Not, I must quickly add, the sophomoric, pseudo-theological questions of our era’s anti-theists who witlessly insist that corrosive doubt can paradoxically fill the existential void in their lives. Nor, for that matter, the sincere questions of the serious faithful who labour under the misconception that a finite amount of Scriptural textual explication is the key to unlocking the eternal Word.

Rather, we were asked to reflect on Christ as question; more precisely the question that has Him as its only, irreducible answer.

In the words of Father Julian Carron, who led our exercises: “There will be no faithfulness unless there is the question to which Christ is the answer. We can repeat Christ’s name over and over for the rest of our lives, but the experience we will have is not Christ.”

Christ’s irreducibility is indisputable, of course, because of his relation to the Father. The Father created all things. Christ is always with Him and so extends to us, historically and immediately—now!—the freedom to fully become what we have been created to be.

As Father Carron said, “I discover Christ is the answer to what I am.” Or in Saint Paul’s words: “It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me.”

Here we have the reason, I think, that Christianity is at once such a joyful and such a terribly difficult faith. It brings us the peace of Christ but also the onerous demand not just to behave like Him but to “be” Him within the human, all too human, limits of our lives. And “be” here does not mean what it means in the Buddhist tradition of just letting be whatever is at the present moment. No, it means actively, implacably, perpetually enfolding Him within our spiritual and even physical selves through the act of Communion that he gave us as a gift, and which constantly reminds us how sorrowfully we fail.

Each of us knows how sorrowfully he or she fails individually. What we too often fail to grasp collectively as Christians, it seems to me, is that we cannot come blinking out into the light of the wreckage of our culture, our politics, our humanity and either presume to be above it all in Christ’s name or, alternatively, repeat His name over and over in front of it like a magic healing spell.

To do either is an attempt to reduce Christ to an escape hatch from, or a bulwark against, the powers that confront and beset us. Each is an attempt to reduce Christianity to ethics, liturgy, text, devotions, nostalgia. All of those things can be good in themselves. But precisely because they are reductions, they must never become for us the fullness of Christ, irreducible.

My sense, unfortunately, is that is exactly what I do far too frequently in responding to the wreckage around me. I have a sneaking feeling I’m not alone. And it’s a natural response for political Christians. Our faith is foremost in our lives, after all. More, we are the remnant defenders of Christendom so our way of thinking, our language, our logic, automatically draws from the tradition of Christ and confuses the result with Christ.

The question arising is not even so much how to stop doing that as it is how to start being more consistent in making Christ the answer to what I am. At the end of the spiritual exercises for our fraternity, Father Carron had a concrete suggestion: Start over, every day, until it is not I who live, but Christ who lives in me.

• After three months of student protests, many of which have become violent, Quebec’s Minister of Education resigned yesterday. While the protests have been prompted by a proposed $325 increase to tuition rates, the University of Quebec student who has become the public face of the protests, Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois, has suggested that the protest is the cusp of a popular rebellion against “the wave of neo-liberal ideas” that have dominated popular debate.
• Political activists in British Columbia are openly musing about renaming the governing Liberal Party prior to the next election, or forming a “free enterprise coalition party” , in an attempt to counter the NDP’s significant polling advantage in the lead-up to the provincial election which must be held during the next year.
• Federal Opposition Leader Thomas Mulcair has prompted responses from western Canadian Premiers by describing the resource-industry inspired strength of the Canadian dollar as “the Dutch disease” and as the cause of manufacturing job loss in Ontario.

There is, however, a common thread which binds these events into a broader story about the changing face of Canadian politics. It is a story that Cardus told after the 2006 federal election. The politics of consensus has passed and we are now moving into the politics of dissensus. It’s about creating a wedge in the middle of the spectrum, focusing on defining difference and making the opposition seem scary. It has moved away from the way the game was played a generation ago, where parties involved tried to brand themselves as the best representatives of a nation-wide consensus.

Of course this isn’t the whole story. There are other factors to consider when giving an account of the events cited above, and I must admit that they don’t by themselves make a prima facie case for a change in Canadian appetite regarding their political sporting preferences.

One may rightly question whether the student protest in Quebec is really representative of the general student population, just as one can question the extent to which the BC Liberal’s problems have to do with the BC voters’ tiredness regarting a party that has held power for 11 years. It might also be true that both the Conservatives and NDP have common cause to eliminate the Liberal brand from contention in the next election in order to further their own partisan causes.

But it would be myopic to ignore the fact that, just as increasing numbers have taken a liking to extreme sports over the more team-oriented sports, our collective political appetites are undergoing a similar transformation. The politics of the extreme has increasing resonance on all sides, even if isn’t quite yet acceptable enough to admit in polite company. More attention is being paid and more reward given to political bungee jumps than to the teamwork and strategy required for behind-the-scenes compromise and middling consensus. It’s too early to say that this problem has become the new norm, but whether extreme politics is here to stay, or just another extreme sport fad, it’s not an encouraging development.

In particular, it is the symbol of choice for the “Goth” movement, adherents of which wear jet black hair and clothing, chains, tattoos, and sport crosses, skulls, insects, and dragons. They also carry purses and backpacks in the shapes of coffins with crosses on the lids.

Meanwhile, two British women are currently involved in a fight with the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg over their right to wear crosses in their places of work. Officials within the British government have weighed into the case by arguing that because the wearing of the cross is not a “requirement” of the Christian faith, employers can ban wearing the cross, and employees who insist on doing so may be fired (The Sunday Telegraph, March 10, 2012).

The women, Nadia Eweida and Shirley Chaplin, want the European court to rule that they have the human right to manifest their religious beliefs, based on Article 9 of the European Convention on Human Rights: “Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief, in worship, teaching, practice and observance.”

Eweida was fired by British Airways in 2006 for wearing a cross on duty. Chaplin, a nurse, faced disciplinary action for wearing a cross in a hospital, which ended her 31-year career as a nurse.

The British government is arguing that “the applicants’ wearing of a visible cross or crucifix was not a manifestation of their religion or belief within the meaning of Article 9, and . . . the restriction on the applicants’ wearing of a visible cross or crucifix was not an ‘interference’ with their rights protected by Article 9.”

Christian leaders, including the former Archbishop of Canterbury, Lord Carey, now accuse the British government of “sidelining Christianity,” and point out that Sikhs are allowed to wear kirpans, kara bracelets, and turbans, and Muslims are allowed to wear hijabs.

There are likely many British citizens, and other European citizens, who every day trot off to work wearing crosses with no consideration of faith or belief whatsoever. It would be interesting to know if any “Goths,” for instance, have ever been disciplined in the workplace for wearing symbols which have no particular meaning for them.

Perhaps people of no faith are allowed to wear symbols of faith if they don’t actually believe in those symbols, but people for whom those are actual manifestations of faith might find themselves accosted by the “cross police.”

The erosion of religious rights in Europe is distressing evidence that secularism is becoming the only religion tolerated in the public square. In the case of Christian crosses, perhaps the solution would be for the Pope and the Archbishop of Canterbury to declare that from now on, cross-wearing for Christians is mandatory. Perhaps then Christians would have the right to wear them to work.

“How it Went Down” tells a different story, maybe even an encouraging one, about how large scale bureaucracies and enormously powerful personalities and institutions can collaborate to produce precise, calculated results. These are not the adjectives that jump to mind for the American government, but Allison’s piece is a touchstone for those who believe, rightly it turns out, that provided enough motivation modern governments can function swiftly, deftly, and intelligently in a modern media environment.

The killing of Osama bin Laden did violate national sovereignty, severely compromise Pakistani and American relations—on both sides—and did America few favours in reputation in a region already perceiving it a bully. All that aside, and some may claim this is a rather significant aside, the capacity to execute such a clandestine plan, over the course of many months, is in fact quite remarkable. There was no leak, no half-baked group think (à la Bay of Pigs), but instead a slow, methodical, admittedly narrow, group of decision makers that eventually pulled the trigger.

Here are a few of Allison’s more significant lessons.

1. The U.S. government remains capable of extraordinary performance, under extremely volatile circumstances. The question is not whether the U.S. government can perform in such a manner, but how the lessons from this raid can be adapted to be put to use in more ordinary policy making processes.
2. Secrets matter, and “when they do, secrecy matters more.” The bin Laden lead, tipped by his favourite courier, was discovered already in August 2010. Every day after this fact was a delay which increased the chance of alarm and failure. Who to include in the process? How to ascertain the details, without spooking the target? What style of operation (all options, including a full B-2 bomber strike, were on the table) would ensure success? Experts were needed, but experts were also potential liabilities in a sensitive process of this nature.
3. And so, the group of decision makers was indeed kept relatively small, the details of the raid even being kept out of the president’s super-secret morning security briefings to prevent tripping alarms at other agencies and departments. Tightening the decision loop was the price, and mistakes—especially damaging state relations with Pakistan—were made.
4. Perhaps most significant is the circle’s extraordinary success in providing the president time between the initial discovery in August of 2010 and the operation of May 2011. The pressure for decision making on an issue of this magnitude, both for domestic political and international security reasons, was enormous. In a town in which National Security Advisor Thomas Donilon mused, “The only way to keep a secret is not to tell anybody,” the American government and its executive accomplished the seemingly impossible: total secrecy, giving the president precious time to consider his options, to weigh and verify data, before rushing in.

In politics, as in life, many regrettable mistakes are made by urgency, whether false or not. The president would have been vilified in American media if it were discovered he knew of bin Laden’s whereabouts for months and did nothing. He took a big risk taking his time, and it paid off.

But the most interesting message Allison has is one of hope: the American government, which some have already consigned to the dust bin of failed imperial administrations, is still up to some tough work. Can Americans now tackle their tax policy, their deficits, and social disparities with the same calm, clear-minded vigour as the assassination of their most hated nemesis? That, I expect, will be the true test of governance.

Within a month, we’ve had two cringe-inducing high-profile examples of the syndrome. The first was during the recent Alberta election campaign. It involved a candidate for the Wildrose Party, a Christian pastor who infamously felt the need to tell the world via his blog that gays would spend eternity in a lake of fire.

Now, there is a serious discussion to be had about the democratic unacceptability of discrediting citizens from public office for believing Hell is a literal place, not mere metaphor. Serious beliefs based on Scripture and tradition must be treated seriously, fairly, and with respect. Holders of such beliefs do not deserve the smug asininity of journalists tingling with the voyeuristic indecency of Elizabethan Londoners ogling the mentally ill at Bedlam.

The faithful, however, have a concomitant obligation to update the ancient Christian admonition to speak the languages of all men to bring all souls to Christ. We don’t have to be mush-mouths. We do have to speak within the cultural frame of understanding of our interlocutors.

There was a time in Christendom when salvation could promise the benefit of looking down from Heaven as “the smoke of the damned riseth up forever”. That’s been a non-starter for a while—rightly so, not just because of contemporary pagan cultural sensibilities but from the offense against Christian charity of anything that suggests vicarious pleasure in others’ suffering. Vivid evocation of lakes of fire filled with bobbing homosexuals is precisely such an offense against charity, with a heaping helping of blasphemy tossed in since it presumes to know in advance God’s disposition of the souls of the sexually otherwise.

Offending against charity is front and centre, too, in the second example of someone who lives for the Word making a hash of himself by getting tangled up in misbegotten language. Alas, even as perspicacious a Christian as my whipper-snapper colleague Brian Dijkema got drawn into the rush to defend William Swinimer, the Nova Scotia high school student who became last week’s 15-minute martyr for refusing to remove a T-shirt that said “Life is wasted without Jesus.”

You can judge Dijkema’s blog entry from earlier this week for yourself, but I will fairly summarize it by saying it ferociously denounces “the system” and “the man” (properly a female school superintendent) for coming down with two-tonne boots on 19-year-old Swinimer.

“The (school) board’s decision (to suspend Swinimer) and its reasons for doing so are inane, thin-skinned, and not becoming of a liberal society. It was also probably legally wrong,” Dijkema writes.

Reading the blog, I anticipated the mystical appearance of the ubiquitous 1960s rhetorical question—”yeah, and what about Nixon, man?”—just for good measure. It never emerges, but I still half-expect to see young Dijkema trading in his severe formal suits for sloganeering T-shirts of his own. Will pulling out of the Cardus parking lot in a tarted-up 1971 VW bus with his old school tie wrapped, yippy-hippie style, around his head be far behind?

Whatever criticism the school board in question might deserve, it was not wrong to assert its authority to oblige a student to conform to a quite reasonable dress code against wearing sandwich board garments that knowingly and deliberately offend others. Much more importantly, Swinimer’s programmatic lapse into the defense of his right to free speech as a Christian is simply indefensible.

He was wrong. And he was wrong as a Christian. For Christians, no life can ever be a waste. Is the life of a leper a waste? A prostitute? A tax collector? The Samaritan woman at the well? The criminals crucified beside Our Lord? No, no and always no.

Why? Because our Christian perspective makes every moment of every life an open possibility for encountering Christ. It is not up to us, who encounter Him imperfectly ourselves, to judge when that moment should be. It is a besmirching of Christian charity to imply that those who have not yet encountered Him are somehow living lives less worthy in His sight.

But there is a deeper, and yet inherently practical, level at which he was wrong. When he was told that students had complained about the T-shirt, he could have heard the urging of Our Lord to also give our shirts to those who ask for our coats. He could have asked what he could do to try to heal any hurt. He could, in other words, have stepped up and modeled Christ. He could, for that moment at least, made his life a life of Christ.

He chose not to. All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. But it is an amazing reminder for the rest of us that stepping up before speaking up at least keeps both feet directed away from our mouths.

Convivium might just have been Father Richard’s favourite word. There are other candidates—winsome and egregious come to mind—but he loved that word, convivium. He was the only one I knew who used it in ordinary conversation but, of course, his conversations were rarely ordinary. “Convivium” strictly means “to live together,” but it connotes a banquet or feast, indicating that a certain supply of rich food and fine wine are, if not required, at least desired.

The passage came to mind as over the past few days, I received an unusual flurry of emails regarding a column I had published in the Calgary Herald over the weekend. It was a satirical piece on the abortion debate in Canada and while some readers seemed to like it, a few expressed disappointment that I had used the satirical genre. To cite one, “All your points are good ones, but I think in the long run it is self-defeating, given Cardus’ goals, to use sarcasm. While it was well done, you characterized the article as satire, but I perceived it as sarcasm, and sarcasm is a negative and extremely harmful manner of critiquing any point of view.”

While I am not so post-modern in my perspective as to assert that readers are always right and the text says whatever they think it says, I accept the premise that sarcasm rarely advances one’s cause. But let’s, at least for the sake of argument, accept the column as the satire I intended. Would that have a place in a convivial debate, or does being winsome mean forswearing this genre?

Sometimes an unconventional way of making an argument is the only way of receiving a hearing. My guess is that when it comes to the abortion debate in Canada, there is very little meaningful dialogue taking place anywhere on the subject. In this context—in which those who have concerns about abortion had been very publicly told that the debate is over, that the public lacks interest in even giving counter-arguments a hearing—a conventional intervention would have been ignored. So I tried my hand at satire and found a newspaper willing to publish it. My hope was that by framing my case as a conversion story and apology, I might get a hearing from some who otherwise would bave ignored the piece.

Whether it achieved its objective is hard to measure although it did prompt more feedback, public and private, than most pieces I write. And just like a zinger at the supper table that makes a point, I don’t think the occasional article of this sort negates Cardus’ credibility as an organization dedicated to convivial conversation in the public square. To be sure, a steady diet of anything would get tiring and it remains true that the convivial social dinner table requires a respectful tone, appropriate sharing, and social grace. But it also requires honesty. And sometimes a bit of satirical wit, like a strong spice in an appropriate portion, contributes to the zest of the meal and perhaps even provides a bit of a bite that makes the meal more memorable.

Let’s start with the superintendent, Ms. Nancy Pynch-Worthylake, and the school board. Young William Swinimer wore a bright yellow t-shirt emblazoned with the words “Life is Wasted without Jesus” to school. Those words offended another student, who complained to the vice-principal, who asked William to remove the shirt. The National Post reports that the vice-principal considers the words on the shirt “hate-talk.” There is more to the story, of course: the boy says that he had been “bullied” about his faith prior to this incident; the school maintains that he was suspended not only because of the shirt, but because of his defiance of the principal’s order; and the school says it is “expected that students will not wear clothing with messages that may offend others’ beliefs, race, religion, culture or lifestyle.”

Now, let’s get one thing straight: the board’s decision and its reasons for doing so are inane, thin-skinned, and not becoming of a liberal society. Judging from the board’s later reversing of its decision, after it consulted “human rights experts” (a process which should make us all shudder), it was also probably legally wrong. But more importantly, it undermines the purpose of the school. If the purpose of education in a liberal society is to teach future students to uphold democracy (a purpose which is often given as a rationale in defence of a state monopoly on schooling, though this is itself debatable), then surely it should be a place where offensive ideas do not equal suspension. The student wasn’t threatening anyone. Even if his shirt did “judge” someone’s life, I’m certain that it was considerably lower pressure judgment than most rendered in the halls of a public high school, for grounds other than religion. Anyone who’s been in a grade 10 change room before gym class can hear at least 34 significantly more offensive things than “Life is wasted without Jesus.”

The proper response from the superintendent would have been to hear the complaint and have the offended student talk to William about why he was wearing the shirt, what it meant, and whether or not it was in keeping with Christianity—and if so, why. That would have been a smart pedagogical move, and might have even led to mutual enlightenment, and maybe even a bit of respect between the parties. But no, our schools no longer consider eternal questions—or any questions which might lead to serious debate—worth talking about. Schools now prefer to manage conflict, or rather avoid anything that has even the slightest whiff of conflict about it. It’s telling that Ms. Pynch-Worthylake dwells on “the easy way to deal with this” rather than the right way, or the best way, for the children. Such is the sorry state of education in our late liberal society.

Williams Swinimer is absolutely justified when he says, “I believe this is worth standing up for. It’s not just standing up for religious rights, it’s standing up for my rights as a Canadian citizen; for freedom of speech, freedom of religion. I don’t think this is right.”

But such quotes show that Mr. Swinimer comes out the loser in this too. Had he been educated in the art of rhetoric and logic—the stuff schools should be teaching, instead of Orwellian “discussions” hosted by representatives from the Nova Scotia Human Rights Divisions—he might have known that a lame t-shirt is not the most persuasive way to convince one’s fellow students of the rightness and worth of one’s cause.

He also might have realized that a shirt which pronounces judgment does not necessarily follow the logic of Christ’s teaching to love our enemies, even our bullies.

The source of this disparity is certainly not risk-taking capitalism. Competition amongst market participants, which delivers to customers the products and services they want at the most cost-effective prices, benefits everyone. How can self-sacrificing business people focused on the long term be anything but a boon to the economy, and to the pocket books of all productive citizens? No, the disparity is not caused by the savers and investors in our economy, the ones who create and provide the real capital and the long-term wealth creation.

Rather, the problem has little to do with competitive market forces, and everything to do with (1) the massive and overbearing position of the state in the economy, and (2) the inexorable expansion of credit/debt by the central banking elites.

The expansion of the state throughout developed economies is one of the key drivers of wealth inequalities. The so-called fight against poverty, which helped justify the massive expansion of the state, has in fact achieved the exact opposite aim. State intrusion has escalated poverty by creating social welfare schemes that fail to incentivize productivity, and can only be funded by stripping the productive class. Remember, socialism impoverishes, since it is a net consumer of capital. It is the de-capitalization of the economy.

How can wealth inequalities not increase when the state bureaucratically and inefficiently directs over 40% of the economy, with little to no competition or accountability to the bottom line? How can wealth inequalities not mount when the state continues to pillage from the future to pay for excesses today? How can wealth inequalities not grow when the state refuses to accept the truth? We have reached a point in economic history when the scale and magnitude of the debt problem—brought on by lies of “free” education, pensions, and medical care, from here till eternity—can not be paid for, apart from the printing press.

This leads to the second economic source of the growing disparity between the rich and poor: the uncontrolled expansion of the money supply over the past several decades. This, as Mark Spitznagel recently pointed out in the Wall Street Journal, “creates artificial disparities based on political privilege and economic power.” History teaches us that in many cases, large governments are not fundable without the eventual debasement or counterfeiting of money. But an increase in money supply is beneficial to those who get it first, and detrimental to those who receive it last. Monetary inflation is a process; it is not static. It is analogous to counterfeiting, which benefits those that can spend the money immediately while forcing higher prices on those who get the money later.

Central banks do not expand money supply by equally dropping cash from helicopters over the eager population. Rather, they direct their digital “capital transfers” to the largest banks, providing them with the cheap money first which minimizes their borrowing costs. This in turn allows banks to unload this “new money” into the market, raising the prices of what ever it touches.

In the end, central banks transfer immense wealth from the middle class to the most affluent, from the least privileged to the most privileged. Those who can get their hands on the money early in the cycle and own the most productive assets in the economy can generally build a hedge to the debasement of money.

If we are serious about minimizing wealth inequalities we must start by slashing the size of the state, collateralizing our money, and rewarding the productive class by allowing them to build up the necessary capital to underpin our economy.

I’ve read the report, and its content is not what makes it noteworthy. I’m reasonably certain that you could find a bunch of similar-calibre papers from C-range students in first year political science courses in universities across the country. No, what makes it noteworthy, and the reason it made front page news, is that it was produced by something described as a Christian church.

It’s difficult to find any marks which are specifically Christian in the report. It claims to offer a biblical and theological vision for its findings, but these are difficult to find. The closest thing one can find is this:

While much of this history has been clouded by violence and oppression, empires and occupation, exile and return, this land has also been shaped by an awareness of the sacred and transcendent. Whether it is the night journey of Muhammad, the vision of Solomon, or the prayer of Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane, here heaven and earth have come close to each other. The integrity of the three world faiths represented by the land of Israel/Palestine is at stake in how this conflict is resolved.

That’s a little thin, isn’t it? In fact, the four paragraphs dedicated to “biblical and theological vision” are among the most weakly written and banal bits of the whole report. The report as a whole reads like more like policy proposals from a political party or think-tank than the work of a church. The effect is similar to that of Christian rock and roll. Take the music, hairdo, leather jackets, and electric guitars of an eighties rock-band, replace “girl” with Jesus, and you’ve got church music. The result in policy is as confounding as Stryper. It leaves me wanting to say, “You’re not making Christianity better; you’re making public policy worse.” It has media cachet only because it’s connected with Canada’s (supposedly) second largest church.

No, this report doesn’t hurt the reputation of the United Church. After their wholly serious exploration of “Post-Theistic” Christianity and other such (non)theological adventures, the United Church does not have much of a reputation left. It’s the reputation of broader Canadian Christianity that takes the blow, by the United Church’s lingering association.

What of those who want the apostolic faith to be taken seriously for public life? The minimalist and weak way this report treats scripture and Christian tradition to speak to an important issue, combined with the highly disputable policy proposals it unabashedly advances, communicate to a Canadian public that scripture and biblical tradition aren’t important to public dialogue. The church, in this instance, becomes just another voice in the cacophony of think-tanks, university professors, politicians, and lobbyists.

Perhaps it’s time for the United Church to stop speaking as a Christian church, and for the National Post to stop covering them as one. Might it not be more helpful to the public to describe them as a collective of independent spiritual beings with political opinions? Sounds less newsworthy, doesn’t it? Perhaps we’d all be better off.

Wiebo Ludwig, a Christian Reformed minister from Ontario, may not have shared MacIntyre’s nascent Aristotelian-Thomism, but he more than shared his feelings of unease. Unlike MacIntyre, more in fact like Wendell Berry, Wiebo retreated with his family and others to the remote tundra of northern Alberta. There they forestalled the powers of a modern age, clinging to their blue Psalters, and to a more rural, agrarian way of life. “Our true religion” writes Wendell Berry, “is a sort of autistic industrialism.” Wiebo’s work was the recovery of another, true religion.

All did not go well. With Wiebo Ludwig’s passing of esophageal cancer last month, at the age of 70, op-eds and even a documentary, “Wiebo’s War,” covered the clash between Wiebo Ludwig and modern society. What, the unfamiliar might ask, would modern society care for a group of the religiously fervent carving out a farm in northern Alberta? Of course it wouldn’t care a whit . . . unless there was oil and gas under that farm.

And so Wiebo Ludwig, unlike the beloved, pastoral poet Wendell Berry, became embroiled in scandals ranging from sabotage to pipeline bombings to murder. None of it was ever proven. But the twinkle in Wiebo’s eye, his cagey media presence, and the circumstantial evidence encasing his life underline obstructions of justice, facts undisclosed, people protected.

Paul Joosse, writing his dissertation on radical environmentalism, began visiting Wiebo Ludwig at Trickle Creek after a string of bombings in 2008 and 2009. Macleans interviewed him on the life and death of Wiebo. Radical environmentalism hardly seems to tell Wiebo’s story: he did not, after all, go searching for a fight with oil and gas. It came to him. And his Reformed theology inspired not only a more radical perspective on the environment, on stewardship and respect (à la Wendell Berry), but a more fundamental shift away from a consumption-oriented culture, one which had broken covenant with its God and with itself. Theirs was a true Benedictine confession, a retreat from a dark age into a place of hope, of peace, and of new covenant.

It is a sad thing, a tragic thing, that Wiebo’s legacy is radical, violent environmentalism, and that circumstances drove that community to unproven excesses. Charges of fundamentalism and cultish behaviour abound, though Joosse claims to find little evidence to sustain these. Indeed, it is lack of evidence which is its own kind of evidence in all things surrounding Wiebo Ludwig.

Macleans, Paul Joose, and others miss the point when they talk about a comingling of traditional Christianity and radical environmentalism. It is not merely an environmental message, but an interpretation of covenant and of religion which finds itself at fundamental odds with the social contract of North American life. That is not just about oil and gas. And that is a far more profound prophecy, underlining a far more worrying cultural anomie, than one radical environmentalist passing quietly in the solitude of northern Alberta.