Institute for Christian Studies

10/02/2026

What happens when a history of white Christian womanhood in the United States sounds uncomfortably familiar north of the border?

In her reflection on Kristin Kobes Du Mez’s new Live Laugh Love, Angela Reitsma Bick traces the Christian books, CCM, direct-sales living rooms, and assumptions about success and authority that travelled easily across the Canada–U.S. border. The similarities matter. So do the differences in where Christianity may now be headed in each country.

Read the full reflection here: https://instituteforchristianstudies.substack.com/p/where-live-laugh-love-hits-close

09/29/2026

As you settle into the rhythms of fall, consider a new one: monthly giving.

A gift of $30 a month helps sustain ICS as a place to learn, ask honest questions, and grow in faith together.

Become a monthly donor: https://donate.icscanada.edu/monthly

09/25/2026

In his latest for our Substack, Taylor reads the Gospels against Roman imperial power and argues that Jesus’s teaching challenges hierarchy, domination, and Christian nationalism. It is a provocative theological argument about power, discipleship, and the church’s public witness.

Read Taylor’s complete article: https://instituteforchristianstudies.substack.com/p/how-do-we-recover-the-politics-of

09/18/2026

In a new article, Mark Standish reflects on Matthew D. Taylor’s definition of Christian supremacy and asks what happens when the impulse to control shows up closer to home: in classrooms, churches, families, and the stories Christians tell about who has “the right way.”

Read the full piece, then join Free to be Faithful’s free Big Read with Matthew D. Taylor on October 8. You can find it here: https://instituteforchristianstudies.substack.com/p/the-ways-of-christ

Mark Standish reflects what Christian supremacy looks like when it moves from politics into classrooms, communities, and our own habits of faith.

09/17/2026

"Christian antichrists (n.): those who use power to harm others in the name of Jesus."

Join us on Thursday, October 8 at 7PM ET for an online conversation with Matthew D. Taylor on his new book Defying Tyrants.

Register and we'll send you an excerpt → f2bf.icscanada.edu/big-read

An evening with Matthew D. Taylor. Thursday, October 8, 2026, 7:00 PM ET. Free, online, and open to anyone. Register and we'll send you an excerpt of the book.

09/08/2026

In her latest reflection, Beth Green writes about the strange mix of anticipation and nerves that arrives with a new school year, and turns to Ray Bradbury’s Dandelion W**e for a way of thinking about memory, loss, and the passing of summer.

At ICS, that transition also means welcoming new students, beginning new courses, and making room for another season of learning together.

Read the full piece here: https://instituteforchristianstudies.substack.com/p/back-to-school-edition

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09/04/2026

In this new reflection on Wendell Berry, Matt Bonzo writes about loss, memory, work, community, and what it means to “practice resurrection” after the communities we love have been fractured. Berry’s wisdom does not offer an escape into a simpler past. It asks us to remember what is good, resist what destroys people and places, and do the work at hand.

Read Matt’s full reflection here: https://instituteforchristianstudies.substack.com/p/the-long-way-home

08/28/2026

What if healing is not a straight line, but a spiral?

In a conversation with Héctor Acero Ferrer, philosopher and psychotherapist Jim Olthuis reflects on love as connection, the risk of relationship, trauma, and what he calls the “gift and call” of life. For Jim, healing means returning to what hurts without simply repeating it, learning to receive life as gift and respond to it in a new way.

The conversation offers a glimpse into Jim’s upcoming six-week Free to be Faithful course, Spirals of Love and Healing, beginning Tuesday, September 15, at 6:30 p.m. ET.

Read the full piece here: https://instituteforchristianstudies.substack.com/p/spirals-of-love-and-healing

08/26/2026

We’re hiring an Academic Registrar!

The Academic Registrar plays a central role in the life of the Institute for Christian Studies, stewarding the student journey from admission and registration through to graduation and helping ensure that students experience ICS as a welcoming, well-supported academic community.

If you’re an organized and collaborative administrator who cares about students and the work of higher education, we’d love to hear from you.

Read the full position description and application details:
https://www.icscanada.edu/about/employment-opportunities/academic-registrar

Please share with anyone in your networks who might be a good fit!

08/24/2026

What might faithfulness look like amid personal wounds, authoritarian pressures, religious deconstruction, and political uncertainty?

Join us this fall for one of four six-week online seminars exploring healing, resistance, hope, and the possibilities of faith:

• Spirals of Love and Healing: Empathy, Re-stor(y)-ing, Re-connecting, Transforming
Jim Olthuis

• Keeping Faith Under Dictators: Lessons from 20th-Century Europe
Bruce Berglund

• “Broken Hallelujah”: Faith, Deconstruction, and Spirituality through Music
Angela Reitsma Bick

• “We Are Free to Change the World”: Hope, Resistance, and the Power of the Possible
Ron Kuipers

Now enrolling: https://f2bf.icscanada.edu/courses