Issues, ethics, memory
I sat in the upper room of a rundown Ottawa pub on a rainy evening last week reminiscing with a dozen others about recently-deceased Saskatchewan poet Andrew Suknaski and reading short excerpts from his work. Earlier there had been a similar gathering in Montreal, far from the small prairie city of Moose Jaw where Andy... Continue Reading →
In October 2011, the leaders of about 30 faith communities met in Ottawa to talk about the urgent need to take a stand on climate change as a moral issue. These deliberations were organized by the Commission on Justice and Peace of the Canadian Council of Churches. The faith leaders crafted and released an interfaith... Continue Reading →
Rev. Bill Blaikie stands tall in the annals of Canadian parliamentarians and it is not only his imposing physical presence that sets him apart.
A note posted on the Evangelical Fellowship of Canada website says that Father Raymond De Souza will be the featured speaker at the National Prayer Breakfast in Ottawa on May 1. Hundreds of MPs, Senators, judges of the Supreme Court, Parliament Hill staff and invited members of the public attend the annual event. The EFC... Continue Reading →
I was thinking over the Easter weekend of Father Bob Ogle, my late friend and political mentor. It was in April 1998 that he died at age 69 after more than a decade of serious illness. I wrote a brief piece about him for the Lives Lived section of the Globe and Mail and the... Continue Reading →
My recent book book Pulpit and Politics has been reviewed in the Clarion Journal of Spirituality and Justice, an on line publication. The reviewer is Ron Dart, a professor in the Department of Philosophy & Politics at the University of the Fraser Valley in Abbotsford, B.C. You will see that he recommends the book and is pleased that it... Continue Reading →
I was interviewed about my book Pulpit and Politics by two CBC Radio hosts in early January 2012. Michael Enright, host of CBC Radio’s The Sunday Edition talked with former MP Bill Blaikie and me on New Year’s Day. Then on January 7, Wojtek Gwiazda, host of the Radio Canada International's Masala Canada, interviewed me... Continue Reading →
Writer Christopher Hitchens has died at age died at age 62. One of his most popular and controversial books is God is not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything. In a guest column for this blog, Eric Schiller, a Quaker and a retired University of Ottawa professor, writes about the book and analyzes Hitchens' attack on organized... Continue Reading →
I had two recent launches in Saskatchewan for my book Pulpit and Politics. One of the events was at St. Peter's College in Muenster, where I was a boarding school student for three years in high school and first year university in the 1960s. My friend Father Andrew Britz interviewed me about the book prior to a time of questions... Continue Reading →
About 130 people attended an Ottawa launch on November 2nd for Dennis Gruending’s new book, Pulpit and Politics: Competing Religious Ideologies in Canadian Public Life. The event took place at Southminster United Church and was co-sponsored by Kingsley Publishing and an Ottawa-based group called Canadians for Democratic Renewal. Veteran journalist Juliet O’Neill, who is now... Continue Reading →
Pulpit and Politics 