Facing the Darkness with Nik Ansell

As summer draws to a close and we start gearing up for the start of the semester at ICS, we're going to spend a few weeks with some of our Senior Members as they prepare for their upcoming online courses in the fall.

Today, we're welcoming Nik Ansell, ICS Senior Member in theology, back onto the podcast to talk about one of the two courses he'll be teaching online. On Monday evenings, he’ll be teaching his Biblical Foundations course, and on Thursday afternoons he’ll be teaching the course that provides the topic of today’s conversation: Facing the Darkness: The (Human) Nature of Evil.

If you'd like to find out more about the course, to register, or to learn more about our discounts for first-time auditors and ICS alumni, you can visit the course page on our website or send our Registrar an email at academic-registrar@icscanada.edu!

Critical Faith is sponsored by the Centre for Philosophy, Religion, and Social Ethics (CPRSE) at the Institute for Christian Studies in Toronto. For more, visit www.icscanada.edu.

A Growth Mindset for Christian Education with Edith van der Boom

ICS recently hired Dr. Edith van der Boom as the new Senior Member in Philosophy of Education and Practice of Pedagogy and as the Director of the MA (Phil) in Educational Leadership Program. So we invited Edith onto the podcast to introduce herself and give us an idea of some of her hopes and plans for the MA-EL program and its students. For more about Edith and the MA-EL program, visit www.icscanada.edu.

Critical Faith is sponsored by the Centre for Philosophy, Religion, and Social Ethics (CPRSE) at the Institute for Christian Studies in Toronto.

Set the Prisoners Free with Dean Dettloff

We're announcing a recent change to the next upcoming course ICS is offering for our Summer Online Learning Initiative:

In light of the ongoing anti-racism protests taking place around the world and the growing outcry against targeted police brutality, ICS Junior Member Dean Dettloff will be offering an updated intensive version of his course Set the Prisoners Free: Christianity and Prison Abolition.

For this episode, fellow ICS Junior Member and Associate Director of the CPRSE, Héctor Acero Ferrer, joins Dean to explore the background narratives to this course, to uncover some of the ways in which Christianity and prison and police abolition share an entwined history, and to identify some compelling resources and activists in these areas.

This 6-week course will take place two evenings a week, two hours a day from July 7 to August 13. This online format means Set the Prisoners Free will be available to be taken for credit or audit from anywhere in the world. There are a number of enrollment options available, so if you'd like to learn more about the course, to register, or to find out more about our discounts for first-time auditors and ICS alumni, you can visit the course page on our website or send our Registrar an email at academic-registrar@icscanada.edu!

- List of prison and police abolition resources mentioned in this episode -

Books and Interviews

• Are Prisons Obsolete? (2003) by Angela Davis 
• Golden Gulag: Prisons, Surplus, Crisis, and Opposition in Globalizing California (2007) by Ruth Wilson Gilmore 
• Policing Black Lives: State Violence in Canada from Slavery to the Present (2017) by Robyn Maynard 
• Warrior Life: Indigenous Resistance and Resurgence (forthcoming, 2020) by Pamela Palmater

Organizations

• Christians for the Abolition of Prisons
• Black and Pink 
• 8 to Abolition

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Critical Faith is sponsored by the Centre for Philosophy, Religion, and Social Ethics (CPRSE) at the Institute for Christian Studies in Toronto. For more, visit www.icscanada.edu.

Faith in Art with Adrienne Dengerink Chaplin

Here at ICS, we're embarking on a Summer Online Learning Initiative, which means we have a number of exciting new courses in the works for the next few months. So we wanted to give you a sneak peek at these courses with the people involved in making them happen.

This week, Adrienne Dengerink Chaplin joins us remotely for a conversation about her upcoming course Faith in Art: Spirituality and Lived Experience, which takes a close look at some of the intersections and tensions between faith and art today, especially within theological and philosophical aesthetics.

This 6-week course will take place two days a week, two hours a day from June 16 to July 23. Its online format means Faith in Art will be available to be taken for credit or audit from anywhere in the world. If you'd like to find out more about the course, to register, or to find out more about our discounts for first-time auditors and ICS alumni, you can visit the course page on our website or send our Registrar an email at academic-registrar@icscanada.edu!

- List of faith and art "must reads" mentioned in this episode -

• Contemporary Art and the Church: A Conversation Between Two Worlds (2017), Christians in the Visual Arts conference proceedings edited by W. David O. Taylor and Taylor Worley
• Theological Aesthetics: A Reader (2005) by Gesa Elsbeth Thiessen
• Normative Aesthetics: Sundry Writings and Occasional Lectures (2014) and Redemptive Art in Society: Sundry Writings and Occasional Lectures (2014) by Calvin Seerveld, edited by John Kok

Critical Faith is sponsored by the Centre for Philosophy, Religion, and Social Ethics (CPRSE) at the Institute for Christian Studies in Toronto. For more, visit www.icscanada.edu.

Ref Phil 101 with Bob Sweetman: The Response-Ability of the Heart

Congratulations! You've reached the final installment in our miniseries on Reformational philosophy with Bob Sweetman and Gideon Strauss!

Bob and Gideon have covered a lot of territory in the past number of weeks--from the influence of Abraham Kuyper on Dooyeweerd and Vollenhoven, to the broader historical and philosophical context in which Reformational philosophy first developed. This week, they ask the burning question: why does this matter? And Bob leaves us considering what Reformational philosophy has to say about how we know, and how such knowing is ultimately a response of the heart to the world around us.

Critical Faith is sponsored by the Centre for Philosophy, Religion, and Social Ethics (CPRSE) at the Institute for Christian Studies in Toronto. For more, visit www.icscanada.edu.

Hannah Arendt & Religious Critique with Ronald A. Kuipers, Andrew Tebbutt & Héctor Acero Ferrer

Here at ICS, we're starting a summer online learning initiative, which means we have a number of exciting new courses in the works for the next few months. So we wanted to give you a sneak peek at these courses with the folks involved in making them happen.

This week, we invited Héctor Acero Ferrer to chat with Dr. Ronald A. Kuipers and Dr. Andrew Tebbutt about their newly redesigned course Evil, Resistance, and Judgment: Hannah Arendt and Religious Critique and what Arendt's thought has to say to us today. This 6-week course will take place two days a week, two hours a day from May 12 to June 18, and is available to be taken for credit or audit from anywhere in the world.

If you'd like to find out more about the course or to register, you can visit the course page on our website or send our Registrar an email at academic-registrar@icscanada.edu!

- List of Arendt "must reads" from this episode -

• "Perplexities of the Rights of Man" in Origins of Totalitarianism (1951) by Hannah Arendt
• The Last Interview and Other Conversations (2013) by Hannah Arendt
• The Three Escapes of Hannah Arendt: A Tyranny of Truth (2018) graphic novel by Ken Krimstein 
• "Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli: A Christian on St. Peter's Chair from 1958 to 1963" in Men in Dark Times (1968) by Hannah Arendt

Critical Faith is sponsored by the Centre for Philosophy, Religion, and Social Ethics (CPRSE) at the Institute for Christian Studies in Toronto. For more, visit www.icscanada.edu.

Ref Phil 101 with Bob Sweetman: Things and Their Hows

We're nearing the end of our miniseries on Reformational philosophy with Bob Sweetman and Gideon Strauss, and this week we take a turn to a fundamental philosophical topic: ontology.

In this episode, Bob explains what ontology is, how Reformational philosophy's complex-and-integral approach compares to some of its theoretical contemporaries, and provides examples of how this ontology frames human responsibility.

Stick with us for the final episode in this series coming in the next couple weeks!

Critical Faith is sponsored by the Centre for Philosophy, Religion, and Social Ethics (CPRSE) at the Institute for Christian Studies in Toronto. For more, visit www.icscanada.edu.

Quarantine Special with Mark and Danielle

Have you been wondering how Mark and Danielle can possibly have been keeping themselves busy during these weeks of quarantine? Looking for some new ideas for ways to keep yourself busy?

A couple weeks ago, as Toronto entered the first stages of enforcing social distancing, Mark and Danielle tried their hands at recording a Critical Faith episode remotely for the first time. This is the result!

Having begun exploring these new technological possibilities, we're planning to return for the final episodes of our intro series on Reformational philosophy in the next week or so, and we have some programming plans in the pipeline for over the summer. But for now, just enjoy hearing how we're coping.

Links to sources of Isolation Entertainment mentioned in this episode:

• Instagram live music sessions with Gareth Inkster (@garethinkster)
• Instagram live morning and evening prayers with Saint Luke's Common (@saintlukescommon): 6:30am on Tuesday, Thursday, Friday; 7:30pm on Wednesday.
• NYTimes crosswords through the Seattle Times
• Codenames board game available online through codenames.plus

Critical Faith is sponsored by the Centre for Philosophy, Religion, and Social Ethics (CPRSE) at the Institute for Christian Studies in Toronto. For more, visit www.icscanada.edu.

Ref Phil 101 with Bob Sweetman: Ground Motives and Spiritual Movements

We managed to get a couple more episodes of our miniseries on Reformational philosophy with Bob Sweetman and Gideon Strauss recorded a few weeks before the pandemic hit. So this week, we present you with episode three!

Last time, Bob explained the significance of Kuyper's idea of "sphere sovereignty" to how Herman Dooyeweerd then went on to develop it into a critique of power dynamics. This week, Bob and Gideon discuss Dooyeweerd's idea of "ground motives" and Reformational philosophy co-founder Dirk Vollenhoven's approach to historiography as tools for recognizing how societies change, collide, and flow through history.

We'll continue this series in the coming weeks, so stay with us to find out more about what makes Reformational philosophy tick...

Critical Faith is sponsored by the Centre for Philosophy, Religion, and Social Ethics (CPRSE) at the Institute for Christian Studies in Toronto. For more, visit www.icscanada.edu.

Ref Phil 101 with Bob Sweetman: Spheres of Societal Power

Welcome to week two of our miniseries on Reformational philosophy with Bob Sweetman and Gideon Strauss! After last week's introduction to Abraham Kuyper's role in the backstory of Reformational philosophy, today we have two goals. First we'll look at Kuyper's idea of "sphere sovereignty." Then we'll consider how the key Reformational figure of Herman Dooyeweerd begins to develop Kuyper's idea into a critique of social and historical power dynamics.

This series will continue next week, so stay with us to find out more about what makes Reformational philosophy tick...

Critical Faith is sponsored by the Centre for Philosophy, Religion, and Social Ethics (CPRSE) at the Institute for Christian Studies in Toronto. For more, visit www.icscanada.edu.

Ref Phil 101 with Bob Sweetman: Kuyper's Principled Pluralism

Have you ever wondered what this Reformational philosophy thing is that folks at ICS constantly talk about? For the next few weeks, Bob Sweetman, with the help of Gideon Strauss, will be giving us a crash course on how Reformational philosophy came to be, what it says, and how it is relevant today.

This week, Bob gives us some of the backstory to how Reformational philosophy first developed. To do so, he dives more deeply into a conversation begun in our last episode about Abraham Kuyper and his idea of principled pluralism. Stay tuned in the coming weeks to find out more about what makes Reformational philosophy tick...

Critical Faith is sponsored by the Centre for Philosophy, Religion, and Social Ethics (CPRSE) at the Institute for Christian Studies in Toronto. For more, visit www.icscanada.edu.

Christian Hospitality and Global Migration with Matthew Kaemingk

How might Christians build truly welcoming spaces?

Every semester, the CPRSE hosts a Scripture, Faith, and Scholarship symposium where we invite scholars and reflective practitioners to share with the ICS community how their faith, research, and practice inform each other. This past January, Dr. Matthew Kaemingk (Fuller Seminary, Texas) spoke at this symposium after receiving Redeemer University’s Emerging Public Intellectual Award.

In this special episode of Critical Faith, we present Dr. Kaemingk's symposium discussion on Christian public life and contemporary Muslim immigration. If you'd like to see more of Dr. Kaemingk's work, you can check out his website here or read his recently published book Christian Hospitatlity and Muslim Immigration in an Age of Fear.

Critical Faith is sponsored by the Centre for Philosophy, Religion, and Social Ethics (CPRSE) at the Institute for Christian Studies in Toronto. For more, visit www.icscanada.edu.

ART in Orvieto with Rebekah Smick

What does faith have to do with the arts?

This summer, Senior Member Rebekah Smick will be leading our ART in Orvieto program in Orvieto, Italy. So she joined us in the studio to give a glimpse into the program and talk about the role of the image in historic Christian traditions.

If you're an artist, writer, student, or simply interested in the relationship of faith and the arts, visit our website to register: http://www.icscanada.edu/art_in_orvieto.

We're accepting applications until March 31--with an early-bird application deadline of February 13, so apply today!

Critical Faith is sponsored by the Centre for Philosophy, Religion, and Social Ethics (CPRSE) at the Institute for Christian Studies in Toronto. For more, visit www.icscanada.edu.