The Silent Fall into Love

Jennifer Neutel

February 6, 2017

A group of multifaith Calgarians meets every week for a contemplative service. Together they focus on experience rather than language or doctrine, and experience the peace and rest that silence offers.    

Many people find silence frightening to be with, she says, and may not be open to exploring it until experiencing the peace and rest it can offer Cooper says she hopes those who attend the open service get a taste of what silence really is, and an awareness of another approach to worship and spiritu...

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Defending Parental Rights

Andrea Mrozek

February 6, 2017

Cardus Family Program Director Andrea Mrozek explains the significance of the Senate debate on Bill S-206. 

However, the new Cardus Family research review, Parental Discipline, concludes that the effort to repeal Section 43 is based on flawed reasoning ...

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To Wake Up the Heart

Gideon Strauss

February 3, 2017

In the sixth of his regular dispatches from from Montreal’s faith-rich Outremont district, Gideon Strauss talks to one restaurant owner of Jewish background who was drawn to Sufi Islam.

I am having a conversation with Jonathan Hassan Friedmann in the week after the Quebec City mosque shooting in which six worshippers were killed, five critically wounded, and many others injured Jonathan and his brother, Todd Husseyn Friedmann, started Rumi Restaurant in the autumn of 2001, in part ...

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Agnes Macphail

Terry Crowley

February 3, 2017

Agnes Macphail was Canada’s first female member of Parliament. She, a radical, believed in thinking anew about collective problems rather than reverting to outmoded prescriptions. 

Following a family tragedy in which a niece shot an uncle, Agnes whisked her nieces and nephews off to Toronto, rented a large house, and began taking in boarders to pay the rent, all the while serving on the executives of the Canadian Civil Liberties Union and the Canadian Association for Adult Edu...

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Who Are We?

Raymond J. de Souza

February 3, 2017

Editor in Chief Father Raymond J de Souza delivers a moving reflection on the mosque murder that occurred earlier this week in Quebec City and examines the corresponding themes of solidarity and identity this tragedy asks us to consider. 

Je suis Charlie was the favoured way to express solidarity with the journalists killed ...

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Leonard Loved The Light

Douglas Todd

February 3, 2017

Most biographers focus on how Canadian singer-songwriter Leonard Cohen was rooted in Judaism and how he took up Zen Buddhist practice. Many fans also recount his fondness for psychedelics, wine and the erotic. Yet it’s especially intriguing that, despite his iconoclasm, Cohen also appealed to millions who are active or nominal Christians.

Even though Cohen strove valiantly in the 1990s to become a Zen monk at Mount Baldy Monastery in California, he concluded Zen was a spiritual discipline, not a faith In a song about spiritual surrender, Cohen seems also to be alluding in If It Be Your Will to Golgotha, the hill on which Jesus was cr...

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Only Ourselves To Thank

John Robson

February 2, 2017

Canada has been transformed in the 50 years since Canada’s 1967 Centennial. For some, the change shows we are now what history always meant us to be. But contrary voices have been to argue that we have, in fact, been cut off from our national origins, and natural development, by calculated ideological schemes.

Yet he immediately claims that Canada’s transformation into a place that’s actually cool and worth inhabiting was not the result of “political decisions, parliamentary votes, court rulings and Royal Commissions…” Rather, “the explosions of official novelty that were launched in and around 1967 weren...

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Building Faith in Calgary

Jennifer Neutel

February 2, 2017

Interfaith Harmony Week in Calgary this year will go beyond encouraging different traditions to live together. One of its featured events will explore how different faiths can live under the same roof.

Rabbi Shaul Osadchey, a member of the Calgary Interfaith Council steering committee who approached Mayor Naheed Nenshi to proclaim city support for the week, says it will show how faith groups can work together to make positive community changes ...

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Celebrating Ordinary Time

Jessica Walters

February 1, 2017

Jessica Walters, co-founder of  the magazine Vigil, brings us a beautiful reflection on the marking of Ordinary Time as a part of our Cross Canada Convivium series. 

While I cannot speak to culture as a whole, I know that when I view time as a means of constant growth, whether spiritually or financially, I see every opportunity as a chance for self-betterment When I view my life through the lens of an agricultural metaphor, I see that I am guided by routine and ...

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Harmony in Halifax

Jennifer Neutel

February 1, 2017

As we begin World Interfaith Harmony Week 2017, Jennifer Neutel shares how Halifax has become a model of religious diversity and openness.

When the UN kicks off its World Interfaith Harmony Week today, the people of Halifax will know their city has been put on the map as a model of religious diversity and openness Interfaith Harmony Halifax considers its resources and website open source ...

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Harmony in Halifax

Jennifer Neutel

February 1, 2017

As we begin World Interfaith Harmony Week 2017, Jennifer Neutel shares how Halifax has become a model of religious diversity and openness.  

When the UN kicks off its World Interfaith Harmony Week today, the people of Halifax will know their city has been put on the map as a model of religious diversity and openness Interfaith Harmony Halifax considers its resources and website open source ...

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Facing Quebec's Religion Problem

Janet Epp Buckingham

January 31, 2017

The shock wave from the Quebec City mosque tragedy might at last jar loose public recognition of what Quebecers themselves privately know: Quebec has a religion problem. Or perhaps better, Quebec has problems with religion.

When the Supreme Court of Canada struck down those bylaws, the Quebec government amended the law Jehovah’s Witnesses were persecuted for more than a decade in Quebec In the mid 1940s, Premier Maurice Duplessis ordered police to arrest Jehovah’s Witnesses for distributing their literature ...

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Is God Good For Cities?

Milton Friesen

January 30, 2017

Milton Friesen, Program Director for Social Cities at Cardus, shares the importance of strong social fabric and the contribution that religious communities make to the health of their cities.

Do religious communities make cities better places and if so, how does the social generation of common goods work? If my objective as a researcher is to understand the social landscape of the communities that make up our cities, I will inevitably encounter religious people and the institutions that ...

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Bill Blaikie

Nigel Hannaford

January 27, 2017

The Hon. William (Bill) Alexander Blaikie (born 1951) is a former federal Member of Parliament and Manitoba provincial conservation minister, now occasionally teaching a course on faith and politics at the University of Winnipeg. One of the leading exponents of late-twentieth century Canadian Christian socialism, Blaikie was in opposition during his entire twenty-nine and a half year career in federal politics.

Blaikie recognizes this alternate emphasis as the important distinction between two important streams of Canadian Christianity, with conservatively inclined Christians focusing on man’s personal relationship with God, and those on the left seemingly more engaged on issues of social justice However, ...

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Façades and Values

Gideon Strauss

January 27, 2017

This week author Gideon Strauss brings us an alternate perspective on the ongoing conversation occurring in Outremont over the borough referendum campaign supporting a ban on new places of worship on Bernard Avenue.  

Living just a few steps away from Bernard Avenue, Murdock is one of my neighbours in Outremont, and she cares passionately about the borough In the fifth of his regular dispatches from from Montreal’s faith-rich Outremont district, Gideon Strauss brings us an alternate perspective on the ongoing con...

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