Lois Wilson is an ordained minister of the United Church of Canada (’65) and its first female Moderator (’80 – ’82). President of both the Canadian (’76 – ’79) and  World (’83 – ’91) Council of Churches. Chancellor of Lakehead University (’91 – ’00). An Independent Senator (’98 – ’02), she worked with Sudan and North Korea and founded the Senate’s Standing Committee on Human Rights. Fifteen honorary degrees and awards include the Canadian U.N. Pearson Peace Prize (’84) and the Canadian Civil Liberties Award for Public Engagement (2014). Married to Rev. Dr. Roy Wilson, she has four children, twelve grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.

Quotes by Lois Wilson from WomenTalk on how to bridge the church with the secular world:

“In terms of theologians in dialogue with the world, I think that the theological mandate is in the Gospel of John: “God so loved the world…” It’s not “God so loved the Church, it’s God so loved the world”. That’s always been the focus of my ministry and I think that should be the focus of the Christian church as well.”

“I was a lay person for half of my life and working for the rest of it. And it seems to me that the Christian witnessing in the world is going to be with the Christian lay people. It’s the laity so we need to address that.”

“You’ll remember some years ago, I think it was the year 2000, the Church in Canada put together the Year of Jubilee based on Biblical Jubilee and Leviticus 25 where symbolically all debts are forgiven, prisoners were released…So I took this literally. I was in the Senate at the time, sitting as an independent senator which I had to negotiate with Prime Minister Chrétien. So we had a 15 minute thing in the Senate where you can say whatever you want. So I promoted this Year of Jubilee. I said the Christian churches in Canada are coming together asking the Canadian government to forgive the debts of the most indebted countries in the world. Would you support that? Well, it went over like a lead balloon. And several people said it’s not realistic – go away Lois. So I snuck off into my corner. But 5 years later, in fact, that’s exactly what the Canadian government did. We had forgiven the debts of the most indebted countries, partly because of the pressures of the churches.”