That number comes from Giles Fraser, and I'm inclined to trust his reckoning. He was, before resigning, in charge of the cathedral's finances. The last annual report he filed is composed of a long string of cheerful remarks about recovering global markets, portfolio earnings and the gross income of the crypt shop.

After quitting, he wrote "those who have huddled outside the cathedral in the freezing cold have acted as sentinels for an idea of social justice that can be found on almost every page of the Bible but which the church has too often lost sight of."

The reluctant seminarian

Five time zones away, at Trinity College in Toronto, Jeffrey Metcalfe has been thinking along similar lines. He's on track to be ordained this year. At 25 years old, it's not something he once wanted. "I was approached by one of the parish leaders and asked if I would consider the priesthood. It's ironic now, but at the time I laughed in that person's face and made some snarky remark like 'I'm not really interested in dealing with that level of dysfunction.'"

With an academic background in Marxist political theory, Metcalfe is about as punk rock as a postulant for ordination can get. He started a theological blog in March last year called "Catholic Commons," where he fired this shot over the bows: "If the Church is no longer capable of sustaining the imagination of a better world, if it truly has come to the horrifying conclusion that liberal-democratic capitalism is the end of history, then why would we want it to survive?"

But Metcalfe could not dissuade his recruiters. "I remember telling the priest up front "I don't feel called by God," and he responded, "Well the church is calling you, and it's the body of Christ, so you'd better damn well listen!"

Following his ordination in April, Jeff Metcalfe will be headed for a tour of duty on the front lines in the Anglican Church's struggle for relevance: the diocese of Quebec. Here, the language wars have added to demographic and economic pressures, draining rural and urban parishes alike. Only 87 churches remain, scattered across an area roughly the size of Turkey. Many branches count only a handful of worshippers. In the couple of services I attended in Quebec City, I singlehandedly skewed the average age of the tiny congregation.

The unlikely bishop

Presiding over this windswept outpost is perhaps the Church's most maverick diocesan leader. From the pulpit, Dennis Drainville's voice needs little amplification. Built like a Québécois "lutteur" -- a homegrown professional wrestler -- he commands love and allegiance reminiscent of the province's 1960s square-ring champions.

Though his struggles are peaceful, the bishop has been in protests that were not. He was once arrested for blockading a logging road into First Nations land north of Sudbury. "I presented the view to the court that what I did was necessary, as the government was acting unjustly and doing violence to the Teme-Augama Anishnabai." Drainville was sent to jail for a week. "I also indicated that I had no remorse and if put into the same position again would do precisely the same thing. Frankly, what alternative did I have?"

Drainville's politics are hands-on, and inseparable from his faith. He was already a priest when he took charge of STOP 103, an agency caring for the poorest and most marginalized people in downtown Toronto. The local alderman was Jack Layton, and the two men teamed up, notably to fight the SkyDome project.

Then Drainville accidentally won a seat in the provincial legislature, as part of Bob Rae's NDP government in 1990. "Many people," the bishop jokes, "would say that Dennis Drainville was a total failure as a politician." Perhaps. He resigned from Rae's caucus after three years, protesting the plan to bring casinos into Ontario. After the Rae government fell, Drainville moved to a parish on the Gaspé coast.

In the 1997 election he was back at it, running for the federal NDP, with his campaign office tucked in the basement of the rectory. Local reporters, he says, didn't know what to make of this mixing of church facilities with affairs of state.

"I am not totally sure that I follow rules very well. As a citizen and as a human person I engage life as I meet it," Drainville explained to me by email. "From my perspective every act is political, just as every act is moral and religious. You can no more separate politics from religion than you can separate human life from breathing."

To that end, the bishop recently posted a 30,000-word essay on his blog called Renewing Hope. Prompted by the death of his old ally Jack Layton, the work is an urgent examination of what Drainville sees as a crisis in Canadian leadership, coupled with the abandonment of the public interest -- in politics, but also in corporate boardrooms and church synods.

Drainville is also in the middle of a speaking tour, bringing a theological perspective to issues like the tar sands and pipeline debates, Canada's military role overseas, and the Harper government's attitude toward domestic dissent. He says "If the Occupy movement has taught us anything, we have conclusive proof that our political and economic elites have cared only for their own agenda and have sold the citizens of Canada to the highest bidder."

That makes Bishop Dennis Drainville one of the few high-ranking figures within the Anglican Church exercising what is known as "prophetic ministry".

The retired theologian

"Prophesy is not prediction," Donald Grayston explains to me. We're sitting at a busy coffee shop in Vancouver. Tapping out each word on the table, Grayston says "The prediction part comes when you say 'unless we do this right now, we're going to get that.' " Sometimes those warnings come true. "And people say wow, he predicted the future. But that's not the point. The point is to do justice in the present."

Grayston still teaches the odd course at SFU, but he is officially retired from both academia and the Anglican priesthood. "The big word is freedom. You can't lose your job by saying whatever you want." And he does -- especially about Israeli-occupied Palestine, the tar sands and Stephen Harper.

Jesus of Nazareth, he notes, inherited the prophetic tradition of the Hebrew prophets -- like Jeremiah, tossed down a well for annoying the king. "So there are consequences to prophesy," I say. "Like crucifixion," nods Grayston. "It's not always safe to tell the truth."