Pie Day 2026

Happy Pi Day. Or Pie Day. Or PIE Day.

Today is March the 14th. Which if you write it out numerically is 3/14. Which is suspiciously close to 3.14. Which if you add an infinite stream of increasingly minuscule digits after the decimal point (159265358979323846264338327950288419716939937510… etc) equals the mathematical constant pi.

What’s cool about pi? Pi is used to calculate the relationship between the width of a circle and its circumference. Here at the Centre for Christian Studies, where we learn in circles and are always trying to “draw the circle wide,” this is useful knowledge.

“Pi” also sounds like “pie”, making Pi Day a good excuse to eat pie. (Do we need an excuse to eat pie??) I’m enjoying a tasty apply pie with my fam today. (Thanks, Mom.) Pie is comfort food. Pie is belonging. At CCS we’re interested in that too.

PIE is an acronym that our friends at Affirm United use. It stands for Public, Intentional, and Explicit. The Centre for Christian Studies is an Affirming organization (and a Proud Anglican organization), which means that as a school we are welcoming, inclusive, and supportive of 2SLGBTQ+ people – as staff, as students, as volunteers, as friends in the community. (We became Affirming so long ago that the policy statement making it official is in Comic Sans font. Do you hear what I’m saying, people? Comic Sans!)

It’s not enough to be inclusive on the down-low. We need to be public, we need to be intentional, and we need to be explicit. Why? Because that’s how you push back against the forces of heterosexism and transphobia. (And their cousins – racism, classism, sexism, ableism, etc.) Author and educator bell hooks said, “To build community requires vigilant awareness of the work we must continually do to undermine all the socialization that leads us to behave in ways that perpetuate domination.” And James Baldwin said, “Not everything that is faced can be changed; but nothing can be changed until it is faced.” That’s why PIE.

CCS Program Staff member Marcie Gibson notes that CCS has been public, intentional, and explicit since before “Affirming status” was a named thing. At various points in the the school’s history it was unofficially labelled by some in the wider church as “that lesbian feminist place.” (…OK, well, I mean, not entirely not true.)

“I wasn’t around at that time,” Marcie says, “but it would’ve been a draw for me, not a deterrent.” 

From her time as a CCS student, Marcie remembers a fellow student coming out for the first time during a small group discussion. “We were discussing an article that was about pastoral care with lesbians experiencing domestic violence. This student had never spoken about their sexual orientation, but they felt they could trust the group based on the conversation. What they hadn’t yet realized was that three-quarters of us in the small group were also not straight, including the staff person, and that those who were straight were affirming.”

Marcie finds it refreshing to be in the kind of environment where she’s rarely the only one in the room and it doesn’t all fall on her to raise 2SLBTGQ+ issues or perspectives.

CCS’s Affirming status has never been merely theoretical or liberal lip service.  CCS embraces being a queer organization (in the expansive sense of that term).  Staff, students, readings, alumni, liturgy, resources, and community-engagement are 2SLBTGQ+-informed, identified, explicit, intersectional, and open to continued learning.

For CCS, being Affirming is non-negotiable. It is how we live God’s call faithfully in the world. It is how we assess the width and the circumference of the circle. It is how we are comfort and belonging to each other.

Help yourself to a slice.