God does not provide much money to many Presbyterian congregations because they spend it in a way He does not want. To grow more in […]

The Record has expended a fair amount of ink on John Calvin over the past year. It was a reasonable project, for Calvin was one […]

Canada faces a shocking threat to Medicare's existence and Canada's traditional way of life. The battle is being waged by a mindset featuring an evil ideology, highly organized and supported by big money. On the other side are millions of disorganized citizens who, for the most part, are oblivious to the danger facing them in the joust.

It's not everyday that I am prepared to say “well done” to a politician. But Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty wins my support. The premier-cognizant of the diversity and freedoms of Ontario as the most culturally rich area of the world – wants to write a more appropriate public reflection for the legislature.

February is a time when we think about love and part of that is the Lenten emphasis on repentence for not loving enough. As I thought about that I reflected on my experiences with our Muslim neighbours.

Although it seemed a relatively innocuous line item in last year's federal budget, the Conservative government's HPV (human papillomavirus) vaccination program has generated more controversy than might have been expected. The latest instalment in the debate unfolded as various Catholic school boards in Ontario considered whether to allow the vaccine to be administered within their elementary schools. The Ontario Conference of Catholic Bishops weighed in with an open letter, suggesting that introduction of the vaccine is inconsistent with a Roman Catholic understanding of human life and sexuality.

February is a time when we think about love and part of that is the Lenten emphasis on repentence for not loving enough. As I thought about that I reflected on my experiences with our Muslim neighbours.

Kathleen Norris, the American poet and author well known for her meditations on the Christian faith (The Cloister Walk, Amazing Grace), refers to hymns as “the Protestant liturgy” in one of her books.

Matthew (2:1-16) and Luke (2:1-20), the Biblical nativity narrators, do not specify the date of Jesus' birth. Still, as Northrop Frye remarks in The Great Code: The Bible and Literature, “The Gospels are not biography.” John (21:25) had already concluded, “And there are many other things which Jesus did, the which, if they should be written every one, I suppose that even the world itself could not contain the books that should be written.”

There's been a lot of crazy, even murderous religion in the news lately. Some of it Muslim, some of it Christian, all of it nuts.

It is normally thought, certainly was by Mel Gibson, that Christ spoke Aramaic, the Semitic tongue believed to have displaced Hebrew as the Jewish vernacular. Latin is usually ruled out. It was used in the East mainly for administrative purposes; the Romans never forced it on their subjects — hence the bad grammar joke in Monty Python's Life of Brian.

I know all the things you do, and that you have a reputation for being alive — but you are dead. Wake up! Strengthen what little remains, for even what is left is almost dead. I find that your actions do not meet the requirements of my God. Go back to what you heard and believed at first; hold to it firmly. Repent and turn to me again. If you don't wake up, I will come to you suddenly, as unexpected as a thief.Revelation 3:1-3

The present practice of The Presbyterian Church in Canada is to place retired ministers of Word and Sacrament on the appendix to the roll of presbyteries. As members on the appendix to the roll these persons have the right to speak on matters before the court but do not have the privilege of moving or seconding motions or of voting.

“I submit that since 1925 our church has wandered somewhat haphazardly, goaded by the memory of certain heroic events in our past, feeding on the manna of our own history…. I want to see our church set free from preoccupation with her own past and her own future, free to emerge from that wilderness of her own choosing and enter the modern city, the terrible and wonderful new world where one thing above all is required from Christians — a celebration of the Christ who is already there, waiting for His followers to come out into the tempest of living.”

Were Joe McLelland's words prophetic? Are they words we need to listen to today?

“It's the theology, stupid!” What if it is? What if our diagnosis of the ills of the church — shrinking numbers and diminishing expectations, based on changes in social norms, charges of irrelevance and outdated sermons and liturgy and music — misses the heart of our problem: theology, doctrine, what we believe?

Lloyd Evans in the British weekly Spectator unequivocally asserts that Jesus could not read, a claim made by many books and Internet sites, glossed in Northrop Frye's The Great Code: The Bible and Literature by placing Christ in the oral tradition of Socrates and other early Greek philosophers who wrote nothing, their teachings preserved by loyal disciples.