July snippets

Taking us from Nicosia to Amsterdam to Boston, I find this piece by Matthew J. Milliner a little painful to read: Those Whitewashed Walls.

Chuck Colson asks What's the matter with Canada?, where he believes, with some justification, that religious freedom is threatened.

Last month I was privileged to participate in a WRF-sponsored online symposium on religious freedom in public life, in recognition of the 20th anniversary of the Williamsburg Charter. My own brief contribution is titled, Social mores as a bulwark of freedom.

I was recently surprised to learn that I am now teaching a second generation of students at Redeemer. The daughter of two of my very first students is now sitting in my classes. However, the chances of my teaching her children are, I would judge, fairly slim.

Is America an empire? I would answer yes. However, in contrast to the views of some, I do not believe that all manifestations of empire are irremediably bad. I will come back to this topic at some point.

The fallout from Henry Morgentaler's misplaced honour continues: Humanitarian's family returns Order of Canada.

Robert Louis Wilken tells us How to Read the Bible, endorsing allegory as a way of finding Christ in the Old Testament. I would suggest a better option: reading the whole of scripture as a grand redemptive historical narrative pointing to Christ as culmination. Rather than looking for bits and pieces hidden in the text, we read with eyes open to the unifying big story that is the Bible.