Although each year Canada grants sanctuary to many refugees, some refugee claimants to Canada are forced to turn to other sources of asylum. One such individual was Mohamed Cherfi. You may remember him as an Algerian refugee claimant. Entering Canada via the US in 1999, he resided in Montreal. Cherfi sought refugee status on humanitarian [...]
Every January Catholics commemorate the World Day of Migrants and Refugees. This day is about both justice and celebration. It “celebrates the human drive to belong, to protect, to grow and to share in family, and the immeasurable importance of family in the lives of migrants and refugees in all corners of the world” (International [...]
How are you going to celebrate Buy Nothing Day? Just a reminder – this Friday, November 25th is Buy Nothing Day. It’s a day promoted by the team at Canada’s own Adbusters magazine. Like everything else done by this team, this day is plugged using striking graphics and remarkable pithiness: “Participate by not participating,” the [...]
Theologian Walter Rauschenbusch once wrote that it is “the will and power of God to redeem the permanent institutions of human society from their inherited guilt of oppression and extortion.” Have you ever thought of free market global capitalism as an institution of human society that needs to be redeemed? Have you ever thought of [...]
“I’ve seen the needle and the damage done,” croons Neil Young hauntingly: “a little part of it in everyone.” Those words pierce. The song encapsulates a plethora of truths about addictions stemming from Young’s experience of the carnage of heroin addictions coalescing around him. But that line – a little part of it in everyone [...]
I think we have a very ambiguous relationship with our bodies. I don’t think we really know what to make of them. It’s a problem that’s only exacerbated in death. Let me provide an example to illustrate what I mean. Are you familiar with the BODY WORLDS exhibit, developed by Gunther von Hagens? The show [...]
Several years ago, the Church of England issued a statement that organ donation is a Christian duty – one to which all Christians should consent. Donating your organs to needy recipients, the argument went, goes hand in hand with giving your possessions to the poor. It’s just another way of fulfilling the mandate Jesus gave [...]
One of the inescapable realities is that we presently live in a secular, pluralist, post-modern … what? I want to say “society” or “culture,” but part of the challenge is that society and culture imply a cohesiveness that we don’t know exists any longer. So, let’s settle for “milieu” or “environment.” Whatever it’s called, and for better or worse, Christian communities and organizations in the West now live in a milieu that no longer takes Christian values, forms and structures to be “the” way to live. What does grace have to say about this?
Secularism
To begin with, secularism refers to a belief in the separation of church and state. At one time many Western countries had a state church. While this has never been true in Canada, even some of the original states of the United States had “established” churches. This meant that kings and governors had a role in appointing bishops and other church officials, and in turn those church officials had a role in legitimizing the kings and governors. We can’t imagine this happening nowadays. Places in the world that are experimenting with it―especially “fundamentalist Islamist states”―are reported on with some fear and enormous incredulity. Whether we come at it from the side of ordinary citizens and elected politicians or from the side of ordinary church members and ecclesiastical authorities, we will defend a division of power between state and church.
