Last fall I had the pleasure of teaching a course on Christianity and other religions at the invitation of Ryan Topping, Academic Dean and vice-President of Newman Theological College in Edmonton. In our initial conversation he told me of an initiative at Newman to establish a BA in Catholic Studies using the great books that have been foundational to the Christian culture of the West. In my four decades of teaching in various universities the withering of the humanities has been palpable. In this “late age and outlying province” I was hearing, almost for the first time, a counter-cultural vision.

Since November 11th, 1931, Canadians have paused to remember those men and women who have served in our various armed forces. Shortly after attending this years’ service of memory in Ottawa I sat down with Lorraine Smith-MacDonald to think about her work listening to soldiers who have recently served in Canada’s forces in Afghanistan and elsewhere. How has she come to prepare for this work and what has she drawn from it that we all need to understand?

Steve Bynum has been the senior producer for Worldviews, a global affairs program on Chicago Public Radio, WBEZ. We met at a monastery a number of years ago and our conversations have explored the challenges to democracy, culture, and communities given both the political leadership and the habits of mind in both Canada and the United States of America. In this podcast we explore questions of race, power, and privilege, questions shaking the foundations of our civil society.

Last September I was invited to a conference of the International Council for Middle East Studies titles, “Faith, Community, and Culture”, held at the University of British Columbia in Kelowna. My previous podcasts with Norton Mezvinsky and Rabbi Yaakov Shapiro were recorded on that occasion. This podcast with Professor Emilio Ferrin from the University of Seville is the third of my conversations on that occasion. An eminent historian he has examined Euro-Arab cultural cooperation, early Islam and Islamic modernization.

David Jennings: lawyer, business man, theological thinker, philanthropist, social critic and cultural entrepreneur, superb board member for so many church and arts organizations, son of the Presbyterian Church, friend and interlocutor. Our wide-ranging conversation touches areas largely foreign to me and perhaps to some of you. He invites us to think again about matters too easily dismissed by party politics and ideological purity

Historians have argued that Christian Zionism migrated into Jewish, largely secular Jewish circles, and seeded forms of Zionism that are foundational to the Israeli state. One of the foremost Jewish scholars of this matter is Rabbi Yaakov Shapiro. He forcefully argues that Zionism has moved Jewish identity away from the Covenant and Commandments, which called the Jewish people, as the scriptures tell us, “to be a holy people and a nation of priests”.

David Brooks, one of America’s fine public intellectuals in his recent book The Second Mountain, quotes C.S. Lewis. I remember reading Lewis’ comment years ago and was delighted to have it brought to mind. “The load, or weight, or burden of my neighbor’s glory should be laid daily on my back, a load so heavy that only humility can carry it, and the backs of the proud will be broken.” In preparing this conversation with Ray Sawatsky I heard the echo of Lewis’ words. Ray is CEO and Executive Director of the international NGO Global Aid Network (GAIN). They partner with local governments and churches in various places around the world drilling wells where water is increasingly scarce. Our conversation turned and returned to the three transcendental, the good, the true, and the beautiful. We explore the gifts and challenges he was bequeathed through his early formation in the Brethren Gospel Halls, an evangelical and fundamentalist portion of the protestant church with an impact far above its weight. The gifts of the Brethren Church carried a shadow that Ray has struggled with and found his way through.  His insight into the brokenness that so often frames human experience, his surprised discovery of the love and compassion of God, and his growing recognition that the two commandments in the Gospel, to love God above all and ones neighbour as ones self has transformed his understanding of charity into a call for “faithful presence” to those we are blessed to come to know.

Norton Mezvinsky, historian and activist, is currently writing a book titled, “Is A Jewish State a Good Idea?” Is it a good idea in the Middle East? This book culminates Professor Mezvinsky’s close to seven decades of thinking about the state of Israel, the Palestinian community, the role of Jewish fundamentalism and Christian Zionism and the relationship of Israel to the United States of America.

Welcome to our conversation on spiritual formation, and a vocation in service to “a more Christ-like God.”

My friend Greg Pennoyer who sits on the board of Prison Fellowship International (PFI) introduced me to Andrew Corley who became the President and CEO of PFI a year ago. I welcomed the opportunity to meet for several reasons. First, is the work in prisons through the Ephesus project colleagues and I have engaged over the last few years. Second, is Andy’s formation and service through the Salvation Army, an evangelical church that befriended my mother in Norway when she was a small child.  Evangelicals have long been leaders in prison ministry around the world. Charles Colson, chief counsel for President Richard Nixon, founded Prison Fellowship following his guilty plea in the midst of the Watergate inquiry and his incarceration at the Maxwell Federal Prison Camp in Alabama for seven months. There are now national Prison Fellowships in 119 countries spanning various cultures and religious communities and Prison Fellowship International works with all of them assisting in ways to enlarge their good work.  Andrew developed his strategic thinking and leadership skills in management as director of global construction companies. I welcome you to our conversation moving from his way of shaping business and questions of purpose, on what it means to be “salt and light” in the market place, and, on how working in prisons is transformative for those who enter behind the walls of separation. I welcome your thoughts on our conversation and may be reached at www.davidgoa.ca/contact.