Senior Fellow Jonathan Chaplin, Director of KLICE, publishes God and Government with Nick Spencer of Theos. Featuring a top collection of essays including Bishop N.T. Wright and a Foreword by Archbishop Rowan Williams, Cardus calls this "must reading" for folks thinking about religion and politics. 

"A Canadian Culture of Generosity: Renewing Canada's Social Architecture by Investing in the Civic Core and the Third Sector", is a Cardus discussion paper looking at a strategic response to flagging volunteerism, philanthropy and civic participation.Order a copy here.  

Mike Goheen and Erin Glanville (eds) release The Gospel and Globalization, featuring chapters by Senior Fellows Jonathan Chaplin, Paul Williams and Cardus Researcher Robert Joustra.More on the book...   

Cardus opened its new head office in Hamilton, on 185 Young Street with ceremony and style on September 2. Visit us at our new Hamilton location in the coming weeks, and stop in for a coffee and a chat. Or - check out some the photo gallery from our event on Facebook - no account required!    Finally, coming soon browse some candid video from the night and get a feel for the new space, what it is we're up to and the folks that make it happen.

The passage of time and the progress of cultural development continue to make positive changes in society, but surely Canadians are saddened by the process that has put the existence of Alberta's Hutterite colonies at risk. To those who don't know, the Alberta government recently won a Supreme Court of Canada decision upholding its right to insist that in order to have a valid driver's licence, the holders thereof must have their photograph attached to it. On the face of it, this is not unreasonable: People need to be identified, and driving is a privilege and not a right. Or, as Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin wrote in support of the majority in the 4-3 decision, "the negative impact on the freedom of religion of colony members who wish to obtain licences does not outweigh the benefits associated with the universal photo requirement." The problem is that the photo requirement offends a Hutterian tenet of faith that for some forbids having their photograph willingly taken. The act is interpreted as the creation of a 'graven image,' which violates the Bible's Second Commandment forbidding idolatry. Relevant to this and the end of their exempt status is that on a great many of the colonies within Alberta, Hutterites allow photography, provided that it is candid. The act of photography itself does not violate their piety; it is the act of posing that some consider sinful. Other people, obviously most of us, hold different views. Until now, Alberta Hutterites, a passive, communal people, have been free to hold licences without having to have their photo taken. Now, some colonies are faced with the decision to either abandon driving or to sell the land they have so faithfully stewarded these past hundred or more years and move to a place where their faith can comfortably co-exist with secular society, essentially the same broad issue that caused their forefathers to flee Russia for North America in the late 19th century. Alberta told the Supreme Court that the primary reasons for the regulation are the enhancement of security, additional efficiency for the police and possible future harmonization of licensing. But surely the main objective is to ensure that people are properly identified and not whether or not they have their pictures taken. After all, people can, through perfectly routine practices such as changes in hairstyle, growth or removal of facial hair and weight gain and loss, appear considerably different in a photo than they do in reality. So why not simply give the Hutterites (and others with a similarly proven conscientious objection) the option of identifying themselves on their licences through other means? A thumbprint, for instance, provides more accurate identification than a photograph. Police have the technological capacity to access licences on file and they have the technology to test them for matches. Even if the process of identification in such instances takes extra time, the added inconvenience to the Hutterites (really, how many times have you seen flashing lights in hot pursuit of Hutterites on the lam?) seems a reasonable compromise. Indeed, as Madam Justice Rosalie Abella wrote in dissent, fewer than 250 drivers were exempted, the previous system operated without incident for 29 years and there is no harmonized licensing system in place. "The government has not discharged its evidentiary burden or demonstrated that the salutary effects in these circumstances are anything more than a web of speculation." She goes on to say: "To suggest, as the majority does, that the deleterious effects are minor because the colony members could simply arrange for third-party transportation fails to appreciate the significance of their self-sufficiency to the autonomous integrity of their religious community. When significant sacrifices have to be made to practise one's religion in the face of a state-imposed burden, the choice to practise one's religion is no longer uncoerced. Canada has a long tradition of welcoming people of different backgrounds and encouraging them to feel free to maintain their traditions. Excellent farmers and kind, peaceful people, the Hutterites are a rich part of Alberta. Yes, there are boundaries to cultural practices that may be accepted elsewhere but are unacceptable here. But if there has been one positive identifier in Canada's culture, it is that we are a reasonable people who respect each other's beliefs. Reasonable people should be able to accommodate the rich Hutterite tradition of peacefully farming Alberta's rich soil.

Melinda Estabrooks Interviews CEO of AIC and Cardus Senior Fellow Jonathan Wellum on Listen Up TV.

Thirty years and a month ago I began my career in journalism as a summer intern at the Cowichan News in Duncan, B.C. For now, it ends. Yes, my appointment last month as Alberta and Northwest Territories CRTC commissioner has a lot to do with it. But the truth is that I really don't have anything left to say in this genre. I have had most of the arguments, very publicly. I've won a few and I've lost most of those that really mattered to me, at least for now. I have had the opportunity to cover some amazing events, such as during my tenure in sports at the Calgary Sun, the World Cup in Mexico in 1986, (I will never forget Luis Fernandez of France, following 90 minutes of play at 7,000 ft. in 40oC temperatures, meeting with the media while sipping a glass of wine and lighting a smoke), the Olympic Winter Games in 1988 and Stanley Cup finals in 1986 and 1989. In my news life I saw the Klein Revolution first hand at the legislature in the days when Jim Dinning would rise in question period and respond to the latest plea for funding by saying, "Mr. Speaker, No" and then sit back down. I saw the rise of the Bloc and Reform and sat, fascinated, in the Parliamentary Press Gallery in Ottawa while the results of the 1995 referendum of Quebec sovereignty rolled in. I won a National Newspaper Award and was honoured by the Association of Opinion Page Editors for my skills as an essayist. Over the years at the Calgary Herald as editorial page editor, editor in chief and publisher I met prime ministers, presidents, premiers, royalty, philosophers, playwrights, theologians, authors, state and territorial leaders from across North America and beyond. On Sept. 11, 2001 we published the first Extra Edition of the Calgary Herald since Wandering Spirit, angered by broken promises and the loss of the buffalo, engineered the Northwest Rebellion's Frog Lake Massacre in 1885. I worked for and with some larger-than-life characters, revered and vanquished, such as Conrad Black and Izzy Asper. I have made many friends and learned that not everyone who is friendly is a friend. I have seen power and I have felt it. It was wonderful. It was everything, and much, much more, that I dreamed of when I embarked on the adventure 30 years ago banging out stories on a typewriter in that little building on Vancouver Island. But I have also learned that there is a rich, full life beyond the narrow spectrum of that world. My wife and I have raised two of the finest, most beautiful young people you can imagine. We have volunteered for charities, sports and the arts; this city has been good to us and over the past 26 years here we have tried to be more than mere Buffalo Hunters who only take from this land and leave nothing to sustain it. I have learned that the world changes not through media's obsession with 'events' but through the incremental impact of ideas and the vast mysteries of faith or the lack thereof. I am still trying to change and articulate the world and its meaning while understanding that in these matters reasonable people of good faith may always disagree. I am not a great writer, but I am pretty good at it. Two years ago, as a senior fellow with the Cardus think-tank, I was invited to spend a week in the New Mexico desert with artists, poets and authors contemplating Islam, Judaism and Christianity through the prism of art. It reminded me of the dreams of a long-haired and bearded young man ill-prepared for the world's realities, petrified by his own potential for failure and uncertain of his considerable capacity for success. That is the world where my writing now belongs; where it is called to go. It is the world beyond cops, courts, commerce and politics where writing touches people's hearts and tweaks their souls. It is about beauty and a refuge from the otherwise concise life of a regulator charged with overseeing the nation's ability to reflect its culture. It is there. But it is not here. And so it is time to go.

This was the intellectual epicentre of events that has led to 89-year-old John Demjanjuk being charged as an accessory to 27,900 of the murders committed at the Sobibor death camp more than 65 years ago. The native of Ukraine who spent most of his life as a U. S. autoworker will likely be tried in a society that remains in the process of confessing and asking forgiveness for that horrific period of its life. The images of those horrors linger openly in Berlin's Topography of Terror where visitors view graphic photos of executions that took place before nonchalant crowds of onlookers--some with unexplainable smirks on their faces. It is testament to carefully planned and meticulously choreographed evil. There is something profound about being on the sites where these things happened and seeing where the bullets of Hitler's Third Reich still mark the stones. The Holocaust Memorial overwhelms the senses. The stones, by design, seem to go on forever and give meaning to the enormity of the Holocaust's body count of six million. Here, over the course of a single generation, a culture went mad and unleashed the largest, most costly war in human history. Here, one culture proudly and efficiently tried to eradicate another. Here, we see the consequences of ideas. It is neither the only nor the most recent place where one culture, race or tribe has launched a genocidal attack against another. Germany's lessons were forgotten in Bosnia and have been repeated elsewhere, most notably Rwanda. As a Christian I have a theological category to assist me in understanding what happened here. But I remain challenged. The depth of the depravity among the masses that participated in it is inescapable. For this was not--and could not have been--the outcome of a conspiracy of a few. What happened here revealed, and continues to illustrate, the depths to which the human project can sink. Rationally, we can separate ourselves from Hitler and his henchmen. But no one can reasonably believe that the bulk of the people involved were made of anything different than the rest of us. Or, as the late political philosopher Hannah Arendt put it: "The trouble with (Adolph) Eichmann (architect of the "final solution") was precisely that so many were like him, and that the many were neither perverted nor sadistic, that they were, and still are, terribly and terrifyingly normal. From the viewpoint of our legal institutions and of our moral standards of judgment, this normality was much more terrifying than all the atrocities put together." Redemption is a huge topic, with lots attached to it. A brief visit to this city does not give one the right to judge it. The apparent absence of enthusiastic places of worship is troubling, but on a macro level Germans lead the world in their honesty in confronting their past by telling their stories to others and, in the process, constantly reminding themselves. The Demjanjuk trial may be necessary for justice; it is not required as a reminder. The stones and memorials here confess a communal sin and seek forgiveness. Because if a city can, to use the sort of evangelical terminology that makes so many uncomfortable, be "born again," this is it. Seven Jewish synagogues are now active here. The boulevards and cafes seem vibrant and there is an excitement connected with Berlin's determination to move on and rather than being known as the epicentre of evil be a model instead for the lesson that Hitler denied--our humanity is not based on racial heritage. That, at least, is the Christian point of view: that all people are created in the image of God and all are equal. That also means that the same capacity for evil that was revealed here in Berlin lives inside of each of us. This is the truth, brilliantly articulated by Fyodor Dostoevsky in The Brothers Karamazov, that in the "freedom" humans seek, we are capable of things of which we would prefer not to speak. But Berlin, as the rest of the world, still exists. The unspeakable has been overcome, and the only seemingly rational explanation comes not from within, but without. To find hope in such a place, one must look beyond the monuments and place this story in the context of a larger one. History has a purpose, a truth which seems spoken very loudly amid the haunting silence of the monuments of Berlin.

Canada is entering its sixth year of leadership under the minority governments of, consecutively, Paul Martin's Liberals and Stephen Harper's Conservatives. If the most recent polls and punditry is to be believed, even another election in the fall (the fourth in five and a half years) is unlikely to change that. The first reason for this is widely accepted: The reconciliation of Canadian conservatives following the fissure of the 1990s between the Reform Party and the Progressive Conservatives has created a powerful single force. While its permanence, given history, is not to be taken for granted, its bond appears firmly fixed. Despite governing in the midst of the nation's worst recession in more than a generation, the Conservative Party of Canada's standing in the polls remains little different if not better today than a year ago. Under the fresh leadership of Michael Ignatieff, the Liberal party has rediscovered its traditional base in Quebec and once again is a strong candidate for power in the fall. But neither the Conservatives nor the Liberals, who between them represent the inclinations of 70% or more of Canadians, are likely to achieve a majority. The largest single reason for this is the enormous campaign advantage the Bloc Quebecois and its leader, Gilles Duceppe, enjoy due to the party's narrow ambitions and the public funding of campaigns. The Liberals, Jack Layton's NDP, Elizabeth May's Green Party and the Tories must deploy campaign efforts strategically to spend the most amount of time in areas of the greatest opportunities and threats. The Conservatives, for instance, need not spend as much time in Alberta and Saskatchewan where their seats are relatively safe, but must keep a high presence in Vancouver, southern Ontario, Quebec and the Maritimes where threats and opportunities abound. Layton also has seats in Atlantic Canada he has to defend and seek, as w ell as Montreal, Toronto, various areas of Ontario and all across the West. Ditto for Ignatieff. In fact, the Conservatives have seats in nine of the 10 provinces and one territory, as do the Liberals, while the NDP is close behind with MPs from eight provinces and one territory. All of Duceppe's eggs are in one convenient basket, making his task much simpler. The enormous northern ridings of Abitibi-Temiscamingue and Manicouagan are Bloc strongholds. Other ridings in eastern Quebec are also safe, which allows Duceppe to focus on contentious ridings. When the risks and opportunities are broken down, he only needs to focus on about 24 ridings and while other leaders are flying coast to coast, the Bloc leader sleeps at home. Then there's the media advantage. Duceppe's constituency is almost entirely francophone, which means he can target advertising primarily through Quebec francophone networks where advertising rates are less expensive than national buys. Because he is able to spend all his time in one province, the Bloc leader is guaranteed prominent if not dominant play on Quebec's election newscasts and front pages. His image and messages appear more frequently while, unburdened by a record of governance, he is free to attack and diminish others without having to worry about effective and repetitive counterpoints or defensive strategies. No such luxuries are afforded leaders of national parties whose supporters must simmer in the knowledge the Bloc finances campaigns entirely through the federal funding for political parties, leaving private sources to its ideological confreres in the Parti Quebecois. Absent an unlikely change in the funding structure, little will change until 2014 when, due to population shifts, B.C. will get seven more MPs, Alberta five and Ontario 20. Were those in play in the 2008 election, for instance, the Conservatives might have 18 more seats, the Liberals eight more and the NDP six more. The Conservatives might still have been shy of a majority in a 340-seat House of Commons but in the future a majority will be much more within reach as Quebec's electoral value declines in proportion to the rest of the country. Significantly, B.C., with 43, and Alberta, with 33, will have a combined total of 76 MPs, one more than Quebec's 75, which due to stagnant population levels will not increase. Then and in all likelihood only then will the Bloc Quebecois,s stranglehold on Canada,s politics be released.