Research Fellow Geoff Ryan is featured on Listen Up TV as a guest speaker on urban poverty. Watch his commentary here.

Theos publishes Senior Fellow Jonathan Chaplin on Talking God: The Legitimacy of Religious Public Reasoning launched June 23, 2009 in the British House of Commons. Download Report

Stanley Carlson-Thies, "Faith-Based Initiative 2.0: The Bush Faith-Based and Community Initiative," (download PDF) Harvard J. of Law and Public Policy (Summer 2009).Read more about Stanley's work with the Institutional Religious Freedom Alliance.

The question: Can religion save the world?The debate about whether "religion" or "secularism" stands the best chance of alleviating 21st-century political conflicts will continue to be mired in debilitating confusion unless we are clear what people mean when they speak of a "secular state" (or a "secular international order").First, a state may be called secular if it is officially committed to a secularist faith such as atheism or materialism or secular humanism and to propagating it through state action. This is "militant secularism", the kind witnessed under Communism. Second, a state may be deemed secular if, while upholding private religious liberty, it strives to keep the influence of religious faith out of public debate and public institutions. This is "exclusive secularism", the variety defended by the National Secular Society. Third, a state may be termed secular if it refrains from officially endorsing any one religious creed, adopting a stance of impartiality towards all. This is "impartial secularism"; it flows out of the logic of religious toleration. Fourth, a state may be thought of as secular if it refrains from officially offering religious justifications for its laws or policies, presenting to the public only "public good arguments". This is "justificatory secularism". While impartial secularism is a matter of what the state does (or refrains from doing) towards religious citizens, justificatory secularism is a matter of how it speaks about what it does. My central proposition is that religion stands the best chance of mitigating political conflict if it embraces the latter two meanings of a secular state and a secular international political order. Above all, religion should support impartial secularism, urging the state to grant effective equal legal standing to all (law-abiding) religions within its realm. The suppression of religious freedom will continue to be a chief cause of violent political conflict in the century ahead, and those states that engage in it, notably officially Islamic states, must face ceaseless pressure from defenders of impartial secularism everywhere. Impartial secularism can exist without justificatory secularism, and departures from the latter are less inherently politically divisive than breaches of the former. But where states officially invoke religious justifications for their actions they risk alienating those of their citizens who cannot endorse such justifications. Justificatory secularism on the part of the state can engender a sense of equal respect among all citizens and so help pre-empt or ease religiously-based political divisions. But it is essential to insist that justificatory secularism does not imply exclusive secularism. For states and state officials to refrain from officially invoking religious arguments in support of state actions is entirely compatible with protecting an extensive and intensive contribution from religious faith to public debate both outside and inside parliaments, right up to the point of the official announcement of a policy decision. While we should call upon states to respect justificatory secularism, we cannot impose a similar restraint on the justifying reasons advanced by citizens or their elected representatives. That would have silenced Desmond Tutu in his campaign against apartheid. Allowing freer reign for religious expression may make democratic debate more turbulent. It may make secularist and religious believers uncomfortable. It will certainly require everyone to bone up on the religious (or secularist) beliefs of those they find themselves debating with. Tony Blair's attempt to create greater religious awareness among school children thus seems eminently sensible and NSS's opposition to it leaves me scratching my head since I thought it favoured banishing ignorance. It is a chief error of many secularist believers to suppose that impartial secularism implies exclusive secularism, that the state cannot treat religions equally unless public policy debates are secularised. This is both a prejudicial and a dangerous error. Its consequence is the marginalisation of those citizens for whom religious faith is both the deepest and the most comprehensive source of normative guidance. Exclusive secularism is therefore both illiberal and anti-democratic and is guaranteed to fuel existing religious tensions or evoke latent ones. The track record of conflict-resolution through imposed public secularism is, to say the least, unimpressive, as the case of Turkey makes clear. Religion will neither be the dominant source of 21st-century political conflicts nor the unique solution to them. But religions, and political orders, which embrace impartial and justificatory secularism while rejecting militant and exclusive secularism may be well placed to help mitigate them.

Thirty years ago, buying advertising was easy. You purchased an ad in the local newspaper, maybe one in a magazine and on TV and, shazam!, people showed up at your store or auto dealership and bought your stuff.You made money, the media made money and people got the information and product information they needed. When it came to finding a car, a place to live or a job, there was really only one place to go, the classified advertising department of your local newspaper. In those days, people subscribed to newspapers the way they today subscribe to cable. Virtually everybody did it. Enormous, responsive audiences were guaranteed. It was not unusual for newspapers to have a 'read yesterday' rating of 70 per cent or better. The first big shift came when local TV newscasts became so powerful that hundreds of afternoon newspapers across North America moved to morning delivery or died. But the business was still good, so good, in fact, that everybody wanted a piece of it and, even before the Internet, media began to fragment. For many newspapers which over the course of a century or more had enjoyed virtual monopoly status this meant learning to compete and being more responsive to audiences and advertisers. Community relations departments became marketing departments, for instance, as operators learned they had to actually sell their products and value to the community. Some did it well, some did it poorly. But they all continued to do just fine until the green sprouts of the technology age matured almost overnight into the solid oak of the Internet and the single audience and advertising platform that print once represented was blown apart. Breaking news, formerly the sole preserve of print, could now be delivered on demand to people's desktops and Black- Berry smartphones. Heck, you can read it on screens in office tower elevators. Newspapers had two options. One was to adapt to their new role as carriers of commentary, context and analysis of news to distinguish themselves online and the other was to continue to do what they had always done in terms of product creation, assuming that they could just transfer it to the online world. Recognizing that what was most at risk was the lucrative gold mine of classified advertising, papers also launched their own online products to make sure they retrieved at least a portion of the lost, help wanted, rentals and auto advertising. Still, the toll was inescapable. What was once unimaginable is now taking place and, particularly in the U.S., newspapers are dying. For business people who have relied on print to deliver their product information, this is an enormously confusing dilemma. The once simple task of placing an ad and waiting for the phone to ring or the line to form is now a complex weave of picking and choosing between print, broadcast and online deliveries too numerous to mention. But should you abandon print as so many are saying? As a former newspaper executive my answer is: no, I don't think so. Diminished as they are, newspapers can still build audiences bigger than most as a single buy. Readership declines have more or less stabilized over the past eight years and while newsrooms are shadows of their former selves, they are still much larger than those elsewhere. Most of all, while new media has proven to be unstoppable in certain advertising categories, it has yet to prove its effectiveness when it comes to selling retail products. Yes, many newspapers will die. The herd will be culled. The ones that survive will not be those that deliver what is essentially a print version of their online news capacity to people's doorsteps. Quite the opposite: people don't just need news, which can now be delivered on hundreds of different platforms. They need context, meaning and explanation. Newspapers that recognize this evolutionary opportunity and invest in it may never be the bastions of profitability they once were. But under the appropriate structure they can retain and build the audiences they need to survive as solid businesses and serve their communities. It might be the end of the day, but it's way too early to pull the plug on print.

The City of Calgary's Centre City project is one of the most dynamic urban planning documents I've read in a long time.It defines the heart of one of North America's great cities; one of the world's cleanest cities and Canada's emerging centre of economic and cultural influence. It clearly outlines the future infrastructure of a downtown core that is, in its own words, "a livable, caring and thriving place within a first-class urban living environment and a national and global centre of business." Economic, social, cultural and environmental sustainability is a core objective for a plan that in the short run will see 25,000 additional people living in the newly defined city centre, while in the longer term as many as 70,000 people will settle in the area that for many years has been the hole in Calgary's residential doughnut. Last fall, having completed our Toronto the Good project, we at Cardus used the Centre City initiative as the foundation for the beginning of our examination of Calgary's social architecture and how it is expressed through the urban planning process. What we came across was what could be a rather unique omission. Within all of the plan's detailed and admirable initiatives, there is no mention of or accommodation for new institutions of faith. Yes, there are a great many existing faith institutions in the downtown area and some such as the old Wesley United Church have become secular institutions such as the Arata Opera Centre. So we know there is some existing capacity to serve the social and spiritual needs of the population influx the Centre City plan will inspire. But we also know intuitively that existing infrastructure represents a different Calgary than the one that exists today. There are no mosques or temples within the Centre City, which means that while there is some existing Christian and Jewish infrastructure downtown, Muslims, Sikhs, Hindus and other members of Calgary's multicultural mosaic must travel to the suburbs or fringes of the city to pray and engage with other members of their faith community. If existing capacity is not sufficient to meet their needs, the same will be the case for Christians and Jews. Institutions of faith belong at the centre of cities and not physically and metaphorically on their fringes. These are places of community care and emotional healing. They can and are used for girl guide and boy scout meetings, day cares, seniors centres, AA meetings, choirs, concerts and more. One in three Calgarians attends worship at least once a month and each imam, rabbi, priest and pastor has at his or her fingertips the names, phone numbers and e-mail addresses of hundreds if not thousands of good-hearted citizens ready to step up and volunteer in the event of disaster. When all the hotels were full and all those people were stranded at Calgary airport on 9/11, it was the airport chaplain's office that triggered the calls that opened up homes and found people in distress a safe place to stay. Last month, Cardus outlined its plan for a next step in addressing this issue by gathering 50 community stakeholders, including several aldermen (who have been very supportive) at the Ranchmen's Club. Our proposal is to conduct an audit of the Centre City's existing faith infrastructure and report back on its capacity to serve the needs of the additional tens of thousands of Calgarians who will be moving to its core. And, as we work with funders, we will also propose innovations to meet needs that are identified. Current parking bylaws, for instance, make zoning for institutions of faith problematic. In fact, if the current parking bylaw had been in effect during the past and previous centuries there wouldn't be any churches at all in Calgary's core. But that doesn't mean a project as innovative as the Centre City plan couldn't create space, for instance, for churches built right into condominium buildings, or mosques within the plus-15 network or even shared-space venues available for Muslim worship on Fridays, Jewish Sabbath on Saturdays and Christian worship on Sundays. Whether you care about faith or even have one is not the point. The good work that is done by these institutions is vital to sustaining any community's social capital. Centre City may give Calgary a new heart. It's important that it also cares for its soul.

Cardus is announcing a new research initiative to Build Capacity in Canada's Charitable SectorThe project aims to stimulate the civic core and strengthen the so-called "third sector", a progressively critical industry in times of economic decline. Browse the research proposal below, or click here to download the PDF.

Cardus warmly congratulates Senior Fellow, and Comment Editor Gideon Strauss on his appointment as the new President of the Center for Public Justice, in Washington.Gideon will continue to serve as Editor and Senior Fellow with Cardus, but from a somewhat greater distance. We congratulate both Gideon and the Center on an excellent new appointment!To read CPJ's news announcement click here.

Not so long ago I was listening to a chat show on the topic of the rights of children seeking the identities of their official sperm donor fathers and vice versa. I was struck by the commentary of one of the participants, who explained why those children have no such rights because the entire notion of affiliation to a biological father belongs to an outdated set of ethics that, blessedly, are no longer accepted or applied. He was correct in that no one has a legal 'right' to know who their father is. Heaven knows paternity is a secret a lot of women have taken to their graves throughout history and a great many men have certainly casually donated sperm, sometimes even while sober, and with it, their fatherhood over the years never to be heard from again. There is no mention of this sort of issue constitutionally so there is no 'right' allotted to people seeking this knowledge. But there is, or at least there was, a generally acknowledged moral standard in society that insisted men take responsibility for their donations, drunk, sober, married, or otherwise. If it no longer exists, and it very well might not, I missed the public debate that concluded the old rule need not apply. I remember my father drilling this apparently passe notion in to me when I was a teenager. Have sex, he said, and the girl will probably get pregnant which means you will then have to quit school, get a job, marry her and regret it for the rest of your something or other life. At the time, there appeared to be no other option because growing up in the 20th Century as I did, there was still this insistence that people should be responsible for their own actions. Nevertheless and accurate or otherwise, my father's words inspired the intended level of terror and had a considerable mitigating impact. I suppose the change began with the "if it feels good, do it" and "if you can't be with the one you love, love the one you're with" philosophy of the 1960s (it is remarkable how much of the political philosophies developed by the young men leading the hippy revolution tended to serve their needs). And then of course there was Murphy Brown, the TV show character played by Candice Bergen who decided she would parent a child on her own as an expression of her rugged feminist independence. Vice-presidential candidate Dan Quayle became somewhat notorious and was generally mocked in mainstream media for criticizing this as an inappropriate role model during the 1992 election. The show's producers were inspired to fight back with a series celebrating the diversity of family structures. Maybe that's when the debate took place because, come to think of it, that's about the time more women began to give up on the idea of finding a husband and fast-forward straight to motherhood thanks to sperm banks. Certainly the banks served the mother's need to become a mother. And I suppose they helped a lot of young men pay their way through college or buy some beer. There is no question either that women who chose to become mothers through artificial insemination are generally wonderful mothers, perhaps even better than most. But they are not fathers. In 2002, Candice Bergen, the actor who played Murphy Brown, said she agreed with Quayle. Bergen called Quayle's notorious talk "a perfectly intelligent speech about fathers not being dispensable," adding that "nobody agreed with that more than I did." In France, a government study on marriage recognized that while adults have freedoms, children have rights and that the government should not "systematically give preference to adult aspirations over respect for [children's] rights." All of this can and no doubt will be debated for decades. But despite all the changes in mores, laws and biotechnology, the most compelling argument in favour of dual obligations of parents to their children comes from children themselves. One of the very first questions each of us asks as we emerge as sentient beings is this: "Mommy. Where did I come from?" And one of the earliest questions asked by children with mothers only is:"Mommy. Why don't I have a daddy?" Those are questions that need to have answers and they need to be the truth.