No history of the Christian Council for Reconciliation can be told without first telling the story of the Reverend Doctor Charles Taylor, or Charlie as he was known by the guys.

Dr. Taylor was professor of Pastoral Care at Acadia Divinity College when he began a ministry at Springhill Institution. He was a pioneer in the area of Clinical Pastoral Education.

Society tends to think of prisoners as deviant, dangerous individuals that should be sent away and locked up. That solution may protect society temporarily, but the problem does not go away. Eventually, most people who end up in the prison system are released back into the community. It would therefore seem wise and prudent to prepare the prisoner both spiritually and emotionally, that is, for a new way of life.

Yet prisons are overcrowded and very noisy, not an environment which encourages quiet reflection of life and its meaning. By examining inner thoughts and feelings which may have been buried for years, an individual can begin the process of healing wounded areas, and of reconciling with self, with others, and with God. This in turn, brings hope and life-long changes in both attitude and behaviour.

After many years studying, teaching and counselling prisoners, Dr. Charles Taylor, Professor Emeritus, Acadia Divinity College came to the conclusion that many of those now in prison, especially the long-term offender, could benefit greatly from counselling that would encourage this desire to develop both spiritually and emotionally.

In this context, spirituality is seen to speak to the longing for serenity, for wholeness, for unity of purpose. It speaks also of the wonder about the possibility that behind the everydayness of life there may be another order of reality. Spirituality speaks of the mystery of who we are as a person.

Writing in an article in Psychiatric Medicine, titled, "A spiritual inventory of the medically ill patient", C. Kuhn has described spirituality as "those capacities that enable a human being to rise above or transcend any experience at hand...", and "Whereas the function of the spirit is to transcend or rise above manifest data, the role of the psychological elements is to work with or manipulate data at hand. Mind brings a person into a problem, spirit lifts a person above it."