Today a no-confidence vote in the House of Commons dissolved the 38th Parliament in Canada. This will now kick off one of the longest election campaigns in the history of the country: 56 days. That doesn’t leave much time for mudslinging, though we Canadians can be quite resourceful.
Many American’s are familiar with the US News & World Report rankings of colleges and universities in the United States. Canada has a rough equivalent: the annual Maclean’s ranking of Canadian universities. (In Canada, “colleges” is a term used only to refer to community colleges and technical schools, which don’t grant any kind of “degrees,”…
This is probably shameless self-promotion that conflicts with good Calvinist humility, but Fors Clavigera readers might be interested in an upcoming NPR program. Krista Tippett’s public radio program, “Speaking of Faith” will broadcast a show next week called “Evangelicals Out of the Box.” It will feature conversatiosn with me and Fuller professor Nancey Murphy. The…
I have always found the notion of “public intellectual” interesting, but slippery–particularly given that there can be quite a plurality of publics. (The Church, as a public, might have a different set of public intellectuals than, say, the “public” as defined by the NYT. I’ve often thought that if a particular congregation represents a certain…
I finally had the opportunity to see David Cronenberg’s new film, A History of Violence, starring Viggo Mortensen (as Tom Stall), with an excellent performance by William Hurt (as Richie Cusak). As you’d guess, the film very much interrogates violence on a number of different levels, with various kinds of “disturbance”: from a sado-masochistic erotic…
Jonathan Kozol’s recent Harper’s essay, “Still Separate, Still Unequal: America’s Educational Apartheid” is one of those pieces that makes you want to just crawl into a corner and sob–right after you find somebody to shout at because of the terrible pain in your gut. Documenting years of visits and conversations with children, teachers, principals, and…