Culture

  • World Down Syndrome Day: Who Are the Least of These?

    World Down Syndrome Day: Who Are the Least of These?

    Doug Sikkema

    March 21, 2014

    Unhappy with all the flattery, the king and queen devised another test. They disguised themselves as peasants and, leaving the castle through a back door, proceeded through their Kingdom once again. Invisible to almost all, they were not greeted or offered anything to eat or drink, until they returned to the young peasant girl’s home where they were once again received graciously.

    The King will reply, “Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.” -Matthew 25:40

    When I was young, our family had this ragged, blue hardcover collect...

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  • Part of the Problem with Politics is You

    Part of the Problem with Politics is You

    Ray Pennings

    March 20, 2014

    The past 48 hours have seen the resignation of two significant Canadian figures—federal Finance Minister Jim Flaherty and Alberta Premier Alison Redford. My social media feeds are dominated by others with similar interests and so are quickly filled with the...

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  • How (Not) To Read Charles Taylor: A Reply to Linker, Part I

    How (Not) To Read Charles Taylor: A Reply to Linker, Part I

    James K.A. Smith

    March 10, 2014

    But this line of questioning is barking up the wrong tree, I would suggest. This is the wrong question to ask, and framing it this way might be a sign of not quite getting Taylor's argument and analysis. 

    Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor is getting a lot of play in papers and magazines here south of the border.  His work, A Secular Age, has received attention from New York Times columnists ...

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  • Corporate Faith

    Corporate Faith

    Peter Stockland

    February 13, 2014

    Yet when the Supreme Court of Canada hears arguments next month in the dispute between Loyola High School and the government of Quebec, the implications will be at least as far reaching as TWU's bid to marry an evangelical Christian ethos with accreditation of our next generation of lawyers. . . .

    Debate over Trinity Western University's bid to open a new law school in B.C. has overshadowed the religious freedom fight faced by a 166-year-old Montreal high school.

    Yet when the Supreme Court of Canada hears arguments next month in the dispute be...

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  • The Business of Patronage

    The Business of Patronage

    Brian Dijkema

    February 11, 2014

    Why? The museum does not cost a dime to enter. It cost a mint to build, and likely costs a mint to maintain, but the visitor need not open her wallet for anything other than to buy a glass of wine to enjoy in the plaza. Anyone—anyone—can come in and enjoy it all. And all of its riches are available not as a result of public largesse, but of private patronage; particularly the patronage of J.

    There is no other way to describe it: the Getty is a gift. My wife and I just returned from a vacation to southern California and one of the places we visited was the J. Paul Getty museum. There is a lot you can say about the place—its use of outdoor space ...

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  • Three Cheers for Ideology

    Three Cheers for Ideology

    Eric Miller

    February 4, 2014

    Left and right may be sick. But the solution isn’t to kill them off. Rather, it’s to infuse them with life—ideological life.

    The politics of left and right have caused many in recent years to jeer “good riddance” to any candidate willing to step up to a mic. Our dominant ideological configurations seem to be malignancies that, for the sake of hope itself, must be removed.

    ...

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  • Love in the Digital Age

    Love in the Digital Age

    Doug Sikkema

    January 17, 2014

    In The Atlantic this week, Leah Reich shares an interesting story about Tofu, a twitter bot designed to read your tweets and then tweet back to you. People who have actually engaged with the bot were often surprised with its uncanny ability to understand them better than many "real" people ever did.

    We're still connected, but are we even friends? We fell in love when I was nineteen and now we're staring at a screen. Will I see you on the other side? We all got things to hide. It's just a reflection of a reflection. —Arcade Fire...

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  • The York University Question: It's not about sex—it's about the law

    The York University Question: It's not about sex—it's about the law

    Albertos Polizogopoulos

    January 13, 2014

    All of these characterizations are, in my opinion, wrong. Here's why. There is no question of, nor threat to women's equality rights in the accommodation request of an online university student. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

    There has been much talk about York University's decision to accommodate the religion...

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  • Walking Away From Omelas

    Walking Away From Omelas

    Doug Sikkema

    January 10, 2014

    The only way for Omelas to maintain its stoic happiness is to free itself from guilt. Easy enough, it seems, but for one problem. In the basement of one of the buildings in Omelas is an imprisoned child that everyone living in Omelas must confront. The child is never let outside, is never spoken to, and must sit chained in its own filth.

    In Ursula LeGuin's 1973 short story, "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas," we are told of a place where everyone (well, almost everyone) is perfectly happy. The Summer Festival is upo...

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  • Abundant Hope for The Walking Dead

    Abundant Hope for The Walking Dead

    Peter Stockland

    January 9, 2014

    At first blush, it looks like a basic flaw in story coherence. Though set in the very near future, The Walking Dead’s inhabitants have entirely abandoned our current arguments over inequitable income distribution and our dogmatic debates over the sanctity or profanity of trickle down economics. There is, after all, precious little time for such palaver in a world where some mysterious affliction has left the living and the undead alike scratching and clawing at each other for mere sustenance.

    There appears to be an intriguing narrative gap in AMC’s brilliant zombie apocalyptic series The Walking Dead. No one, in any episode for the first three seasons at least, ever goes to Costco.

    ...

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  • The Cardus Travelling Circus

    The Cardus Travelling Circus

    Dan Postma

    December 27, 2013

    Sure, sure. Cardus believes cities can be much better than they are now. We believe a more cooperative labour environment would seriously raise the dignity and fairness of our workplaces. We think private education is good for everyone. Ideas matter when they get legs.

    "How and where ideas have consequence is as much a matter of who uses them, as what they say." —Michael Van Pelt and Robert Joustra, in Comment (2008)...

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  • Panem et circenses

    Panem et circenses

    Peter Stockland

    December 10, 2013

    Although I live to revel in metaphors revealing this city's collapsin infrastructure as harbingers of cultural apocalypse, I think putting all that weight on a single creaky, crumbling, 50-year-old bridge might go a little too far. To those who don't live here, of course, it matters little that Montreal is an island. Those of us who must daily negotiate arterial routes designed by Byzantine madmen are, alas, never allowed to forget it. The Champlain is our main southern escape hatch, the back door in our Aurelian Wall, so to speak.

    A witty friend recently found a parallel in the weakness of Montreal's Champlain Bridge and the fall of Rome.

    Although I live to revel in metaphors revealing this city's collapsin infrastructure as harbingers of cultural apocalypse, I think ...

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  • A Flourishing Detroit Requires More Than an Influx of Cash

    A Flourishing Detroit Requires More Than an Influx of Cash

    James K.A. Smith

    December 9, 2013

    An "emergency manager," Kevyn Orr, has been appointed to oversee the restructuring of the city's finances. Part of that process has been for the city to declare bankruptcy. That unprecedented strategy received confirmation on Wednesday when U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Steve Rhodes issued a decision permitting the city to pursue protections that will allow a restructuring of Detroit's debts.

    The city of Detroit continues to be a haunting case study of municipal implosion, economic upheaval, and urban renewal.

    An "emergency manager," Kevyn Orr, has been appointe...

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  • Law Good, Virtue Better

    Law Good, Virtue Better

    Brian Dijkema

    November 8, 2013

    These, and not whether or not Toronto's image is going to suffer, are the questions that I'm asking as Canadians continue to wallow in the griping mire of news stories about a mayor who admits to smoking an illegal drug while in office, and yet will not resign. This refusal to resign is only the most egregious of host of other violations of political custom.

    What does the public do when the laws cannot do anything? What does the public do when there are, in fact, no laws relevant to the issue of the day?

    These, and not whether or not Toronto's image is going to suffer, are the questions that I'm asking a...

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  • Everybody and Nobody

    Everybody and Nobody

    Kathryn de Ruijter

    November 4, 2013

    Let's take the example of neighbourhoods. Steven Johnson, guest on the show and author of the book Emergence, proposes that neighbourhoods are organically created by a series of small accidents, what he calls 'swerve'. For example, imagine you are walking to the grocery store to grab a few ingredients for dinner and you pass by a restaurant that just opened.

    In one of the very first episodes of RadioLab, Jad Abumrad, Robert Krulwich, and their team tackle the topic of Emergence. Emergence is the way in which smal...

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  • Allies or Enemies? I don't buy it

    Allies or Enemies? I don't buy it

    Naomi Biesheuvel

    October 31, 2013

    Versions of this story continue to play out every day, and it seems as though Christians are obligated to land in one of two categories: allies or enemies. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

    Many years ago, when I was president of a Christian student club at a secular school, a young man came through the door. He had a smattering of thoughtful questions for the group of friends in the room, but I could tell that something bigger was on his mind...

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  • The Gravity of Gratitude

    The Gravity of Gratitude

    Julia Nethersole

    October 21, 2013

    A review of the film Gravity prompts one Convivium contributor to cultivate a practice of gratitude this Thanksgiving. 

    I am three weeks into a new daily routine where I have been journaling the things for which I am grateful. Coinciding not coincidentally with Thanksgiving, my intent is to instill this new habit until the end of October with the hopes that it will stick. It...

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  • What's Under the Hat

    What's Under the Hat

    Peter Stockland

    October 8, 2013

    And with a single word, the Queen's Counsel who has made his legal reputation lecturing in the country's law schools and arguing before the Supreme Court reduced the op-ed, talk show, and water cooler verbiage poured out over the Charter to so much mush. That he did, though his delivery of the overview while dressed in full kilted Scottish regalia hinted that something broader and deeper was in the works.

    [caption id="attachment_2427" align="aligncenter" width="236" caption="Photo: Peter Stockland"] ...

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  • A Double-Edged Sword

    A Double-Edged Sword

    Brian Dijkema

    September 26, 2013

    Montreal itself—a beautiful and wealthy city—is in the heart of the province in Canada working hardest to move religion out of the public square and box it well into the private sphere.

    As I write this, I'm sitting in the McGill Faculty club in Montreal. McGill, of course, is the heart of the old evangelical establishment in Quebec, and it has plenty of wood paneling, paintings of men with mutton chops, and lovely crown molding to show for...

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  • Experiencing Every Square Inch of God's Theater

    Experiencing Every Square Inch of God's Theater

    Ray Pennings

    September 25, 2013

    Calvin described this world, moved by God's providence, as theatrum gloriae. For him, every aspect of life from work to worship and from art to technology bears the potential to glorify God (Institutes, 1.11.12). Creation is depicted as a platform for God's glory (1.14.20) or a "dazzling theater" (1.5.8; 2.6.1), displaying God's glorious works. Calvin viewed the first commandment as making it unlawful to steal "even a particle from this glory" (2.8.16). Such comments support Lloyd-Jones' later claim that for Calvin "the great central and all-important truth was the sovereignty of God and God's glory."What makes the theater image powerful?  It's the interaction between performers and audience. Every performance is unique as the audience responds to the actors who in turn are affected by the response. The lively dynamism shapes the experience.

    Last week's Comment interview reminded me of why I prefer John Calvin's metaphor of the world as the theater of God's glo...

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  • At Least Quebec Is Honest About It

    At Least Quebec Is Honest About It

    Janet Epp Buckingham

    September 23, 2013

    The most recent volley is from the Ontario Human Rights Commission. The OHRC is updating its policy on "creed," which has generally been considered to prevent discrimination on the basis of religion.

    "Separation of church and state" is an American concept, intended to protect the state from religious interference. It's not technically applicable in the Canadian context. But might it be time for religious institutions in this country to adopt the concept...

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