Prayer Letter: December 2023

Monday, December 4 - Friday, December 8:

Dr. Samson Makhado was recently admitted to the hospital and is scheduled for spinal surgery in the coming days. Dr. Makhado received an MWS degree from ICS in 1994 and an honourary doctorate from ICS in 2012, and he is known to many around the world for his extensive work in Christian education and with the Association of Christian Schools International, particularly in South Africa. Please join us in praying for a successful surgery and speedy recovery for Dr. Makhado.

Irene Suk, the wife of former ICS President John Suk, was recently diagnosed with terminal brain cancer. In the face of this extremely difficult news, the family asks for the supportive thoughts and prayers of the ICS community. Please join us in praying for peace and comfort for Irene and the Suk family as Irene undergoes an operation and first round of treatments in the near future.

On December 7, we will be hosting an online Open House for our MA and PhD programs. This will be a prime opportunity for potential students to “visit” ICS and hear firsthand from Junior and Senior Members about what an ICS education entails. This event will take place 6:00-7:30pm ET and is designed to introduce students to these programs and to answer questions about studying at ICS. Please pray that God will establish the work of our hands as we reach out to potential students that there will be interest in joining ICS in one of these programs. If you are interested, or know someone who is, please email Brenna at recruitment-coordinator@icscanada.edu. 

Monday, December 11 - Friday, December 15:

ICS Board Chair Marci Frederick has been diagnosed with lymphoma. While the lymphoma is treatable, the treatment will likely be aggressive. Please join us in praying with Marci: that she might be able to complete all the precursor testing and procedures so that the chemotherapy can begin this Monday, that all involved will be carried by the Spirit of God and the love of Christ, that Marci and her family and colleagues will know calmness of spirit, and that Christ will be made known through all of this.

Our next ICS Philosophy on Tap event will take place on Wednesday, December 13 at 8pm ET. This event will take place online and will feature ICS Senior Member Nik Ansell discussing the topic: "Philosophical Realism and Ripley's 'Believe It or Not' Versus the Resurrection." Everyone is welcome, especially undergraduate students—no philosophy background required. Email recruitment-coordinator@icscanada.edu to RSVP and get the Zoom info, and pray with us for a lively time of discussion among attendees!

This is the final week of fall classes before the Christmas break and courses in the winter 2024 term are scheduled to start the week of January 8. Please pray for our Senior Members and instructors as they teach their final sessions and as they prepare for their teaching next term. Pray also for our Junior Members and students as they work to finish up readings and other assignments and as they turn their attention toward their term papers and projects. Please also pray along with us that the holiday break will enable everyone to rest and recharge, and bring all of us back energized for the new year and all it may bring.

Monday, December 18 - Friday, December 22:

The ICS offices will be closed during the Christmas holidays from December 23 to January 1. Please pray for the ICS staff, Senior Members, Junior Members, and loved ones as we celebrate this joyous season. We pray for health and safety for all those planning to travel near and far over the holidays, and we pray that this may be a time of rest and reflection for the whole ICS community. 

Starting in October, the work of ICS’s CPRSE has been enriched with the contributions of Junior Members Julia Henderson and Todd Dias in their capacity of Research Assistants. Julia and Todd have focused their energy on the Centre’s blog and podcast, both of which will be relaunched in early 2024. Please join us as we pray in thanksgiving for Julia and Todd’s contributions to the public outreach of our institution.

Please pray with us in gratitude for the work of the Academic Council this past semester. The members of the council have spent the past few months reviewing academic policies and hearing reports on the work of the Library and Academic Office for presentation to the Senate at their winter meeting. The Academic Council in particular will continue to host Reflective Practice Reports from our Senior Members in the new year. Please pray for each of the members of the Academic Council as they continue their work into the new year, that they will have wisdom and clarity of thinking, and for Edith van der Boom as she chairs the council in their academic programming and policy deliberations.

This calendar year has been a time of fruitful partnerships for ICS’s CPRSE. Between January and May, our team collaborated with the Canadian Interfaith Conversation and Martin Luther University College in putting together the SSHRC-funded conference, “Our Whole Society: Finding Common Ground in a Time of Polarization.” Between June and October, we worked closely with the Society for Ricoeur Studies as ICS hosted SRS’s 17th Annual Conference,  “Ricoeur in Practice.” We pray in thanksgiving for these partnerships as well as for all the people who made them possible. 

Monday, December 25 - Friday, December 29:

May the blessings of love, joy, and peace be yours as you celebrate the birth of our Lord and Saviour this Christmas week.

Our Advent Appeal is under way! ICS supporters should have received the appeal package in the mail (if not, it should arrive soon), and we hope you enjoy reading the latest issue of Perspective that accompanies the appeal! You can also find a digital copy of the Advent Letter from President Ron Kuipers, including a link to donate to ICS, on our website. We are especially grateful during this time of year for the ways God continues to provide for us and for your faithful support of ICS and our educational mission—thank you!

Please pray for members of the ICS Senate as they prepare for their meeting in January 2024. Our Senate consists of two Junior Member representatives (June Moon and Julia Henderson), two Senior Member representatives (Nik Ansell and Neal DeRoo), President Ron Kuipers, the Academic Dean Gideon Strauss, and eight external Senators (Janel Kragt Bakker, Memphis Theological Seminary; Pamela Beattie, University of Louisville; Beth Green, Tyndale University & Seminary; Joshua Harris, The King’s University; Henry Luttikhuizen; Margie Patrick,The King’s University; Janet Wesselius, Augustana Faculty, University of Alberta). There is a vacancy for an external Senator, for which your prayers would also be appreciated. Please also pray for the Chair of Senate and Chancellor of ICS, Pamela Beattie, and the Vice Chair, Beth Green, in their leadership of the Senate.

As 2023 draws to a close, we give thanks for another fruitful year of work at ICS and for all our supporters, friends, and colleagues who made this work possible through their prayers, financial gifts, and service. We also pray for God's blessings upon our staff, Senior Members, and Junior Members as we pursue wisdom together, in the classroom and beyond, throughout this next year. We look forward to another year of work and study together!

Embodying Love

Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved,

clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience.

—Colossians 3:12

During Advent, as we contemplate the profound mystery of God coming to dwell among us in human form, my thoughts turn in gratitude to all those people in my life who have embodied Christ’s compassion for me, and whose living example has profoundly shaped my own stumbling efforts to walk our Messiah’s path of grace and love.

Hendrik Hart, who left us to return to the God of love in March 2021, was one such person. Henk not only nurtured my intellectual gifts, but also showed me true friendship by dressing my spiritual wounds, sensing my struggle to stay connected to God’s love in Christ while I was at the same time harbouring profound doubts about my conservative Calvinist upbringing.

Sometimes Henk would address this situation with humour. In those early days, he once jokingly introduced me to people at an ICS event with the words, “This is Ron Kuipers. ICS is the last stop on his way out of the tradition.” In the early 1990s, when he said those words, he might even have been right. Yet thanks to the loving and faithful witness of my ICS professors and the larger ICS community, I never in fact boarded that final train.

Yet no one more than Henk illustrated for me through both his actions and his words the profound and mysterious truth that God is love. Importantly, he did so without skirting the dark realities of pain, suffering, and death. During his life, Henk had to say farewell to his wife, Anita, as well as his daughter, Esther. While grieving their loss, he was nevertheless able to remain grateful for the love they brought into his life. This experience inspired him to write the poem “Love/Love II,” in which he writes, “I experienced Love / dawning forcefully / at the dark edge of the abyss / in their last journey.”

Henk’s expression of surprise at feeling the profound Presence of Love while he was bidding farewell to those whom he loved most eventually builds to a crescendo in a verse that, to my ear, evokes a deep Advent truth:

The birth of Love in our life, 

foretaste of eternity:

this inexpressible joy will be ours

forever.

Henk’s life embodied the truth that because God dearly loves us, we may clothe ourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience—even in our darkest hour.

So, in the spirit of the Advent season, I wish you all the profound Presence of Love, of Immanuel, and hope that you experience this Love every time the candles we light for one another, both literally and figuratively, pierce the surrounding darkness.

Shalom, friends!
Ron Kuipers

New Essay on Foucault and Adorno

Senior Member Emeritus Lambert Zuidervaart has published a chapter titled “Adorno, Foucault, and Feminist Theory: The Politics of Truth” in the volume Feminism and the Early Frankfurt School edited by Christine Payne and Jeremiah Morelock (Brill 2024), pp. 133-161. 

Zuidervaart first summarizes Michel Foucault’s genealogical account of disciplinary power and state biopower. Then he contrasts Foucault’s account with Theodor Adorno’s negative dialectical critique of domination and compares their understandings of how truth and power interrelate. From this comparison two challenges of relevance to feminist critical theory emerge. One is to articulate the normative implications of how truth and power interrelate. The other is to envision genuine prospects for the transformation of society as a whole. 

Lambert’s full chapter is available online. The publisher Brill will publish a hardcover version of the book in 2024.

New Book on Neo-Calvinism and the Arts

InterVarsity Press has just published a new book on Neo-Calvinism and the arts entitled: The Artistic Sphere: The Arts in Neo-Calvinist Perspective, edited by Roger D. Henderson and Marleen Hengelaar-Rookmaaker. 

The volume features many contributors from the ICS community and beyond, reflecting on the thought of John Calvin, Abraham Kuyper, Herman Dooyeweerd, Hans Rookmaaker, and others in the tradition as they pertain to artistic practice. In particular how the Reformed tradition, in the publisher's words, "has consistently demonstrated not just a willingness but a desire to engage with all manner of cultural and artistic expressions."

The book contains chapters from Calvin Seerveld on "The Meaning of the Crucifixion: Grünewald and Perugino," from Nicholas Wolterstorff on "The Social Protest Meaning of the Graphic Art of Käthe Kollwitz," from Adrienne Dengerink Chaplin on Calvin and the arts and "Chris Ofili: Contemporary Art and the Return of Religion," from Lambert Zuidervaart on "Redemptive Art Criticism," and many more. Check out the book for yourself today.