When Rhetoric is Wrong
My memory insists it was a late American President who said something that grows stronger within me as the shadow of my years lengthen. I believe it’s now becoming evermore true: “When the action is hot,” he said, “keep the rhetoric cool.” Those words come back to me, day after day, as the rhetoric, especially from university student unions, becomes louder and nastier. (Click on the blog's bold title to read the whole.)
The United Church Today
A gifted Canadian scholar – Dr. Phyllis Airhart, Associate Professor of Christian History at Toronto School of Theology, has written a highly readable and reliable history of its life: “A Church with the Soul of a Nation”. The Observer invited me to write my impressions of the book for its cultural essay series, which thereby includes my own sense of the United Church as I see it today. (Click on the blog's main title to read the whole.)
In Rome One Lifetime is not Enough
Rome. The very sound of the word lingers in memory, so that just hearing it spoken, evokes my past visits, so many that certain streets and sites seem permanently engraved. (Click on the article's bold title to read the whole.)
The Issue that Won’t Go Away
For well over a decade, legal, political and public opinion have been softening on the issue of prostitution. Some years ago, the current Chief Justice of the Supreme Court questioned its illegality, then at last year’s end the high court itself, The Supreme Court of Canada, ruled in favor of dropping the laws forbidding it. Public opinion studies reflect a slow trend in favour of the court’s opinion. (Click on the blog's bold title to read the whole.)
The Prejudice That Never Passes
Some sayings are engraved upon history, century after century, one being the admonition of Jesus that the poor will be with us forever. (Click on the blog's main title to read the whole.)