Institute for Christian Studies

In this week's article, Ron Kuipers sits with a promise from Isaiah 42, light for people walking an unknown road, and asks an uncomfortable question: what does that promise actually sound like to someone in the dark right now? To hunger strikers inside an ICE facility? To the thousands of parents pulled away from their kids?
With Hannah Arendt and the philosopher Byung-Chul Han as guides, Ron makes the case that hope is not a soft, passive comfort. It is restless and costly, a single candle lit in a dark room that makes the next one easier to light.

Read the full article at: https://open.substack.com/pub/instituteforchristianstudies/p/light-for-the-dark-road-ahead

The Contemplative Life in the Age of Distraction — a new six-week online seminar with Jacob Benjamins, beginning June 16. Together we'll explore digital fasting, deep reading, time in nature, and silence, alongside readings from Simone Weil, Teresa of Ávila, Abraham Joshua Heschel, and Martin Laird.

A low-pressure space for lifelong learners to think about the promise and the difficulty of contemplative life today.

Register: https://f2bf.icscanada.edu/courses

Congratulations, Class of 2026!

What a night to remember! We are so proud of every one of our graduates who walked across the stage on Friday, May 29.

From the bottom of our hearts, thank you to the families, friends, and faculty who made this celebration unforgettable. Your support means the world to us.

Swipe through a few highlights from the evening and to see the full celebration, read messages, see the full gallery, and relive the moment, visit:

https://icscanada.edu/congratulations-2026

Here's to the futures you'll build and the dreams you'll chase. The best is yet to come!

This summer, study Enrique Dussel and the Philosophy and Ethics of Liberation with Dean Dettloff . Thinking from Latin America, Dussel grounds ethics in the lives of those excluded by capitalist globalization, modernity, and Eurocentric thought — insisting philosophy serve the liberation of the oppressed. We’ll read his Philosophy of Liberation and Ethics of Liberation together.

Online intensive
June 8–July 13
Mondays & Wednesdays 7–9pm ET.

Full details: http://courses.icscanada.edu/2026/02/enrique-dussel-and-philosophy-and.html. To register, email [email protected].

We tend to treat contemplation and action as opposites. This summer Jacob Benjamins is offering a course through our Free to be Faithful initiative that complicates that binary, with practices like digital fasting, deep reading, and time in nature, read alongside thinkers like Simone Weil, Abraham Joshua Heschel, and Martin Laird.

The technologies competing for our attention shape not just what we think but how we think. Contemplative rhythms offer a way to push back, and maybe to inhabit the world a little differently.

Read Jacob's full reflection: https://instituteforchristianstudies.substack.com/p/the-contemplative-life-in-the-age

Enough Is Enough — a book launch & conversation.

Infinite growth on a finite planet is impossible. So what comes next?

Join us as we celebrate Enough Is Enough: Degrowth, Capitalism, and Liberation Theology with authors Matthew Bernico & Dean Dettloff — hosts of The Magnificast — for an evening on degrowth, climate, and what liberation theology offers a world fixated on growth.

Wednesday, June 24, 2026
6:30 – 8:30 PM ET
Knox College, Classroom 4 — Toronto
RSVP at the link below

RSVP → https://icscanada.edu/enough-is-enough

If you enjoy Dean's work, consider taking his online course entitled, "Enrique Dussel and the Philosophy and Ethics of Liberation."

Dates June 8 to July 13
Mondays and Wednesdays; 7-9pm ET

More info: http://courses.icscanada.edu/2026/02/enrique-dussel-and-philosophy-and.html

To register, email [email protected].

ICS PhD student, Joel Erhardt, argues that in a "post-truth era," the easy diagnosis is that we don't have enough facts. But Thomas Merton identified the real problem decades ago: it's not a shortage of information, it's an overload of noise. And Simone Weil adds that the answer isn't to try harder.

In this week's piece, Joel reflects on what it looks like to quiet the noise without performing it.

Read Joel's full article on Substack: https://instituteforchristianstudies.substack.com/p/when-distractions-arent-enough

What if spirituality isn't an escape from the material world but a way of living more deeply within it?

The Institute for Christian Studies is delighted to invite you to the launch of Material Spirituality: A Transcendental Phenomenology of Religion, the new book by Dr. Neal DeRoo.

Drawing on Husserl's notion of "material spiritual" conditions, DeRoo offers a fresh theory of religion. He challenges monotheistic and cognitive assumptions and asks how religion, as both concept and practice, is generated, lived, and shared.

Join us for an evening of conversation, conviviality, and the launch of a book years in the making.

Thursday, May 28, 2026
6:30 PM Eastern
Knox College, 59 St George Street, Toronto

All are welcome. RSVP at https://icscanada.edu/deroo-launch

ICS MA student Alayna Erickson finally cracked open Orwell's classic and found that the post-truth era isn't really a fight over facts. It's a fight over loves.

The path through the post-truth impasse, she argues, isn't to strip emotion out of truth. It's to pay attention to what is shaping the loves we already have.

Read the full article, here.

https://instituteforchristianstudies.substack.com/p/all-is-not-fair-in-love-and-war

#1984

Should research have to make sense to your wallet to deserve a place in Canadian public life?

In the latest article in our Facts and Faithfulness series, ICS doctoral candidate Timothy deVries asks the harder question: what *is* the public interest, who gets to define it, and why should the market have the final word?

Read the full article:

https://instituteforchristianstudies.substack.com/p/should-research-make-sense