered in a heavily fortified bank vault in the depths of the “Diefenbunker” near Carp, Ont., on Nov. 17, 2013. They were there for a Eucharist and sermon comparing the pacifism of Christ and the “redemptive violence” of the bestselling novel and movie The Hunger Games.
The once-secret underground bunker near Carp, Ont., was built more than 50 years ago to protect the Canadian government from nuclear attack.
“The Hunger Games is a book about juxtaposition,” said the Rev. Monique Stone, organizer of the service and incumbent of the Anglican Parish of Huntley, in her sermon. “It’s a book in which we see a community in dire poverty pushed up against a community of privilege — in which we hear about a community that is starving, and [another] that has so much excess that at times they actually want to make themselves sick so they can fit in more food.”
Matthew Townsend is a Halifax-based freelance journalist and volunteer advocate for survivors of sexual misconduct in Anglican settings. He served as editor of the Anglican Journal from 2019 to 2021 and communications missioner for the Anglican Diocese of Quebec from 2019 to 2022. He and his wife recently entered catechism class in the Orthodox Church in America.
