“The Persistence of Civil Religion in Modern Canada,” presented by the Cardus Centre for Cultural Renewal.

The annual Hill Lectures are named in honour of the late Frederick Walter Hill, distinguished Canadian businessman and philanthropist, Member of the Order of Canada, and long-time advocate of serious cultural analysis and engagement. Each year, the Lecture is held on Parliament Hill in Ottawa.

The series is consistently well-attended by government leaders, prominent decision-makers, politicians, religious leaders, and concerned citizens. The Hill Lecture also provides a venue for top legal and political minds to meet and discuss current developments, providing an opportunity to share ideas and strategize responses to those developments. The focus is not on a particular partisan political platform or perspective, but on themes which ought to be considered publicly on a broad basis. A prominent researcher/lecturer is invited to speak on a topic of societal cultural importance, and the audience is given opportunity to ask questions. Past lecturers and responders have included, Hon. Claude Ryan, Prof. Roger Scruton, Prof. John Witte, Baroness Caroline Cox, Prof. Peter Erb, Prof. Jeremy Gunn, Prof. Marvin Olasky.”

This year the speaker will be Dr. John von Heyking. He is Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Lethbridge, in Alberta, Canada, where he teaches political philosophy and religion and politics. He is author of Augustine and Politics as Longing in the World (2001), and coeditor of Friendship and Politics: Essays in Political Thought (2008) and Civil Religion in Political Thought (2010), as well as two volumes of The Collected Works of Eric Voegelin. The topics of his scholarly articles include friendship, cosmopolitanism, liberal education, multiculturalism, empire, civil religion, political representation, citizenship, republicanism, just war, Islamic political thought, leadership, America as symbol, and religious liberty in Canada. His editorials have appeared in the Globe and Mail (Toronto), Calgary Herald, C2C: Canada’s Journal of Ideas, and the Ashbrook Center for Public Affairs. Dr. John von Heyking blogs regularly on the website for the Lehrman American Studies Center. He is currently at work on a book-length study on the political significance of friendship.