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1192 RESULTS

Nov 1, 2004

Modernity and Differentiation

According to Pearse, the peculiarly modern civilization of the West bears a number of characteristics deemed threatening to pre-modern civilizations in other parts of the world. The emphasis in particular on the autonomous exercise of personal choice is highly dangerous to communities whose very survival is dependent upon the subordination of individual preferences to communal norms.

Nov 1, 2004

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Freedom of Association with Little Meaning

Abraham Kuyper exclaims: ‘Sin is such a tremendous power that it mocks all your dikes and sluices… it will again and again flood the field of human life with the waters of its passion and selfishness’ (The Problem of Poverty). Market mechanisms… are not sufficient to contain the effects of sin on the workplace and are in fact themselves corroded by sin.

Dialoguing with Terrorists and Liberals

Oct 1, 2004

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Dialoguing with Terrorists and Liberals

Imagine, if you will, a café somewhere between Amsterdam and Cairo circa 1964… two men sit, oblivious to their surroundings, engaged in a frank discussion about how to structure a society so that it reflects the will of God in all its particulars. Let’s call those men Herman and Sayyid, Herman Dooyeweerd and Sayyid Qutb.

Oct 1, 2004

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A Call for Thought Police

The church needs more well-trained Christians, clergy and lay, who are willing to play the role of doctrine cop in a way that protects the church from errant ideas that may cause greater long-term harm to the church even as they seem to be practically helpful. The church needs doctrine cops who don’t mind being theological thought police.

Sep 1, 2004

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Collective Representation: A Conservative Defense

For eleven years, when asked my occupation I responded “Union Representative.” This usually made my conservative political friends and business acquaintances squirm uncomfortably. They knew me well enough to know I advocated a different type of labour relations than the stereotypical adversarial relations that are associated with contemporary unionism.

Sep 1, 2004

Turning dollars into dignity: Teaching a small town how to trade

The connection between fair trade, as a response to the excesses of global capitalism, and the Christian faith is natural, given a solid theology of work and the imperative to open our ears to the cries of the poor. In today’s global political and economic climate, individual disadvantages result from worldwide structures of trade.

Sep 1, 2004

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Westernization or clash of civilizations?

As the Cold War was coming to an end in 1989, Francis Fukuyama, then an official with the US State Department, published a ground-breaking article, “The End of History”. Fukuyama’s thesis is only the most recent manifestation of the general belief that history not only has a purposeful character, but at some point will reach its final consummation, a notion owing much to Christian eschatology, albeit in secularized form.

Sep 1, 2004

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Life’s Big Questions: What’s Wrong with the World?

One of the most popular questions I have come across on campus from both struggling Christians and skeptical non-Christians is why does a good and all-powerful God allow so much evil and suffering in the world? The very fact that the question is posed shows the almost universal consensus that something is very wrong with the world and that evil and suffering is somehow not the way it is supposed to be.