In Conversation with David Goa

I am joined by Victor Carpay in this podcast. I never had the pleasure of having Victor in one of the classes I was privileged to teach. We talked periodically in the atrium of Newman, and I glimpsed how the study of the great books, the Socratic method, the Newman community, and the liturgical life were at work in nurturing his mind and heart. Victor is likely the most precocious businessman I ha...

I am joined by Jacqueline Richard in this podcast. I had a lovely afternoon several years ago reading T.S. Eliot’s Four Quartets with Jacqueline and her now husband Reid. On that occasion she talked about her father’s love of the poem and his visit to Little Gidding, an intentional Anglican community of work and prayer, established in the seventeenth century by Nicholas Ferrar and his mother Mary...

I am joined by Anna Sidloski in this podcast. Anna grew up in Saskatchewan, was largely home school within an intentional community that formed the love of learning and the desire for God. How this community of learners was shaped is richly described by Anna. Its gifts and the ground superbly prepared her for what unfolded in her years with the great books at Newman Theological College. The first...

I am joined by Andre Boudreau in this podcast. Andre grew up in Calgary and attended the junior seminary of Christ the King for grades 9 through 12.  This junior seminary is part of Westminster Abby in Mission British Columbia. The Abby is a Benedictine foundation formed in 1939 from the Abby Mount Angel in Oregon. Andrea entered Saint Joseph’s Seminary under the auspicious of the Bishop of Calgar...

Every day I met with these students and their collogues was a delight. Every day as I left the campus, I marveled at what seemed to be unfolding. Students were dwelling in and with great literature. They were accompanying seminal thinkers from Plato to Pope Benedict XVI exploring the good, the true, and the beautiful. The transformation taking place in each student was palpable. The love of learni...

Our conversation begins with the history that led to the commissioning of the icon. We then explore the landscape of meaning associated with such icons in the ancient world, their invocation for the protection of cities, churches and monasteries. We talk about Canada and the way he, through his long ministry, hassought to deepen the presence of Orthodoxy in “our Canadian land and Canadian people”...

An aspect of Todd’s ministry is embedded in the title of a newsletter he anchors with the provocative title, Evangelically Departed. For the last decade or so, Todd has engaged many and varied evangelicals. Some have departed the church they spent many years attending. Some have raw wounds from their experience in evangelical churches. Many who have sought him out have been seeking to deepen their...

Eden grew up in the bosom of a Mennonite community. Belonging was woven into her childhood. Her mother and other women were leaders within the church. She treasured the piety and pacifism of the church and its politics of caring both for its own and for others. She attended Briercrest Bible College from 1982-1986, met her husband Brad at the College, and, after settling back into the Frazer Valley...

I met Bishop Sjoberg in the late 1970s when he was President of the Western Canada Synod. I was developing the Spiritual Life Sacred Ritual gallery at the Provincial Museum and sought him out for conversation on Lutheran worship. Our conversation ranged widely and I learned about various Lutheran initiatives including work between the ELCIC and the Lutheran Church Canada - Missouri Synod to produc...

My conversation with Calum began during his undergraduate studies. We talked about his interests in the political life of a number of countries, on international relations and issues of human rights as both a civil gift and a challenge for some cultural communities. We have also talked about the difficult issues often found in the public square and how we might deepen public understanding across t...

My conversation with Calum began during his undergraduate studies. We talked about his interests in the political life of a number of countries, on international relations and issues of human rights as both a civil gift and a challenge for some cultural communities. We have also talked about the difficult issues often found in the public square and how we might deepen public understanding across t...

My conversation with Calum began during his undergraduate studies. We talked about his interests in the political life of a number of countries, on international relations and issues of human rights as both a civil gift and a challenge for some cultural communities. We have also talked about the difficult issues often found in the public square and how we might deepen public understanding across t...

We first met a number of years ago when I was curating the international exhibition Anno Domini, Jesus Through the Centuries for the year 2000. I discovered, quite by happenstance, that the marvelous hand-woven tapestry Suffer Little Children to Come unto Me by the artist Edward Burne-Jones (1833-1998) was the property of the Church of Saint Andrew and Saint Paul in Montreal. Richard Topping was t...

Mikel Laurie is pastor of the Highlands Baptist Church in Edmonton. He previously served a United Church. His move from a progressive form of Protestantism to and evangelical church is of particular interest for our conversations on the Ekklesia.   Our conversation moves from his initial work in the United Church, his studies at Regent College, the Vancouver School of Theology and Trinity Western...

I have had the pleasure over the last decade or so of thinking with Ray Sawatsky about religion and culture. I am delighted to talk with him in this series of conversations on the Ekklesia. He is an astute commenter on the entanglement between a number of political interests and evangelical church leaders. How have these entanglements shaped his generation’s growing unease and distance from the ch...

Pastor Ingrid grew up in post-war Germany and navigated the trauma of the war’s shadow. She discusses the habit of taking refuge in church doctrine as a way of avoiding the responsibility for what unfolded in Germany; the church as a gathering of family and friends, of the like-minded, while teaching engagement with strangers; a church “turned inwards”. She speaks of the gifts she was given by the...

Jacques Maritain was raised a protestant in France initially studying science at the Sorbonne in Paris. He became disillusioned with the perspective of scientism that dominate the academy. Attending the lectures of Henri Bergson whose work highlighted the place of intuition and sympathy Maritain and his wife Raissa Oumansoff, a Russian Jew, set upon a new path which led to their entering the Roman...

Our conversation begins with a brief reflection on Augustine, Aquinas and Luther with Augustine highlighted as the one who opens the gate in a post-Christian world. Ryan Topping’s early formation was within a Mennonite community he continues to treasure in his heart. A period of time followed in and shaping an intentional community with a common purse and common work and with the good fortune of s...

As a child Lorraine sat on her uncle’s knee watching the television series MASH and eating vanilla ice cream flavored with creme de menthe. Her parents, one Scottish Presbyterian and one Irish Catholic, regularly invited their respected clergy over for dinner and hospitable conversation across religious lines. Not surprising she grew up with an interest in the depth of the Christian spiritual trad...

Steve grew up on the Westside of Chicago. He received a football scholarship to Notre Dame and has a stellar journalistic record. A small intimate storefront church was central to his formation and, in more recent years, he has engaged the gifts of the Orthodox Church that, of course, has deep roots in African and the Levant long before it migrated to Europe. Our conversation begins with his famil...

Central to Professor Ferrin’s perspective is how he understands Islamic civilization (to be distinguished form Islamic Empire) and the recent development of Islamism. Put another way: how has it come about that “religionism” and a curious kind of nationalism have come to be wedded in the mind and heart of some forming a new identity claiming to be that of a “pure Islam”? In the Quran it says that...

David combines, as few do, superb legal analysis with equally superb theological thinking. When Karl Bath, who stands alongside the Apostle Paul, Maximus the Confessor, Aquinas, and Calvin, came to America in 1962 he met William Stringfellow. Stingfellow was a lawyer like Calvin and David. Barth said Stringfellow was the finest theological mind in America. If the great theologian were to come toda...

I grew up listening to conversation on Christian Zionism. This idea developed after the Reformation, received clear articulation in seventieth century England, flourished in the 1840s and has continued down to our own day anchoring much of the support for the policy of the Israeli government among North American evangelicals and others. Christian Zionists believe that the gathering of Jews in Isra...

David Brooks, one of America’s fine public intellectuals in his recent book The Second Mountain, quotes C.S. Lewis. I remember reading Lewis’ comment years ago and was delighted to have it brought to mind. “The load, or weight, or burden of my neighbor’s glory should be laid daily on my back, a load so heavy that only humility can carry it, and the backs of the proud will be broken.” In preparing...

Some years ago I hosted Norton in Edmonton for several lectures on the demanding geo-political issues that so often frame our understanding of Israel/Palestine. We also traveled and lectured in Syria and Turkey and engaged colleagues in the Muslim community. Norton is a considerable critic of Israeli political policy toward the Palestinians. This has often garnered the ire of supporters of the Gov...