Biography
Tom Sherwood has two sets of professional credentials.Ordained by the United Church of Canada in 1976, he had a full-time clergy career in parish ministry, hospital chaplaincy and campus ministry including as Carleton University Chaplain, 1999-2009.As a part-time university teacher from 1982 to 2017, he taught courses in Anthropology, Sociology, and Religion at Carleton and Saint Paul University from First Year to M.A. levels.In June 2009, he was appointed the McGeachy Senior Scholar in the United Church of Canada, and commissioned to undertake a national study of the religiosity, spirituality and values of Canadians born in the 1980s, published as Listening to The Echo – young adults talk about religion, spirituality, God, gods and their world (FriesenPress, 2016). His research has also been published in several articles and book chapters, and presented in documentary theatre projects: The god Monologues (2013), godVERBATIM in the 2014 Ottawa Fringe Festival, O god in the 2015 Fringe, and Trans-Script in 2016-17 at the Gladstone Theatre.Since 2011, he has been a Senior Fitness Instructor in a specialized Carleton Athletics program accredited by the Ottawa Heart Institute and Osteoporosis Canada. This is the trajectory of his earlier career as a university athlete (football and basketball at York and Carleton) and as a coach.Since 2023, he has been performing a one-actor, Fringe-Festival-style play, “Eat, Drink and Be Merry – A Meaningless Hour with King Solomon and the Book of Ecclesiastes.” Performances and the audience talkback last about 90 minutes and have raised thousands of dollars for the Multifaith Housing Initiative, refugee sponsorship groups, a children’s camp, the Jewish Community Centre and other worthwhile activities.
Research Interests
• religion in Canadian society• interfaith relations and multifaith activities• multiple religious belonging• youth and young adult spirituality
Publications
Tom Sherwood was Religion and Life columnist for the Ottawa Citizen in the 1980s and ’90s, and a freelance writer of newspaper and magazine articles for many years. His academic publications since 2000 include articles on Multiple Religious Practice, Religious Diversity in Canada, New Understandings of Ecumenism, and University Chaplaincy.
