Anger. Disbelief. Grief. Outrage. Many of us are feeling emotionally overwhelmed and exhausted as we grapple with the news reports coming out of the United States. As part of the Trump administration’s “zero tolerance” policy, over 2,000 migrant children have been forcibly separated from their parents since April. While we can’t exert influence as voters…
Signing onto the David Suzuki Foundation letter asking Ottawa to reverse course on the Trans-Mountain pipeline was not any mere whim, said Citizens for Public Justice executive director Joe Gunn. The ecumenical social justice organization understands that working people who depend on the oilsands to pay their mortgages can’t be bystanders in the national debate about just…
Canada’s faith communities have a proud record of activism. A recent collection of essays, Journeys to Justice: Reflections on Canadian Christian Activism, tells the story well.
In 2015 Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) issued its final report on Indian residential schools, relating the “cultural genocide” that took place, along with much physical and sexual abuse. The report specifically directed to the four churches that ran the schools and challenged every faith community, all governments and the entire Canadian public. Reconciliation must involve…
So now would seem a particularly good time to ask for an apology. And if Canada’s bishops supported it, it is hard to see that the pope would refuse because a hallmark of the Francis papacy is to decentralize authority to the bishops conferences around the world. Joe Gunn, who spent a decade at the…
Journeys to Justice: Reflections on Canadian Christian Activism by Joe Gunn offers a wealth of personal stories on a host of faith-based political issues. Gunn looks at the creation of Canada’s refugee policies; Indigenous rights and the Mackenzie Valley pipeline proposal; Catholic bishops and economic justice; the churches and South African apartheid; violence against northern women;…
Next month, Citizens for Public Justice will release a new book that tells 10 stories of social justice struggles where Christians, most often working ecumenically, changed Canadian society for the better. But the most inspiring parts of the book are the final reflections of young female church activists who point ways forward for faith communities to…
The Liberal government, which tabled Canada’s first gender-based budget Feb. 27, received mixed reviews from think tanks devoted to Christian social teaching. While Citizens for Public Justice applauded the budget’s female focus as a “step forward,” CPJ’s executive director Joe Gunn said the “ambition wasn’t huge in this case.” “There are many more things the government…
For me, Lent’s attraction is not the focus on suffering or deprivation as much as the call to be lured back to attitudes and behaviours that prepare us to become an Easter people. Returning to more disciplined schedules of prayer, renewal of our observance of the sacraments, penance, self-denial and almsgiving — all have heightened relevance at…
As we enter the season of Lent, the period of 40 days that carries us to Easter, it is important to acknowledge the ways that we have turned away from God in our lives and remember the call to turn our thankful hearts, humble minds and serving hands back toward God. For many Christians and…