Author
communications

The Path to Healing : Native Ministries – Community in Kenora

communications

Last January, a rotting old building used for low-rent apartments in Kenora, Ont., was destroyed by fire. Forty tenants were left homeless, their few belongings ruined. With nowhere else to go, they made their way to Anamiewigummig, or the Kenora Fellowship Centre, the town's only overnight emergency shelter, where they can find coffee and a warm meal, comfy couches with a view of pristine waters, company from the resident pet turtle, and most importantly, someone to talk to about their problems.

Diversity and bequests hot topics at Assembly Council

communications

Assembly Council adopted a draft policy on racial harassment entitled Growing in Christ: Seeing the Image of God in Our Neighbour, at its November meeting. “The Presbyterian Church in Canada welcomes its cultural diversity,” states the policy. “Both at the congregational and national level, the Presbyterian Church will actively involve the cultural diversity in its midst when it comes to decision-making, service on boards and committees, preparation for ministry in the church, representation of the church at all levels and employment within the church.”

Climate issue Christian

communications

ENI – “Our Christian values are at the core of our call for urgent, concerted action on climate change. Not only do we believe that, in the beginning, we were given stewardship of the earth, but we believe that good news for the world's poor people is rooted in justice. Climate change brutally exposes humanity's failure and the failure of its institutions,” a united Christian platform of Caritas Internationalis and the All Africa Conference of Churches said in a statment at the UN conference on climate change held in Nairobi in November.

Debating the historical Christ

Joel Coppieters

It is easy to blame author Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code, which has sold more than 61 million copies worldwide in 45 languages and is now the eighth-best-selling book of all time, for sparking a renewed interest in the Gnostic gospels and related texts. Instead, the novel's success can be seen as merely a symptom of a larger phenomenon, which seeks to find an alternative history of Christianity. Obscure academics and many populist authors have been pecking away at the authenticity of Christianity's roots for a very long time. Elaine Pagels has been writing about Gnostic texts for decades, and Holy Blood, Holy Grail laid out more than two decades ago much the same landscape that Dan Brown trod. (In fact, that book's authors sued Brown recently for fictionalizing their unsubstantiated facts.) Nikos Kazantzakis' The Last Temptation of Christ stated much of the same 55 years ago. The modern resurgence of Gnosticism and enduring questions about the identity of Jesus and the origins of Christianity all helped fuel the sales of Brown's novel.

Immunization bond

communications

ENI – Pope Benedict XVI and leaders of five other leading faiths in Britain have subscribed to an inaugural $1.15-billion bond issued by the British Treasury that will pay for immunizing half a billion children in developing countries over the next 10 years.

On Earth as in Heaven

Barry Baldwin

Tom Harpur's attempt in The Pagan Christ to disprove Jesus' earthly existence is as futile as that of his many predecessors. These go back to Docetism, a heresy hinted at in 1 John 4 and 2 John 7, developed by second-century Gnostics to the point where Christ's earthly appearance was an illusion, likewise his death, being replaced on the cross by Judas or Simon of Cyrene.