Parental rights

Who has the major responsibility for determining the education of children? Plato thought it was the polis, or city state, a conviction echoed by Aristotle and many others down through the centuries. However, following the example of our Jewish forebears, our Christian faith tells us something different, as affirmed in the Scriptures (e.g., Psalm 78:4-8; 145:4). Christian Courier has now posted my own thoughts on the subject: Parental rights. An excerpt:

Recently the Canadian media have been puzzling over the notion of parental rights, a concept they appear to regard as strange and unusual. Generally, the commentators take a condescending tone, assuming that all right-thinking Canadians would naturally defer to their betters in the provincial public education bureaucracy. The flurry of articles surrounding parental rights has come in response to the 1 Million March 4 Children protest in September, which the media have portrayed in a largely negative light, depicting the protesters as disseminators of hate.

In a secularized Canada such caricatures are not unusual, but they are certainly unfair.

Read here for more.

Why Ayaan Hirsi Ali is now a Christian

I love to read conversion stories. Decades ago, I read John Henry Newman's Apologia Pro Vita Sua in which the 19th-century cleric and Oxford Movement luminary recounted his departure from the Church of England for Roman Catholicism. Many of us know C. S. Lewis's story of his own conversion to Christianity in Surprised by Joy: The Shape of My Early Life. However, there are few available stories of Muslims or ex-Muslims converting to Christianity, mostly because abandoning Islam is a punishable offence in many predominantly Muslim countries. There are indeed such converts, but for obvious reasons they prefer to keep a low profile.

Earlier this month, Ayaan Hirsi Ali put aside such reticence and published this statement: Why I am now a Christian. Ali's story may not be familiar to everyone, but here are the basics: Born in Mogadishu, Somalia, to a politically active father who fell afoul of the Marxist regime, she and her family moved to Nairobi, Kenya. After fleeing a forced marriage, she wound up in the Netherlands in her early twenties. She became a Dutch citizen and even served in the Second Chamber of the Dutch Parliament before moving to the United States and becoming an American citizen. By the turn of the millennium she declared herself to be an atheist, having become disillusioned with her Muslim upbringing.

November newsletter online

I have now posted my Global Scholars Canada newsletter for November. Included is a statement on terrorism, an address to a Latin American consultation on Christian higher education, an analysis of pro-life setbacks in the United States, and a brief update on my forthcoming book.

Where are the pro-life majorities?

Kuyperian Commentary has published my latest piece, Where are the pro-life majorities? In the wake of the recent poll in Ohio that entrenched abortion rights in the state constitution, some might wonder what happened to the pro-life cause, which many thought to have a demographic advantage. Here is an excerpt:

Peter Berger once observed that, if Sweden is the most secular country on earth and India is the most religious, America is a nation of Indians ruled by Swedes. This saying is appealing to those who prefer to think that their troubles can be attributed to unaccountable elites who are out of tune with the people they lead.

Yet this attitude fails to account for the complexities of human nature and draws too drastic a line between leaders and led, much as Marxists persist in positing a facile cleavage between oppressors and oppressed when in reality, each of us is both oppressor and oppressed, depending on the constantly shifting circumstances in which we find ourselves. George Bernard Shaw’s wry observation is closer to the truth: “Democracy is a device that ensures we shall be governed no better than we deserve.” Leaders and led are inextricably connected with each other, and the gap between their respective worldviews is less than some would prefer to believe.

Read the entire article here.