Sep 30
On any given Monday out at the jail, anywhere from 25-40 percent of the guys who come out to the chapels are indigenous. Given that they make up around 6-7 percent of the Alberta population, that’s some bad math. Actually, “bad” is not a strong enough word. It’s heartbreaking. And it’s angry making. And it’s frustrating. And it’s demoralizing. And… well, pick your adjective. It’s not good. It is a reality that should not be. Read more
I’ve lost track of the number of articles, podcasts, video clips, etc. I’ve seen over the last few days bearing a headline or title something along the lines of, “Will Charlie Kirk’s death be a turning point for America?” American media, Canadian media, international media (because of course, American culture wars are among their many exports to the rest of the world). I haven’t clicked on many of these links mostly because I think the answer to the question is a rather obvious, “almost certainly not.” Read more
I had never heard of Charlie Kirk before yesterday. But his assassination is, of course, front page news everywhere today. Another disgusting tragedy, another spasm of violence in culture addicted to violence, another casualty of a toxic political culture and a diseased discursive climate, another outrage to dominate and be weaponized by social media before we collectively yawn and move on to the next outrage. It all feels so utterly wearisome and predictable and inevitable in our fractious, polarized, and distractible times. Read more
As I mentioned a few posts ago, I’ve been taking some time this summer to read Scripture in larger chunks than the sermon-sized bites that I’ve grown accustomed to over a decade and a half of regular preaching. I read the gospel of Matthew over a few mornings while on a holiday. This week, it’s the book of Genesis. The first book of the Bible is, of course, a vast sweeping landscape which takes us from the creation of the world to the death of Joseph and the Israelites flight to Egypt. The narrative is rich, the characters are compelling and bewildering and oh-so-very-much-like-us in countless ways. Again, I am finding the experience to be a rewarding and interesting one. Read more
I couldn’t help but cringe along this morning as I read an article by Giles Fraser on the search for a replacement for Justin Welby as the Archbishop of Canterbury, the head of the head of the Church of England and the worldwide Anglican Communion. The piece is ominously titled “Anglicanism’s Poisoned Chalice.” According to Fraser, it’s a job that nobody with any sense would want.
Apparently, the kids are turning back to Jesus. That’s a bit of an overstatement, perhaps. We’re not talking about Jesus People 2.0 or mass waves of feverish Pentecostal revivalism (at least not yet). But the data does seem to point to a significant trend. According to a recent Barna survey, Gen Z and Millennials are driving a significant return to Christianity in America (around 10-15 percentage points from 2019 to 2025). A British study pointed to a similar trend, noting that “the proportion of 18- to 24-year-olds who attend church at least monthly has risen from 4% in 2018 to 16% in 2024.” No, the overall numbers are not huge and, yes, statistics and surveys are malleable, but still. Something does seem to be afoot.
Over the last few days, my commutes have been spent listening to a series on The Rest is History called “Horror in the Congo.” It’s grim stuff, to put it mildly. In my last post I talked about how words like “Nazi” or “Hitler” are often used to refer to a special incontrovertible category of evil. After listening to this series, I wonder if we ought to use “Leopold” (as in the king of Belgium) in a similar way. The savage butchery and myriad cruel hypocrisies, not to mention naked greed and overt racism that defined his ownership of the (ironically named) Congo Free State from 1885-1908 boggles the mind. One is tempted to wonder if Leopold would have ranked up there with Hitler and Stalin in our cultural imaginations were his victims white and literate. But I digress. Read more
For at least the last year or two, two Englishmen have been fighting in my head. Well, maybe “fighting” is too strong a word. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that my brain has been hosting a “lively discussion” between two visions of what Christianity might be in and for the world in the twenty-first century. These visions are not entirely incompatible with one another; there is significant overlap, to be sure. But they are different enough to cause some tension. And it’s a tension that I feel as one tasked with leading a church in these strange times. Read more
So, the year 2025 has arrived with a bang. Literally. Shocking violence and increasingly confusing mayhem in New Orleans and Las Vegas. Two deeply troubled souls lashing out at the world in one last spasm of rage or sadness or nihilism or self-hatred or righteous religious fury or resignation or… well God only knows. These sorts of stories still hold the capacity to shock us (I hope), but they are also steadily taking their place in a long list of very angry people exiting this world in one last destructive conflagration. Read more
Around fifteen years ago, the Nigerian writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie delivered her famous TED Talk called “The Danger of a Single Story.” It was hugely popular and influential. It’s among the more popular TED Talks of all time, approaching nearly 40 million views at the time of this writing. In it, she talks about discussed the problem of reducing human beings and cultures to a single narrative. We are all more complicated than the “single story,” whether that story is what it means to be black or African (in her case) or any of the other identities that we associate with or are defined by. Human beings are complex. Human cultures are complex. A single story rarely tells the whole story. Read more
So, another Trump presidency. Today, I have very conservative Christian friends and acquaintances who are exultant and triumphant. I have very progressive Christian friends and acquaintances who are utterly crestfallen and/or enraged. As anyone who has read this blog for more than a minute likely knows, I have a deep and abiding suspicion of politics on both the right and the left, a disdain for the way in which politics has become little more than tawdry entertainment and has hollowed out our social discourse, and a profound concern that for too many Christians, politics has become their religion. But I’ve written about at least some of these matters before, so I won’t go there today. Read more
I’ve had a few conversations recently about Ta-Nehisi Coates’s new book The Message. Coates is, of course, massively popular due to books like Between the World and Me, among others. He was a correspondent with The Atlantic and has garnered a large audience due to his writings on social and political issues, specifically on matters of racial injustice and white supremacy.
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There’s a book that’s been making the rounds lately. It’s called What Are Children For? On Ambivalence and Choice and is co-written by Anastasia Berg and Rachel Wiseman. I’ve encountered no fewer than five reviews or articles on it over the last three days. For many, at least in Western, wealthy, post-Christian countries, having children is by no means an obvious life path. Birth rates are plummeting to far below the replacement rate needed to sustain populations. Many young adults are simply deciding not to have kids. It’s thought to be either too expensive (hard to argue), immoral (climate change anxieties loom large here, as do reservations about how having children reinforces outdated gender norms, “reducing” women to mothers), or simply undesirable (kids can be a real drag). Read more
So, there’s this big scandal involving the Canadian women’s soccer team at the Olympics. Apparently, two Canadian staff members were caught attempting to use a drone to spy on the New Zealand team’s practice. This is obviously not a good look for Canada as the Paris Olympics begin. Canada is supposed to be squeaky clean and wholesome and peaceful and tolerant and inclusive and blah, blah, blah, all the other nice, good, neutral things that we have ever laboured to convey to the world around us. “Cheaters” doesn’t really fit the image we wish to project. Read more
I saw a screenshot in the aftermath of the Trump assassination attempt on Sunday. Some academic somewhere saying something to the effect of, “So close!” The gleeful comments obligingly took their place below. Should have had better aim! Dammit, just an inch the other way. What a glorious day this could have been! Etc., etc. The screenshot was captured as a gotcha moment. Look at all these self-righteous “progressive” elites who claim to have the moral high ground, wallowing around in the mud of glorying in an attempted assassination. It was all so wearyingly predictable. And of course, if it had been Biden’s ear that was grazed, the same sad scenario would have been playing out in different corners of the internet that are emotionally invested in being perpetually aggrieved in other directions. We are, it has seemed to me for a very long time now, grossly and terrifyingly invested in who and how we hate. Read more
Is it morally permissible to be happy in our world? This is a question that I encounter in some variation or other with some frequency. Sometimes it is young adults bemoaning the “state of the world” they’re inheriting (climate change, high cost of housing, bleak employment prospects, depressing dating scene, etc.) and vowing never to bring a child into such a terrible world (I often tell these young adults that they might profit from reading a bit more history). Sometimes it’s activists who look around and see only racism or economic inequality or all the structural barriers preventing this or that marginalized group from flourishing. Sometimes it is people faced with a crushing decision or living in the immediate aftermath of terrible loss. Sometimes it’s people who are depressed, addicted, or anxious. Sometimes it’s people who are simply worn out by life. Read more
“Did you hear about that speech that the player from some football team gave? I don’t know his name, the quarterback, maybe? The team was called the Chiefs or something.” So began a conversation over dinner with my daughter the other day. She was of course referring to the by now (in)famous commencement address given by Kansas City Chiefs placekicker (not quarterback) Harrison Butker at Benedictine College in Atchison, KS. My daughter has never watched an NFL football game in her life. But she knew about this football player’s speech (and she had a few opinions). Which I found interesting. Read more
On Sunday morning, a few of us were going through some last-minute details in preparation for the service. Among these, was the addition of a slide to be projected during the sermon. The person who had requested the slide had it ready to go on a USB drive and was going to deliver it to the people responsible for making sure such things happen. I couldn’t help but notice that the USB drive had the logo of a certain political party on it. I made some offhand comment about it. This led to a bit of harmless political banter. “Better not use that drive when so-and-so is running the tech,” one person said with a wink. “Yeah, but other-so-and-so would love it” said someone else. And so and so forth. It was a light moment of brevity before worship, perhaps even an unwitting acknowledgement that even though we don’t all see things the same way politically, we can still come together in worship. Read more
Rumblings 