2011‑2022, and is preserved here for archival purposes.
There’s a sadness that runs through Richard Linklater’s recent film Boyhood, one that’s hard to put your finger on. Shot over twelve years—yes, twelve years!—the film traces the life of Mason Evans (...
Earlier this month, Robert George offered a bit of advice to young scholars. That advice, in a nutshell, is to be very wary of applause. "In the end," he says, "wh...
Meriam Ibrahim was imprisoned and sentenced to death for converting from Islam to Christianity in Sudan. After intense international pressure, she was released and has been granted asylum in the United States. But there are others whose stories have not garnered international press in similar situations.
It is dangerous to be a Christian in many parts of the world today, and it appears to be becoming more so. Not a day goes by that I don’t get a report about Christians being executed, facing imprisonment, or having to flee their homes in some part of the wo...
This article was originally published on the Text Patterns blog, July 3, 2014. Reprinted courtesy of the author.
Peter Conn is right about one thing: college ac...
"All the world is strange," said the Quaker to his wife, "except for me and thee. But even thee I wonder about." Western democracy is the offspring of a marriage of ideas between Christian social thought and the enlightenment. In different contexts, the particular features of democracy remind us more of one intellectual parent than the other, but only a conscious attempt at ahistorical forgetfulness would deny democracy's DNA.
"All the world is strange," said the Quaker to his wife, "except for me and t...
Whether you celebrated Canada Day earlier in the week or are celebrating Independence Day today, this is usually the time of year when the flags are unfurled, the fireworks lit, and national narratives reinforced. If, like me, you're from Canada, you likely...
The controversy is over the contraceptives mandate in the 2010 health care reform law, which requires employers' health plans to cover a wide range of contraceptive drugs and devices, including some the companies and others regard as abortifacients. Churches are exempt from the mandate; after widespread protest, religious nonprofits such as colleges and hospitals were offered an "accommodation": the insurer provides to the organization a health plan excluding objectionable contraceptives and then announces to the employees that those contraceptives will be paid for by the insurer.
The US Supreme Court yesterday vindicated two Christian-owned companies, Hobby Lobby and Conestoga Woods, that have a pro-life objection to including in their employee health plans certain contraceptive drugs and devices. In a 5-4 decision, the Court ...
Surely it is possible, within a liberal democracy, that we can, without bloodshed, lay bare some deep rifts between value systems. But we're only fooling ourselves—playing with house money—if we don't constantly scrutinize and re-evaluate the "why" questions beneath our differences. The preoccupation with "what" questions in the ongoing Trinity Western University (TWU) community covenant debate has left the "why" questions unanswered.
If our freedom of religion and our freedom to associate mean anything all, surely they allow those who disagree to coexist, without coercing each other.
Surely it is possible, within a liberal democracy, that we can, without bloodshed, lay bare some ...
The Parti Quebecois under Pauline Marois was roundly condemned for a bill purportedly legalizing euthanasia and for the so-called secular charter. It was assumed that when the Marois government was defeated in March, the new Liberal government would bury these controversial bills. But no, not at all.
I could not be more disappointed with the Quebec Liberal Party. What political party wins an election and then adopts all the previous government's most offensive policies?
The Parti Quebecois under Pauline Marois was roundly condemned for a bill pur...
Two weeks ago, Great Britain's prime minister, David Cameron, took heat for calling on Britons to "be more confident about our status as a Christian country." The PM's statements, while constitutionally indisputable, evoked strong comments from many in Britain, including the Archbishop of Canterbury (past and present) and deputy PM Nick Clegg. Cardus senior fellow Jonathan Chaplin, no stranger to this debate, also has comments. You can read those in today's Cardus Daily: Picture if you can a country in which parents had to explain to children what "food bank" meant because a generous and savvy welfare system, working in tandem with well-resourced voluntary groups in support of strengthened families and households, prevented people ever falling so low that they couldn't afford the price of a bag of sugar. Try to conceive of an economy in which the principles of solidarity and justice had begun to transform the landscape of employment rights, corporate structure, investment priorities, and financial regulation.
This blog was originally published at www.theosthinktank.co.uk and is reposted with permission.
Two weeks ago, Great Britain's prime minister, David...
The Law Society of Upper Canada and the Nova Scotia Barrister's Society have decided that while the institution that teaches lawyers in British Columbia—TWU's forthcoming law school—is constitutionally acceptable, its graduates are not fit to practice law. That is, neither LSUC nor NSBS have submitted that Trinity Western's code of conduct policy is unconstitutional—they know this because the Supreme Court ruled very clearly that it is constitutional. They also are fully aware that in the same decision, regarding teachers who were taught at TWU and were required to sign the same Community Covenant, there was, as Albertos Polizogopoulos put it last week, "no evidence that TWU's students, who had signed and abided by the Community Covenant, demonstrated any discriminatory behaviour in the exercising of their duties as teaching professionals."
If law societies are, so to speak, the marrow which supplies blood to our legal system—a society which has, as its very raison d'etre the "duty to protect the public interest, to maintain and advance the ...
The Law Society of Upper Canada (LSUC), the regulatory body which licenses lawyers to practice law in Ontario, has just voted against accrediting graduates from Trinity Western University's (TWU) future law school to practice law in Ontario. The vote, which...
The individual today is the measure and the mark of almost all of our public life. The most vociferous debates in our law revolve around individuals. In Canada, at least, the question of selling, ending, or controlling one's body is settled on the question of what limits, if any, are appropriate to place on the individual, whose freedom to choose is presumed to be—because of our constitution—the highest end of political life.
The Lenten season can sometimes make one feel a bit self-absorbed. Do we really have to spend all that time denying ourselves, searching our hearts, repenting, praying?
...
It says something that Quebeckers, when faced with a PQ party that offered the religious cleansing of the civil service (just for starters), opted instead to run into the arms of a party so deep in charges of corruption it makes the expulsatory end of a sewer rat smell like a spring daisy. The PQ is dead, long live the Québécois!
The bitter, nasty, and bigoted campaign run by the Parti Québécois has ended in complete and abject failure.
It says something that Quebeckers, when faced with a PQ party that offered the religious cleansing of the civil service (just for starters), ...
Doug Sikkema writes on how the anticipation of spring, Easter, and March Madness all tell us a little bit about who we are by kindling, albeit subtly, some of our most basic desires.
March is a month of anticipation. We await the end of winter with the arrival of spring, the end of Lent with the arrival of Easter, and the end of a sport's drought with the arrival of NCAA's March Madn...
But legal definitions should not overly influence our perception of Christian (or other religiously-based) institutions. There are more basic things to keep in mind.
Supreme Court cases on both sides of the 49th parallel last week focused on what ...
Related: Cardus covered in today's National Post Summary briefing of the case from last week (free PDF) "Loyola's Freedom of Religion" Paul Donovan explains the importance of the case (YouTube)
Cardus has covered the issues involved in Loyola et al vs. the Attorney General of Quebec on many occasions. Always our position is that the organizations of civil society, including those that are religiously motivated, must be free to participate...
The issue (raised in posts by Sessions, Dreher, and Millman as well) is whether there is anything about our "secular age" that somehow limits or precludes "religious experience," including experiences of conversion. Does our disenchanted age enclose us under a brass heaven, shielding and "buffering" us from the call of God? Does a secular age enclose us with an "immanent frame" that is doomed to be an echo chamber because our "modern" convictions foreclose the in-breaking of revelation?
Damon Linker, senior correspondent at The Week, has crystallized some of the recent discussion around faith in a secular age, much of it in conversation with the work of Charles Taylor. I'd like to continue a conversation with Linker that I ...
"The terms of our surrender" is how Ross Douthat describes what's left for Americans who hold a traditional definition of marriage. As with abortion and other hot-button moral issues that preceded it, social conservatives have lost the cultu...
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...
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...
And I'm very pleased to offer my own highlights of Cardus's year, as the grateful president of this enthusiastic young outfit. I won't try to be comprehensive—that's what our yearbook is for. Rather, let me share a few of the items that I'm most excited about.
If you haven't been paying attention, I understand. Everybody wants your attention nowadays, and all of us face a thousand experts shouting a thousand opinions. So I'm grateful you're here, following Cardus.
And I'm very pleased to offer my own highl...
Doug Sikkema reviews Joseph Gordon-Levitt's beautiful short film, Flickering Lights, which invites viewers to become participants in a collage of moments where the subtle play of light both arrests and moves the viewer.
Did you know there are over 35 adjectives in English just to describe light? It can be coruscating or crepuscular, glistening or glaring, prismatic or penumbral. Oddly enough, though, light itself is not something we see; we see its reflections and refracti...
While the rest of the country ponders what it means for a religious institution to be granted a public-serving law school, the news this week has been illustrated rather more personally for me. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .