Pittsburgh pilgrimage
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Pittsburgh pilgrimage

In late February I travelled for work purposes for the first time since the pandemic began three years ago. My travels took me to the Pittsburgh area where I spoke at two Christian institutions of higher education. The first was Trinity School for Ministry in Ambridge, Pennsylvania, where a good friend of mine, Bill Witt,…

Raskolnikov and resurrection
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Raskolnikov and resurrection

Many years ago, when I was still a graduate student, I decided to read some of the major Russian novels of the 19th and 20th centuries. It’s taken me decades, but I finally got to Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment (1866). The story is set in the imperial capital of St. Petersburg. Rodion Romanovich Raskolnikov…

The office of citizen
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The office of citizen

When I was growing up in suburban Chicago, my siblings and I attended a public elementary school. The school day opened with a series of rituals intended to instill in us a sense of solidarity with our political community. Before beginning our lessons, we would stand with our hand over our hearts and recite the…

‘A united Canada’
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‘A united Canada’

Federal-provincial relations are testy even in the best of times, but these are not the best of times. Pandemic, war, inflation and global supply-chain disruptions have affected us all, and it is scarcely surprising that they would also affect Canada’s federal system, as a new threat to national unity has recently demonstrated. In early 1830s…

MAiD and the meaning of suffering
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MAiD and the meaning of suffering

We live in confused times. The Government of Canada hosts two websites standing in tension with each other. The first is titled, “Preventing suicide: Warning signs and how to help.” It lists the phone numbers of crisis centres and offers advice for helping those at risk. It then lists the websites of other agencies and…

An American virus infects Brazil
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An American virus infects Brazil

No, this is not about COVID or some other physical malady. It’s about how excessive political polarization is negatively affecting two of the world’s largest democracies in a way that threatens to erode their political institutions. The United States has one of the oldest functioning constitutional documents in the world dating back to 1787, when…

Incarnation and renewal
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Incarnation and renewal

One of my earliest memories is of Christmas 1957. I was just short of three years old, and our family was living in a rented one-storey bungalow on Pershing Avenue in Wheaton, Illinois, then on the outskirts of town. We had a tree in the front bay window facing north, and the five of us…

A mystical faith?
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A mystical faith?

No one has ever accused me of being a mystic. For one thing, I don’t dress the part. No flowing robes or beard down to the belly. Corduroy trousers and tweed jackets are my style. But even apart from sartorial evidence, my writings show few signs of flirting with mysticism. I love the carefully constructed…

A new Carolingian Era
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A new Carolingian Era

When the Queen finally died at age 96, she had become a beloved figure around the world, a symbol of stability and continuity in a tumultuous age. Having lived through the trauma of the Second World War, her last months were spent in the awareness of another war at the eastern edge of Europe. The…

Remembering ron Sider
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Remembering ron Sider

As an undergraduate student in the mid 1970s I came into contact with the writings of several Christian leaders who were advocates of social justice, a concept that was new to me at the time. Accordingly, I began reading Sojourners, The Other Side, and, of course, Vanguard, which was published out of 229 College Street,…

‘We are all orphans’
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‘We are all orphans’

Although we knew it was coming, we still experienced the death of Queen Elizabeth II as a blow. I myself was caught off guard and wept when I heard the news. A good friend put it well: we are all orphans. The Queen had been on the throne for seven decades, since before I was…

Reaching the Hispanic world
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Reaching the Hispanic world

Last month I was delighted to receive in the mail a hefty copy of Visiones e Ilusiones Políticas, the Spanish translation of Political Visions and Illusions, which had just come out days earlier. Published by Teología para Vivir in Lima, Peru, it is a hard-bound volume running to 420 pages in eminently readable print and…