Fighting Against Violence

Peter Panter

February 23, 2018

"I learned my lesson on a warm September evening 10 years ago, and I hope and pray that I will never again raise my hand in anger against another being made in the image of God."

Yet I will always remember that fight, vividly, as the one time in my life that I actively chose violence, and the moment when I decided that violence was not an acceptable means to the end I wished to accomplish The Mennonites were not a perfect people, and God knows that many of my friends and fam...

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The Shared Space of Faith And Science

Peter Stockland with Milton Friesen

February 23, 2018

Milton Friesen, program director of Cardus Social Cities, will deliver a lecture this evening at McMaster University’s Divinity College on Religion And Science: Conspiring Together For God. As Milton tells Convivium’s Peter Stockland, he intends it as a catalyst to a much broader and deeper conversation about the institutional responsibilities of faith and science in Canada’s common life.

What’s interesting is that many people such as (the late) Christopher Hitchens mock and deride religious beliefs, yet science itself has a public image problem when it denigrates religious belief and institutions and marginalizes them, then turns around and asks the public for support Yet the scienc...

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A Life Touched by Billy Graham

Lloyd Mackey

February 22, 2018

Veteran Canadian journalist Lloyd Mackey, a senior editorial advisor to Faith in Canada 150’s Thread of 1000  Stories, recounts meeting Billy Graham while still a school boy  in 1951, an encounter that helped shape Mackey’s life and faith.

On the final day of the mission, Edna and I, along with Smith were among the people invited to sit on the platform behind Graham It emerged that, during those years, Graham cultivated several Canadians who participated in his ministry and helped him to understand aspects of the Canadian faith ethos ...

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Renewing Canadian Citizenship

Trevor Shelley

February 22, 2018

Trevor Shelley, of the Calgary-based citizen’s group imagination 150, warns in this contribution that neglect of the meaning of citizenship risks severing the essential common civic bonds that connect us as Canadians. What do you think? Is the value of Canadian citizenship diminishing? If so, what can you do to reverse the decline? Convivium would love to hear from you and publish a selection of responses..

As citizens living together in and through the tensions created by the various polarities we live with, and reminding ourselves of the citizenship we have in common, we will best weather the populist moment and ensure the continuation of our liberal democracy Our common identity as members of our co...

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Bringing Lent Home

Brittany Beacham

February 21, 2018

Echoing Isaiah, Convivium contributor Brittany Beacham says the Lenten fast has to be about more than giving up creature comforts. It must mean opening the doors of our hearts – even of our houses – purely for God’s love.

In this season of Lent, the season of fasting, let us long for more of the Lord, not only for ourselves but for the world around us: a world broken and desperately in need of Jesus But let us not forget, while the fast of Lent is an intimate time in our relationship with Christ, it is not the ultima...

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Unmarried With Children

Peter Stockland, with Andrea Mrozek, Peter Jon Mitchell

February 20, 2018

Cardus Family has unearthed a startling new statistic: fewer than two-thirds of Canadian children now have married parents. Program director Andrea Mrozek and senior researcher Peter Jon Mitchell tell Convivium how they discovered the number, and what it means for Canadian family life.

PJM: The original (2017 census) report did look at the living arrangements of children, and broke down intact and non-intact families, but it didn't actually look at marriage: which kids were in married parent families, which kids were in common law families It’s a trend that’s been followed since 1...

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On Our Way to Somewhere

Alex Unsplash

February 20, 2018

Stop on your hurry to somewhere. Encounter this gift of space, this gift of place. Here is where God's glory dwells. 

...

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Super As We Are

Josh Nadeau

February 16, 2018

Josh Nadeau finds virtue in the signals sent by superhero cinema.

But if we can’t forget what we’ve learned about the world (and about ourselves), neither can we let go of our need for moral fantasy, inspiration, role models, or our collective hunger for a richer vision for the world – superhero movies, for all their flaws and compromises, boldly straddle these de...

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Esther Bryan's Two Quilts: Visible & Invisible

Sharon Dawn Johnson, Peggy Arnell

February 16, 2018

In the monumental Quilt of Belonging, writers Sharon Dawn Johnson and Peggy Arnell discover, human eyes can witness God’s purposeful, guiding hand at work

The project bears visible and invisible witness to the faith message that those who came together in the fellowship of creating Quilt of Belonging embody God’s love-generated purpose: the belonging of all people in our world The trust and faith lessons that Esther learned about God’s timely provisio...

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Christ's Hope in the Wounds of the Rohingya

Hannah Marazzi with Emily Way

February 16, 2018

Convivium’s Hannah Marazzi speaks with Emily Way about working out the Gospel at the Samaritan’s Purse emergency field hospitals in Bangladesh and Iraq.

May we pray for the Rohingya people to find hope and purpose as people of faith and other organizations seek to provide assistance in this time of crisis C: I understand that Samaritan’s Purse, in partnership with World Medical Mission, has established a 24-bed Rohingya Care Unit I was humbled and i...

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Trial Promises

Peter Stockland

February 15, 2018

Justice Minister Jody Wilson-Raybould has been criticized for intervening in the manslaughter trial of a Saskatchewan farmer. Convivium’s Peter Stockland argues the real damage will come if  judicial reforms she’s promising have already been rejected by the Supreme Court of Canada.

As Justice Moldaver puts it eloquently in words that apply equally to a white Saskatchewan farmer like Gerald Stanley or to any Indigenous person in Canada: “The accused’s right to be tried by a jury of his peers is a right aimed at securing a fair adjudicative process….The right is held by the accu...

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Puddled Refraction

Vitalis Hirschmann

February 15, 2018

Our dwellings are so often made perfect in their baptized reflection and refraction. 

Morning light floods down the street, evidence of yesterday’s rainstorm illuminated in the cobblestone streets ...

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Slowing Down for Lent

Karen Stiller

February 14, 2018

Writer Karen Stiller finds in a sign near her house a spiritual admonition to slow down and pay attention to God.

The word Lent is painted on Neepawa Road because in French, of course, it means slow – which it took me a couple of walks to realize My heart does turn toward God when I pay this kind of slow attention, when I lent like this ...

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Dust, Bones and the Promise of Life

Raymond J. de Souza

February 14, 2018

Father Raymond de Souza finds in the rare coincidence of Ash Wednesday falling on Valentine’s Day a message for the heart in the midst of ashes.

And the promise of life is what leads to Adam to proclaim his wife “Eve”, for the Lord God has promised to grant the gift of life; the dust shall live again Like Adam in Eden who, when warned about the reign of death, clings to the promise of life, so too we join the queue for our ashes, to count ou...

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Ordinary Grace

Logan Adermatt

February 14, 2018

Do you seek the grace in the ordinary? It is there for all who are willing to find it. 

To stop and see the enduring gift of time in the faded bones of an old house, in the rickety spindles of a chair, and most of all in the gift of golden hour light, all is grace ...

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