Editor Bill Fledderus remembers Faith Today’s longest-running columnist
Former Faith Today columnist James Beverley died unexpectedly on Oct. 3, and his community at Hillside Church in Moncton, N.B., held a celebration of life service Oct. 10 livestreamed on Youtube.
The service included some colourful memories shared by his daughter Andrea and condolences from his professional peers read by Larry Matthews, his longtime friend and colleague. (Fun fact: Matthews served as interim editor of Faith Today from 1999 to 2000.)
Beverley’s columns from 2017 to 2021 are archived at FaithToday.ca/ReligionWatch. More can be found from 2008 to 2016 at FaithToday.ca/Digital. But he actually wrote for the magazine even longer than that. I joined Faith Today in 1996, but already then his column was a regular feature every issue.
As his obituary says, “A specialist in world and new religions, cults and religious extremism, Christian apologetics, and ethics, Jim published over twenty books.” Such topics were often the focus of his columns in Faith Today as well.
His career teaching at Crandall University (then Atlantic Baptist College) in Moncton, N.B., began in 1978. When I started working with him, he was a prof at Tyndale University (then Ontario Bible College and Seminary) in Toronto, where he taught from 1988 until retiring in 2019. Many students have said he was a wonderful professor.
To me, Jim was more like an eccentric uncle. He’d call at odd hours, because he liked to nap in the afternoon and work into the wee hours of the night. He was always overdue with his excellent columns because he wanted to squeeze in just a bit more research.
Jim would always ask how I was doing not just professionally but personally, and he’d really listen (and sometimes couldn’t resist giving advice). He’d also share what was going on his life, and it was usually way more interesting than mine.
The good bits were travel – he’d call from, say, Las Vegas, where he might be researching a New Age group, doing touristy stuff with his wife Gloria, giving expert court testimony on a cult, working on a book (behind deadline) and sometimes all at the same time.
He also called me several times from a hospital, recovering from an operation, laughing about a harrowing accident or problem that should in all likelihood have killed him but somehow didn’t.
Jim was tangible evidence to me about how in the Church we’re all adopted members of God’s family. Please join me in praying for his grieving family.
May God be with all of us, siblings in Christ, until we meet again.