Who is Michael Coren?
Michael Coren is a British-Canadian writer and clergyman who was born on January 15, 1959. Coren was a long-time television personality, hosting The Michael Coren Show on the Crossroads Television System from 1999 to 2011, before moving to the Sun News Network to host The Arena with Michael Coren] from 2011 until the channel’s demise in early 2015. He was also a long-time radio personality, most notably on Toronto’s CFRB talk radio station. Coren writes a weekly column for the Toronto Star and iPolitics. Michael Coren among other traits is quite controversial in some of his writings and position on public matters.
He has over ten books to his credit, including biographies of G. K. Chesterton, H. G. Wells, Arthur Conan Doyle, J. R. R. Tolkien, and C. S. Lewis. Heresy: Ten Lies They Spread About Christianity (2012), The Future of Catholicism (2013), Hatred: Islam’s War on Christianity (2014), and Epiphany: A Christian’s Change of Heart & Mind About Same-Sex Marriage (2015) are his most recent books (2016).
Background
Michael Coren was born in Walthamstow, Essex, England, to Jewish parents and raised in a secular household. He moved to Canada in 1987 after graduating from the University of Nottingham with a degree in politics. He was a columnist for Frank and then The Globe and Mail for several years before beginning syndicated columns for the Financial Post and Sun Media in 1995. Following his departure from Frank, he became a favorite target of that publication, culminating in a spoof ad contest to “deflower” Michael Coren (a reference to Frank’s infamous “Deflower Caroline Mulroney” contest, as well as a satirical jab at Coren’s conservative leanings). Coren had also been a favorite target of Frank’s before he started writing for them. During a 1994 interview, Coren took offense to being called a “literary prostitute.”
Career
His broadcasting career began in the early 1990s, when he co-hosted a political debate segment on TVOntario’s Studio 2 with Irshad Manji. He launched an evening talk show on CFRB in 1995. Coren briefly moved to Talk 640 in 1999 to work as its morning host. He returned to CFRB, where he hosted a show from 6:30 to 8:00 p.m. weekday nights until November 2005, and regularly filled in for other hosts. Coren was fired by CFRB after receiving complaints about comments he made about the weight of an apparent guest. The guest was, in fact, an actor, and the segment was scripted.
“Pat Holiday, our general manager, and myself went through the tape of Monday night’s show and were shocked… it was totally out of bounds,” CFRB Operations Manager Steve Kowch said. Coren claims it was satire, comparing public attitudes toward third-world starvation to North America’s obsession with slimming and self-indulgence.
Despite his acrimonious dismissal, Coren made regular appearances on CFRB’s talk show in July 2006, at the start of the 2006 Israel-Lebanon conflict, as he happened to be in Israel at the time. As of April 22, 2007, the show moved from its usual one-hour time slot of 7-8 pm to 7-9 pm. In the fall of 2007, he and former Liberal Party of Canada president Stephen LeDrew launched Two Bald Guys With Strong Opinions, a daily hour-long afternoon show on CFRB in which they debate current events. Coren was joined by Tarek Fatah after several on-air auditions by potential replacement co-hosts after LeDrew’s departure. Coren was let go by CFRB, along with 12 other members of the Toronto radio station, on August 27, 2009.
Coren hosted the Michael Coren Show on the Crossroads Television System until June 2011, when he left to join the Sun News Network, where he began hosting The Arena with Michael Coren weeknights on August 30, 2011. Coren also had a weekly newspaper column in the Sun newspaper chain until February 2015. He has written columns for the Western Standard, Catholic Insight, and The Women’s Post, as well as for the National Post, Reader’s Digest, and other publications. He has appeared as a guest host on The Score’s The Footy Show as a self-proclaimed Tottenham Hotspur fan.
Following the demise of Sun News Network in February 2015, Coren briefly joined The Rebel Media, an online platform founded by Ezra Levant that has since been renamed Rebel News, but left after a week.
Coren began to publicly embrace socially liberal ideas such as support for same-sex marriage after his conversion to Anglicanism. He stated that it had a negative impact on his career and that he became the target of personal attacks from former readers, noting that “there is none more angry than a fundamentalist scorned.”
Coren estimated in a 2015 interview that he lost $35,000 per year in income due to lost speaking fees and former recurring columns for Sun Media newspapers, Crossroads Christian Communications properties, The Catholic Register, and other conservative Christian publications. He also stated that repentance is an important part of his conversion and that he regrets “so much of what was said, especially the tone” in his previous career. On October 20, 2019, Michael Coren was ordained as a transitional deacon in the Anglican Diocese of Niagara.
Coren also gives public speeches, most notably at religious gatherings.
Michael Coren Religious views
Coren’s articles and speeches frequently include stories about his own spiritual journey. Coren’s father and maternal grandfather were both Jewish, and his maternal grandmother came from a family of Welsh coal miners who converted to Judaism. Coren’s father and uncle both worked as cab drivers. Coren claims that his father’s family fled Poland in the 1890s, several decades before the Holocaust. He stated “People have accused me of being anti-Semitic. Because my father’s family was murdered during the Holocaust, I thought it was quite rich “. Michael Coren was featured on Vision TV’s Credo and stated that his father told him he couldn’t attend his son’s wedding in a Catholic church without becoming “physically sick.”
He converted to Catholicism while still living in England in 1984, later stating that he “converted to an institution.”
After a conversion experience influenced by Canadian televangelist Terry Winter, he left Catholicism for Evangelicalism in the 1990s.
[Citation required] “Evangelicals may be intolerant, small-minded, and repellent, but at least they hold a consistent set of beliefs,” Coren wrote in a humor magazine column in 1991. He stated in a book review in 1993: “Is it possible to imagine a detective priest? Unfortunately, it is easier to imagine a priest being questioned by secular detectives on abuse charges.”
In 1993, he clashed with the Catholic Church over an unflattering profile of Archbishop Aloysius Ambrozic he wrote for Toronto Life magazine[citation needed]. The bishop, who appointed Coren as a Knight of the Holy Sepulchre in October 1992, was quoted as saying that Spanish dictator Francisco Franco was a “conservative Catholic and not a bad fellow.” Coren defended himself by claiming “He’s an archbishop, and he’s vulgar… clearly, thousands of Catholics expected me to lie. I’m still receiving hate mail about the article.”
Coren stated that he no longer considered himself a Catholic as a result of this incident. He stated, “My wife is Catholic, and our children will be raised as such, but that is all. It’s simply not there for me “] Coren, according to Daniel Richler, enjoys scandal but despises it when it comes his way. Michael Coren depicted Mother Teresa getting drunk in a bar in one of his columns for the satirical humor magazine Frank.
He returned to Catholicism in early 2004. Spiritual influences include Thomas More, C. S. Lewis, Ronald Knox, and his godfather Lord Longford, and he remains involved in the Canadian and international ecumenical scene.
Michael Coren left the Catholic Church once more in 2014 and began worshiping with the Anglican Church of Canada, where he was formally received into the communion the following year. He cited the Catholic Church’s teachings on homosexuality and contraception as some of the reasons for his conversion to Anglicanism in an interview with the National Post on May 1, 2015.
Coren now considers himself a Christian socialist, in contrast to his previous beliefs. Coren believes that infant circumcision is a “tradition [Jews and Muslims] consider holy and essential, based not in abuse and cruelty, but in concern and love for their child,” and that those who oppose it are “irreligious zealots.”
Coren is an Anglican Diocese of Niagara priest. In October 2019, he was ordained deacon, and in September 2021, he will be ordained priest. He is the assistant curate at St Christopher’s Parish in Burlington.
Michael Coren wife
In 1987, Michael Coren married his wife Bernadette. They have four kids. He is related to Alan Coren’s children, Victoria Coren Mitchell and Giles Coren, as he is a cousin of the late British author and journalist Alan Coren.
Michael Coren Books
- Theatre Royal: 100 Years of Stratford East (1985) ISBN 0-7043-2474-1
- Gilbert: The Man Who Was G. K. Chesterton (1990) ISBN 1-55778-256-3
- The Invisible Man: The Life and Liberties of H. G. Wells (1993) ISBN 0-689-12119-9
- The Life of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1993) ISBN 0-7475-1229-9
- The Man Who Created Narnia: The Story of C. S. Lewis (1994) ISBN 1-895555-78-7
- Setting It Right (1996) ISBN 0-7737-2940-2
- J. R. R.Tolkien: The Man who Created the Lord of the Rings (2001) ISBN 0-7522-6156-8
- As I See It (2009) ISBN 0-9812767-0-9
- Why Catholics Are Right (2011) ISBN 0-7710-2321-9
- Heresy: Ten Lies They Spread About Christianity (2012) ISBN 978-0771023156
- The Future of Catholicism (2013) ISBN 0771023510
- Hatred: Islam’s War on Christianity (2014) ISBN 0771023847
- Epiphany: A Christian’s Change of Heart & Mind over Same-Sex Marriage (2016) ISBN 0771024118
