President Michael Van Pelt and the Cardus white paper, Living on the Streets, were quoted in an article in the July 7 National Post looking at the role of religious institutions in urban centres. Read the article here.

Having been singled out in a recent Holy Post blog by Justin Trottier, it is only appropriate to provide a response. It would be easy, even tempting given the girth of the rhetorical pitches he has thrown, to swing for the fences. I choose instead to offer the other cheek. Mr. Trottier and I agree that religion can be, has been, is and will likely continue to be a subject of division between people. Where we disagree is in understanding that it is just one of many tools used by human beings over the course of history to assert their desire to dominate. Other causes similarly abused to cause strife include differing views on trade, economic systems, ideology, pride, social justice, freedom, secularism, culture, language, etc. Honduras and El Salvador have gone to war over a World Cup qualifying match and the Trojan wars were caused by a dispute over a woman, Helen of Sparta, or Troy. None of this, of course, is reason to build barriers to prevent the participation of economics, ideology, women, football, freedom or social justice within the public square. That cleared up, my argument is not religious. It is sociological and based, not on faith, but on reason and empirical data collected by agencies such as Statistics Canada. Theists punch far above their weight when it comes to contributing to charities both financially and in terms of volunteer hours. Why or if this will forever be the case may be debated. That it is currently the case is not debatable. According to the Canadian Centre for Philanthropy and Statistics Canada, the 32 per cent of Canadians who are active in their belief make 65 per cent of the nation's direct charitable donations. Mr. Trottier may believe as he says that this is because they are funding purely evangelical causes such as, one presumes, the construction of clean water filters in African villages or the feeding and housing of the hungry and homeless at institutions such as Inn From the Cold, Mustard Seed and the Salvation Army, but the truth in this area remains inconvenient to his argument. Even in the purely secular donations sector, that same 32 per cent of believers donates 42 per cent of the $2.1 billion raised annually. Trottier and others need to consider whether their belief system is blinding them to the reality of empirical data. All of this would be neither here nor there if it not for the fact that this 32 percent, the civic core of Canada's giving sector, is declining by 1 to 2 per cent annually. As it declines, and assuming the trend continues, only one outcome can be reasonably assumed, that financial support for Canada's charitable institutions will decline along with it. Assuming that the need for services such as food and housing, offered both by secular and faith-based institutions, is unlikely to disappear, only two outcomes are possible. One is that the needs of the hungry and homeless will not be met; the other is that the burden of their care will shift to the state. One has then to simply ask the very rational question of whether it is more efficient for society to have these needs met by a $30,000-a-year Salvation Army soldier with a degree in social work or an $80,000 a year government employee with a degree in social work. This is to say nothing of the other enormous contributions made by the physical infrastructures of theist institutions to the social infrastructures of society such as the use of their facilities as day cares, seniors centres, Alcoholics Anonymous meetings, etc. I do not deny that people who share a non-theist belief system contribute. They are responsible for 35 per cent of Canada's total contributions, after all. So far, however, there is insufficient data to inspire confidence that as the theist-active civic core described above declines, a new civic core with a non-theistic moral code will emerge to pick up the slack. As Partis Quebecois leader Bernard Landry who as Premier of Quebec led one of western society's most vigorously non-theist societies was quoted as saying in Brian Lee Crowley's Fearful Symmetry: "The revolution (of the 1960s) changed so many things in such a short period. We made a break with Catholic morality and have been trying to build an ethical and moral code that is not linked to religion . . . and we haven't found a good way to do that." The rational approach in a truly open society tolerant of Mr. Trottier's beliefs and mine is to ensure the physical and intellectual contributions to the charitable needs of society is recognized and supported by public policy. The people served do not deserve to be the collateral damage of an intellectual assault on the people who serve them.

Forty days is too soon to identify reliably the trajectory of Britain’s Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition, but its 35-page policy agreement contains clear pointers to its intended direction of travel. The official line is that the agreement heralds the discovery of common “liberal” (in the European, not the American, sense) principles between the two parties. And indeed, David Cameron has sought to move the Conservatives toward a “liberal conservatism,” while Nick Clegg represents the more pro-free market and individualist wing of the Liberal Democrats. The Conservatives campaigned on the need for a move “from Big State to Big Society,” attacking Labour’s squeezing out of the independent responsibilities of individuals and intermediate institutions. In the agreement, such “Big Society” talk is blended with Liberal Democrat aspirations to “disperse power” and liberate individuals and local communities to exercise greater decision-making responsibility. Thus the document promises “to distribute power and opportunity to people rather than hoarding authority within government,” and to effect “a radical redistribution of power away from Westminster and Whitehall to councils, communities and homes.” But when we examine the policy detail what we find is a more complex view of the role of government. There is no straightforward transfer of authority away from central government to somewhere else. True, a raft of laws and several non-departmental public bodies are set for the chop. And many of the planned new measures are not imperative or indicative but permissive or facilitative. But whether the net effect of the overall program will be “smaller” or “bigger” government is not easy to predict, (though the drastic austerity budget of June 22nd will undoubtedly reduce the proportion of national income spent by the state). This should come as no surprise. The laudable goal of restoring proper responsibility to individuals and to a range of public and nonpublic institutions is not the same as simply “shrinking the state.” It requires the establishment of a multi-faceted framework of just public relationships across society as a whole. Sometimes this requires government to step back, at other times to step forward. Thus, for example, while the agreement contains several measures to lift the regulatory burden on businesses and reduce corporate taxation, it also envisages a welter of new economic interventions: to restore responsible decision-making in the banking sector, to require companies to report on their social and environmental duties, to reform energy markets, and to increase consumer protection. Further, while there are significant transfers of authority from central to local government, there are also measures which restrict local authorities in new ways: a freeze on local taxation, limits on their use of investigatory powers, and tighter rules on local authority newspapers. Equally, major decentralizations of power are envisaged for public services, yet alongside new mechanisms of regulation. In the national Health Service, for example, a bonfire of ministerial controls stands alongside newly-imposed national regulations: a uniform expansion of “best practice,” a beefed-up quality inspectorate, and new contracts for doctors and dentists. In education, parents and teachers are ceded new rights to set up their own (publicly-funded) schools, while central government is also set to establish new national performance tables and expanded disciplinary powers for teachers. The new UK government may prove an interesting case study of the central proposition of a “public justice” perspective: that statecraft is not simply about the reduction of government but about the proper attribution of plural social and personal responsibilities among many sources of social and political governance in a complexly interconnected society.

Gideon Strauss interviewed in Christianity Today as one of the movers and shakers in North American Christianity. Read his interview here.

Little magazines are those quirky publications tucked away in the corners of the internet and independent bookstores. Their circulation is tiny, their subject matter diverse, their goal to change minds rather than earn profit. At the dawn of the twentieth century, bolstered by improved printing technology and a host of new ideas swirling around, they sprung up as a vehicle for the generalist intellectual to interpret the world through the lens of the fringe movements: feminism, communism, new literary criticism, the avant-garde. Their common and often ornery theme was dissent toward the political status quo. It seems impossible, but many of today’s little magazines have an even more audacious goal: to address all corners of culture. While some may specialize, they just as often focus on everything at once. One tiny but feisty and influential journal, n+1, is interested in publishing “all reports from all the various fields of human endeavor: medicine, computing, the law, sports, crime, art, finance, engineering, construction, music, etc.” n+1’s goal could be claimed by many little magazines: “Please tell us and our readers what we do not know.” Another upstart, Good, unabashedly seeks to “drive the world forward” by focusing on everything from education to water quality to neighborhoods. My own tiny magazine has an occasionally embarrassingly lofty aim: to “announce signs of ‘the world that ought to be’ as we find it in our midst, and . . . to inspire people to engage deeply with culture that enriches life and broadens experience.” Though the “big” magazines and newspapers are collapsing, many little magazines have weathered the storm surprisingly well. Big publications sell a product to the reader and turn profit for the parent corporation, but the little magazine exists on a shoestring. Big publications target markets; little magazines aim for an intellectual legacy. The internet hasn’t killed the little magazines—it’s made them stronger. Sites like Front Porch Republic and Patrol and my own magazine have sprung up without needing a paper-based presence and a distribution mechanism. By nature, they’ll never be anything more than tiny, and their circulation will always be dwarfed by that of their bigger cousins. At the same time the internet makes it possible for anyone to blog their dissatisfaction, and so some might say the little magazine’s platform is no longer needed. I would argue that while dissent is still the great work of the little magazine, its real unorthodoxy is not in its words, as important as they are. Rather, the existence of the little magazine stands against its culture: it reminds a society entrenched in a race for profit and enamored with short-term success that significant and lasting work is often done when neither immediate success nor profit are present. This is because the work of the little magazine is the ultimate exercise in futility, at least in our era of capitalism. Publishing is high on the sweat-and-tears job scale, with little room for vacations and a lot of nail-biting about whether the next issue will even make it to the finish line. Today’s little magazine’s editors are idealistic, but probably not delusional about what they will accomplish or the celebrity they will attain. There are many little magazines competing for the handful of people willing to read something so marginal. Many little magazines still don’t make it past the first or second issue. No, the little magazine won’t turn a profit, and it won’t make it to every coffee table or newsstand in America. It won’t be discussed on the Today Show and it won’t be water-cooler conversation. It exists openly because of a democratic society that grounds itself on free speech, yet it stands against the economic calculus that a market society prizes. And so it testifies that ideas sometimes matter more than profit, that audacious, lofty goals of cultural engagement can still take priority over obvious success.

Mike Hickerson from the Emerging Scholars Network interviews Comment Associate Editor, Alissa Wilkinson, on her life, vocation and all the incredible ways she balances them. Read ESN's interview with Alissa here.

Author Marci McDonald's latest book, The Armageddon Factor, mocked for its sky-shouting alarm about a purported Christian putsch in Canadian federal politics, has been dismissed by its harsher critics as delusional rubbish being pushed through the public square. And yet, Ms. McDonald's face-off with public faith deserves a second look, at least for what it says about the suspicion and hostility many Canadians harbour toward mixing religious and political belief. The Armageddon Factor may be, as its detractors argue, anti-theist fear-mongering. Yet the book's publisher is clearly betting it will sell to the growing number of Canadians who see faith not merely as a private good, but as a public bad. It's hardly a reckless wager. Whether the discussion involves Muslims, Sikhs, Jews or Christians, it has become common to express uneasiness with any public expression of truth claims that might be considered exclusive to a given faith group. Such public claims are increasingly viewed as divisive or mortal sin of the 21st century intolerant. Common expression need not translate into majority belief. However, 9/11 made us all profoundly aware of private belief's public consequences. Since Canadians are committed to equality and pluralism, the thinking goes, of necessity we need great care in dealing with all religion in public. Even granting the virtue in prudence, it's critical to see such neo-squeamishness about public faith as itself undesirable for several reasons. First, it's flatly ahistorical and utterly ignores Canada's founding nature. Second, it risks befouling the very 'civic oxygen' that religious faith provides in superabundance to Canada's social ecology. While it is now standard fare to hear Canadian secular nationalists imitate their American counterparts by parroting phrases about separation of church and state, Christian faith and practice were essential elements in the construction of Canada. Confederation involved the creation of a national polity within which two separate societies, French Catholic and English Protestant, could unite. In the constitutional protection for religious education, in the social gospel movement of the early 20th century, or in the relationship of the Duplessis government to the Catholic Church, we find the broad trajectory of forces that bound otherwise disparate Canadians together. Yet our shift to the 'secular pluralism' of the past 40 years has been possible primarily because of the social contributions of those who practice religious faith. There is, demonstrably, a civic oxygen on which Canadian social ecology relies, and it is generated by the nation's churches, synagogues and mosques. If Canada's institutions of faith ceased to participate in our country's public life, it would be the civic equivalent of the clearing of the rain forest. The social ecological implications would be far more significant than many comprehend. Statistics Canada data on charitable giving demonstrates this. For example, parsing StatsCan numbers, the Canadian Centre for Philanthropy calculates that the 32 per cent of Canadians who are religiously active contribute 65 per cent of direct charitable donations. Even in the secular sector, they provide 42 per cent of the $2.1-billion raised annually by direct giving. Such statistics do not begin to factor in the importance of the institutional church in contributing to public and social infrastructural space. Institutional religion provides significant social cohesion to cities suffering fragmentation, isolation and disintegration. Can we, reasonably and in a democratic society, demand the members of such institutions simply perform good works, give freely and then shut up? If public, political language can only exclude God, we are not just preventing believers from speaking about their faith. We are denying them the right to speak for themselves. That is why the paradigm presented by The Armageddon Factor cannot be taken. It is not just injurious. It is not just false. It is unsustainable. Historical, sociological, legal and philosophical evidence all prove that that the secularizing experiment of the past 40 years has been a failure. We cannot go on attempting to shape a public square in which God is neither met nor encountered.

In late January, Jonathan Wellum said it was time for central banks to start to raise interest rates. About half a year later, the Bank of Canada pulled the trigger. Should this be just the first in a series of rapid rates hikes? How should investors view the move? Jonathan Wellum, CEO, Rocklinc Investment Partners Inc., explains. Watch Jonathan Wellum online here (8 min).

Senior Fellow Stanley Carlson-Thies on Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly (PBS), talking about whether federally funded faith-based groups should be able to hire on the basis of religion. Watch a preview here.