2011‑2022, and is preserved here for archival purposes.
Peter Stockland reports on a group of B.C. Canadian Reformed Churches going to court to be allowed to come in out of the rain and worship together.
As Christians around the world raise “hosannas” to their Saviour this Palm Sunday, the congregation of Aldergrove Canadian Reformed Church might also be putting up umbrellas.
Members of the church located near the western end of B.C.’s Fraser Valley ...
Trevor Shelley, of the Calgary-based citizen’s group imagination 150, warns in this contribution that neglect of the meaning of citizenship risks severing the essential common civic bonds that connect us as Canadians. What do you think? Is the value of Canadian citizenship diminishing? If so, what can you do to reverse the decline? Convivium would love to hear from you and publish a selection of responses..
As we celebrated Canada’s 150th birthday, the Economist magazine praised Canada as an example to th...
Beth Green, program director for Cardus Education, tells Convivium’s Peter Stockland that Angus Reid polling data released today show Canadians overwhelmingly support public funding of faith-based schooling
Convivium: Were you surprised by the strength of support the Angus Reid data shows exists among Canadians for funding faith-based schools?
Beth Green: No, I'm not surprised. I think the temptation is to see the lands...
Today, we release the third piece in our series of Policy Options articles that have emerged as a response to our Spirited Citizenship: Care, Conflict, and Virtue round table in Ottawa last month, convened in partnership with the Angus Reid Institute to mark Canada’s Sesquicentennial.
(Pictured: Dr. Janet Epp Buckingham, Trinity Western University Laurentian Leadership Centre)
An inflammatory statement by Canad...
Follow along as we feature a series of articles published in Policy Options that have emerged as a response to the Spirited Citizenship: Care, Conflict, and Virtue round table, an initiative convened by Cardus and the Angus Reid Institute to mark Canada's Sesquicentennial.
"The era when churches and religious leaders held sway over public policy in Canada has come to an end," says Angus Reid, head of the Angus Reid Institute, and Shachi Kurl, Angus Reid Institute's executive director.
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With today's release of the fourth major Angus Reid Institute polls on the state of religion in Canada, Cardus Executive Vice-President Ray Pennings says the biggest identifiable gap is between Canadians' positive lived experiences of faith and their negative perceptions arising from narratives about spiritual belief.
Convivium: The results coming out today are from the fourth Angus Reid Institute polls done on the state of faith in Canada. What’s the most important finding, and how do these results fit with those that have come before?
Ra...
Cardus Law Program Director Dr. Andrew Bennett reflects on the way the House of Commons justice committee dealt with Bill C-51.
OTTAWA - Sometimes Parliament works just the way the textbooks say it’s supposed to work. Arguably, the most recent example is in the way the House of Commons justice committee dealt with Bill C-51, which aims to erase “outdated” parts of the Criminal Code....
Convivium's Publisher Peter Stockland reports on the inaugural Ross and Davis Mitchell Prize for Faith and Writing Reception and the presentation of $25,000 dollars in prize money to emerging voices in the Canadian literary sphere.
The good news from Monday night’s Mitchell literary prize gala is that the contest launched to celebrate Canada’s 150th birthday will continue on beyond the end of 2017.
The great news of the evening was the astonishing quality of the winn...
This Monday evening at the Aga Khan Museum in Toronto, a Canadian poet and a Canadian fiction writer will be feted – and awarded $25,000 – as winners of the Ross and Davis Mitchell Prize For Faith In Writing. Cardus’ editor and senior researcher Doug Sikkema, who oversaw the competition from its beginnings two years ago, says everyone who put pen to paper has contributed to advancing the vital role religious traditions play in Canadian life.
It was late in 2015 when Greg Pennoyer and I grabbed lunch at Radius in Hamilton to scheme about a possible literary prize that would celebrate the role religion and faith played in the lives of Canadian writers today. Greg had been brought on board to dire...
Convivium's editor in chief Father Raymond J. de Souza marks the anniversary of both the Sacred Heart of Mary parish and Queen's University's "Newman Club."
The Year of Our Lord 2017 has been rather full of notable anniversaries. Five hundred years since the Reformation, something that reminds us that our work across confessional lines at Cardus, Catholics and Protestants together in a common mission, is a bles...
In the midst of the politics of uproar, Convivium’s Hannah Marazzi chats with Ismaili Muslim writer, speaker, neighbourhood builder, and Little League Coach Eboo Patel about creating a civil world through quiet acts of community.
I remember the exact Ottawa street corner where I was standing as I listened to Krista Tippett’s 2008 Onbeing interview of Eboo Patel. Cars rushed by as I walked the too-warm streets of the city in summer and listened as a man I’d never met talk about getti...
Judges for the $25,000 Faith in Canada 150 Mitchell Literary Prize have their short list ready to announce today. Convivium Publisher Peter Stockland spoke with contest director Doug Sikkema about what the high quality of the entries means for Canadian literature.
Convivium: You're ready to announce the Mitchell Prize shortlist. Can you take us through the process of managing a literary contest of this significance?
Do...
Daniel Prousssalidis, Cardus director of communications, visits a Habitat For Humanity site this week and discovers that people of various faiths working on a building sound like religious belief in action.
The sound of religious worship is as varied as the number of faith traditions around the world. A mournful chant, an ancient hymn, a barely audible mantra, and even the wail of an electric guitar will pierce the air in various houses of worship. But on a su...
Ottawa spends $50 million on showpiece gardens in Winnipeg. Yet Churchill's lone rail line can't be repaired. From Confederation to now, Canada began to go seriously off track.
A few weeks back I wondered whether the dominant theme of Canada 150 – a nation built on nastiness to Indigenous peoples – might work to the practical detriment of Canada’s aboriginal communities.
Denunciations of the past are easy to make. Building ...
Jean Vanier, Companion of the Order of Canada and founder of L'Arche on the occasion of Canada's Sesquicentennial Anniversary.
Like all Canadians, Cardus was shocked and troubled by revelations of sexual abuse by Jean Vanier, which came to light in February 2020. We take these revelations ...
Indigenous accusations of genocide made our 150th birthday a day of repentance with sporadic fireworks, says Father Raymond J. de Souza. That's not good for Canada. It's even worse for Aboriginal Canadians.
I certainly enjoyed this year’s festivities for Canada 150 in Ottawa, mainly because I spent my time at the inspiring events put on by my Cardus colleagues for our Faith in Canada 150 project. But as I watched those taking part in the official ceremonies, I...
Today Convivium publishes an open letter, authored and affirmed at the Faith in Canada 150 Millennial Summit at the Ottawa Offices of Cardus, Canada’s faith based think tank, June 30, 2017.
Dear Canada,
We write to you on the eve of the 150th anniversary of Confederation to affirm the role of faith in the formation of Canada in its past, today, and in future generations to come.
We, delegates of the Faith in Canada 150 Millennial...
Convivium Editor in Chief Father Raymond J. de Souza reflects on the Canada Day celebrations that unfolded in early July.
I had the blessing of spending Canada’s 150th anniversary in Ottawa with my Cardus colleagues for various events that were most inspiring.
It capped off six weeks in which I found myself for unrelated – but Providential? – reasons on Canad...
To mark Canada’s 150th birthday, Providence Renewal Centre in Edmonton has initiated a 150-day prayer challenge. The challenge begins on Saturday, July 1. Read more about how you can get involved.
To mark Canada’s 150th birthday, Providence Renewal Centre in Edmonton has initiated a 150-day prayer challenge. The challenge begins on Satutrday, July 1.
People throughout the city, province and across Canada are invited to pray, sing, or read a ps...
Photographer Dave Andrews brings the people of Carp together to mark Canada Day in the beauty of the Canadian landscape.
In the second of our two part series preparing for Canada Day, we reveal the fruition of photographer Dave Andrews dream to fill in the space created in the shape of a Canadian flag on Haskell farm. "The townsfolk of Carp filled the maple leaf Canada mornin...
Photographer Dave Andrews shares a shot, as envisioned in a dream he had back in the middle of Canadian winter, to celebrate Canada in the middle of an open field.
Capuring the sacred beauty of Canada and the indominability of the Canadian spirit, this Sacred Spaces capture features the beauty of Haskell farm. "This shot was the result of a dream I had the previous January," notes photographer Dave Andrews. Taken in J...
Photographer Hayley Lockrem captures the essence of Canadian communities of faith, standing side by side, facing the future in faith and friendship.
Theologian C.S. Lewis speaks of the power of friendship in his book The Four Loves, describing the posture of friends as being "...side by side, absorbed in some common interest." The power of photographer Hayley Lockrem's photograph lies in her ab...
In this final text from the Cardus’ What Makes a Good City forum, Andrew Bennett for reviving the spirit of urbi et orbi – the city and the world – by which religious traditions have made beauty and comfort integral to our urban lives.
June 1, on certain Church calendars, is the commemoration of St. Justin Martyr, also known as Justin the Philosopher.
St. Justin Martyr lived at the beginning of the second century. He was a Roman citizen, a patrician, well schooled in rhetoric, in p...
His Excellency the Right Honourable David Johnston, Governor General of Canada, participates in a non-partisan and apolitical way, at a variety of events across the country to meet with Canadians in order to encourage dialogue, promote national identity and foster national unity. On May 18, 2017, His Excellency attended the National Prayer Breakfast in Ottawa during which he delivered these remarks on faith. Convivium is delighted to publish his inspiring words.
I would like to address three interrelated topics today—faith, service and love—and I will do so in the context of my own faith as well as of my role as representative of our head of state, Queen Elizabeth II, who also serves as defender of the faith.
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