An ICS Update from Ron Kuipers

Do not remember the former things, or consider the things of old.

I am about to do a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?

I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert.

—Isaiah 43: 17-18

Recently I had the privilege of attending the “celebration of learning” at the Christian Teacher Academy, a one week summer session for educators and school leaders who desire to further their understanding and development of project based learning. I got to hear teachers describe the exciting projects they are planning for their students in the coming school year: a music teacher spoke of her attempt to overcome the challenges that remote learning poses to music teaching by having her students compose and record an original song online; a geometry teacher spoke about connecting students with local businesses to help design containers for commercial products; a geography teacher spoke about her plans to have her students upcycle a discarded item.

The aforementioned geography teacher went on to describe how her project not only helps students understand geography, but also helps them better understand themselves as God’s image bearers. Just as God is busy redeeming creation by making all things new, so can we, with biblical imagination, confront and address the ecological problems we have created. Scripture can help us see our unwanted items with new eyes, to see new possibility precisely in those places where we are tempted to see only trash. This is indeed beautiful work.

We hear daily on the news about the safety concerns of teachers, students, and parents getting ready to return to school. While we should not minimize these concerns, I admit it was refreshing and energizing for me to hear these teachers talk about their plans to do more than simply cope during the upcoming school year. As we at ICS also move into a new school year in the midst of the ongoing pandemic, I am grateful to have had the opportunity to hear these teachers talk about the coming year with hope and expectation.

This year, as ICS continues to deliver its courses remotely, we can take inspiration from these brave and faithful teachers. There is much to be hopeful and excited about. This year, we have students joining our digital classroom from all over the globe: Australia, South Africa, Korea, Indonesia, Seattle, and Edmonton, to name just a few places. While this reality presents logistical challenges, given the different time zones involved, it has also confirmed our intuition that remote access learning removes a major barrier to ICS’s educational programs: the need to physically relocate to Toronto. Now our challenge is to recreate a learning environment that allows these students to thrive and grow in their faith and their understanding of God’s world.

As we move into the unknown of a very new school year, pray for the success of our efforts to create spiritual and intellectual community in our digital classrooms. We remain grateful for your continued support as we, following our maker and redeemer, make a way in the wilderness and a river in the desert.

Be well, friends! 

Ronald A. Kuipers

Special Announcement: Join Our Biblical Foundations Class!

 We’re inviting you, the ICS support community, to take advantage of this opportunity to join an ICS class remotely too. This fall, Biblical Foundations with Nik Ansell will be happening via Zoom on Monday evenings 8-11pm EST starting Sept. 14. This course is open to first-time auditors, ICS alums, and ICS supporters at a significantly discounted price of just $425 CAD (registration included). So if you’d like to dive into an in-depth exploration of the whole Bible with Nik and see firsthand what’s going on in an ICS classroom today, now is your chance! Please email Elizabet Aras at academic-registrar@icscanada.edu by September 10 to register.

Prayer Letter: September 2020

Tuesday, September 1 - Friday, September 4:

Please pray this week for Elizabet Aras, our Academic Registrar as she returns to Sweden to be with her parents. Her flight has been bumped several times in the past weeks but is now set for September 3. Please pray for safe travels with no unexpected delays, and for her peace of mind and protection while she stays with her family. Her main concern with going back is being exposed to diseases since, with the churches reopening, she is afraid that the elderly will go back to their regular habits and put themselves at risk.

September marks the beginning of the 2020-21 Academic Year. For the first time, all our Fall courses will be offered remotely with participation of students from across the globe. Senior Members have been working tirelessly in adapting their seminars to the requirements of remote learning and are ready to engage with students via online platforms. Please pray for instructors and students as they begin this unprecedented venture for ICS.  

We would also appreciate prayer for a few of our new students: our new MWS-ART student who won't be able to start her coursework this semester due to the fact that she's a teacher in Atlanta this year; a student transferring from the MWS to MA-EL; one new MA student in the process of completing all the steps for admission; and a new student from Indonesia who finally gets to start his MA studies with ICS because the courses are all online. Pray that all the details to be finalized and situational challenges can be dealt with smoothly.

Normally at this time we would ask for prayer for our Junior Members, both returning and new, as they prepare to come to Toronto to begin a new academic year. However, all our classes will be wholly online for at least the fall semester so we will only be able to see our students virtually. Please pray for our faculty and administrators as we prepare to provide the optimum learning experience online. And pray for both our new and returning students that they will have a fruitful online learning experience and that we will all find creative ways to build community at a distance. 

Monday, September 7 - Friday, September 11:

Please pray this week for the staff, Senior Members, and Junior Members as they participate in ICS’s first-ever remote Registration Week. Pray that it will be an inspiring time together to launch the new school year despite the fact that we cannot meet together in person. Please especially pray for our Registrar, Elizabet as she will be working remotely from Sweden. Pray for strength and peace of mind as she takes care of the many details that are involved in making sure that each day fulfills its potential. Please take a moment to pray for each day’s tasks and activities during Registration Week.

Tuesday, Sept 8: This is Orientation Day for all of our new students which will consist of faculty presentations, and a library workshop led by our Librarian Hilary Barlow to show the students how to search the ICS digital resources, how to use the U of T catalogue, and other learning resources to make their research possible. 

Wednesday, Sept 9: This is the day that our Junior Members complete their course registrations for the semester. There will also be meetings with Elizabet, our Registrar, and Harley Dekker about financial matters.

 

Thursday, Sept 10: A Research Workshop will be offered by our Librarian, Hilary Barlow for all our Junior and Senior Members this evening in order to acclimate everyone to making the most of online resources for their studies together.

 

Friday/Saturday, Sept 12/13: This is Retreat Day, which will be held virtually this year. The agenda consists of devotions, sharing of our hopes for ICS community life, and our reflections on what it has meant to us to be part of the ICS community during the pandemic. Please pray for the ongoing planning for this event, and for an encouraging time spent together looking to the year ahead.

Monday, September 14 - Friday, September 18:

This is the first week of classes at ICS -- wow, what a different scene from last year! This year, each Senior Member has had to adapt their course material and teaching for this online learning format. Please especially pray for each Senior Member as we all adapt to this unfamiliar territory, that they will be able to easily find a new rhythm for their digital classrooms. Pray also for the technical staff who are assisting them that everything will go smoothly on the technology side, and for the students participating in each class that, despite the differences in time zones of the students, it will be an inspiring and interactive learning experience for all. 

On Monday this week will be the first class of the semester, and fittingly, one of our Foundational courses: Biblical Foundations: Narrative, Wisdom, and the Art of Interpretation led by Dr. Nik Ansell. This course will explore the Bible—from Genesis to Revelation—as the ongoing story of and for God and all God’s creatures, paying special attention to the way in which humanity’s attempt to find its way is interwoven with the story of the Divine presence and with the wisdom and promise of creation-new creation. Participants will be invited to ask (among other things): How may we pursue biblical wisdom as we “re-think the world” when our Christian traditions seem convinced that biblical truth may be disconnected from—or simply applied to—the most pressing and perplexing issues of our time?

On Tuesday, the hybrid course, The Observant Participant: Applying Research Craft to Professional Practice led by Dr. Gideon Strauss will begin. This is a key course in the MA-EL program, led by the question: How do I make sense of my own experience as a practitioner and how do I learn from my experience? This course will draw on the critical reflective practices of other practitioners, will equip participants with the methodological tools of qualitative researchers, and will cultivate an attitude of attentiveness informed by the approach to practice taken by phenomenologists—becoming philosophically skilful students of our own lived human experience. The hope is, together, to become more observant participants and strengthen our capacity as reflective practitioners.

Also on Tuesday, the course Nietzsche, Foucault and the Genealogical Approach to the History of Philosophy will be led by Dr. Bob Sweetman. This seminar examines that philosophical approach to the history of philosophy that travels under the name of “genealogy.”  It does so in terms of selected texts of the tradition’s two major figures: its founder, Friedrich Nietzsche and the presently ubiquitous Michel Foucault.  It examines the role that genealogical study of the history of philosophy has in the philosophical construction of its practitioners and what they think is truly first and deepest in the history they so study.

On Wednesday, the course Hermeneutics and Deconstruction will be led by Dr. Jim Olthuis. Against the background of Heidegger's Being and Time, this seminar will contrast Gadamerian "Hermeneutics" and   Derridean "Deconstruction." Attention will then focus on Derridean John D. Caputo's 2019 Cross and Cosmos as an exercise in reading-with as rabbi/poet.

On Thursday morning, Dr. Rebekah Smick will be teaching her course: The Aesthetics of Compassion. In this course, participants will examine the interface between philosophy and works of tragic drama as that interface pertains to the psychology and aesthetics of compassion. Looking to such writers as Plato, Aristotle, Seneca, Augustine, Dante, Shakespeare, Dostoevsky, Friedrich Nietzsche and Simone Weil, we will investigate the place of compassion in Western philosophy and theology and the roles that art and imagination have played in the stimulation of compassionate response. 

On Thursday afternoon, Dr. Nik Ansell will be teaching his course Facing the Darkness: The (Human) Nature of Evil. In this interdisciplinary theology seminar, we shall probe the (arguably anthropocentric) origin and nature of evil by engaging key biblical, philosophical, psychological, and anthropological resources. Central to course discussions will be a sapiential (wisdom-oriented) re-reading of the Fall narrative (Genesis 3–4), set against the backdrop of the good, yet largely wild, creation of Genesis 1–2. Topics will include "protest atheism" and lament literature (e.g. Job), original sin and fear, and the correlation between victim and agent.

Please continue to pray for our Junior Members during this time of remote learning -- they really miss each other and the spontaneous conversations and coffee runs with Senior Members. Pray that ICS will be able to recreate that "vibe" as much as possible via Zoom, over various time zones. 

Monday, September 21 - Friday, September 25:

We would appreciate prayers for the Leadership Team as they continue to work out the ICS strategic plan, formulated last year at this time, which is geared to enhance our academic programming and increase our institutional revenue. Pray for clarity and wisdom in our thinking as we develop, and then implement, strategies that will take us to that goal.

Please pray for those involved in preparing our Fall issue of Perspective, as authors, editors, organisers, designers, and printers. It is always a challenge to get such a publication ready in a timely manner, and we ask our Lord to guide and uphold all contributors to the process as they aim to mail this issue to supporters in the coming months.

Over the past few weeks, the ICS/CPRSE team has been preparing the third volume of the Currents in Reformational Thought series for publication. The volume will feature the work of The King’s University Professor and ICS Cross-Appointed Faculty Jeffrey Dudiak and is due to be published later this Fall. Please pray for Dr. Dudiak and the editorial team as they bring this project to completion. 

Monday, September 28 - Wednesday, September 30:

We ask for your prayers for Harley Dekker as he prepares for the auditors and the preparation of the year-end statements this month. This is a very detailed and lengthy process so please pray for strength and clarity for Harley as he seeks to complete this task as quickly as possible in the midst of the many other aspects of administration in which he is involved.

In one month, ICS/CPRSE will begin ICS’s Fourth Undergraduate Workshop, “Evil, Resistance, and Judgment: Creating a World Fit for Human Habitation,” in a remote learning format. For the next month, participants and respondents will engage in preparatory discussions for the online sessions. Please pray for the success of this event and for all those involved in making it a reality. 

At this time, all of us at ICS would like to express our gratitude to our amazing community for your wonderful support throughout the summer. Your many notes of encouragement and your generous financial gifts have made it possible for us ‘make ends meet’ and allowed us to keep pursuing our vision of providing innovative and inspiring learning experiences for our students. As we head into a new academic year, which looks very different than it did last year, we are excited about what God is going to do in us and through us. This is possible because you were and continue to be there for us -- thank you!

“A child named ‘Charity’”

As both a faculty member and President of ICS, I have to move between the academic world and the very different world of philanthropy. From listening to and learning from my students and academic colleagues, I must move to listening to and learning from the wider ICS support community. Hearing people’s stories about why they support ICS—including what they hope and wish for from it—always ends up encouraging me in my sense of why ICS is important, and how it must continue to honour your support by making a meaningful and transformative contribution to the growth of wisdom in our chaotic and dangerous times.

In moving between these conversations, I am also struck by the overlapping concerns of the two groups: together we all act from the conviction that God in Jesus the Messiah calls us to be a healing and transformative witness to a good yet suffering world. Recently, ICS received a generous gift from the children of a supporter who has been with us since our earliest days, and who shares this conviction. The family let me know that the gift was made to honour the wishes of their recently widowed father, who had impressed upon them his love for ICS and its mission in Christian higher education.

When I called the father to thank him, I could not have guessed what he wished to say. “I have five biological children,” he told me, “but long ago my wife and I adopted a sixth child, whom we have named ‘Charity’.” It took me a moment to realize that he wasn’t talking about an actual adopted sixth child, but was rather providing me with a metaphor to explain his philosophy of giving. Simply put, he had decided to bestow upon his five, no six, children a pre-inheritance. Of that money, he instructed his children to divide the sixth portion between five charities that he and his wife had faithfully supported, one of those being ICS.

I’m still pondering with wonder this donor’s philosophy of giving. He could have simply held back the sixth portion from his children, and donated that amount to the charities himself. Instead, he involved his children, like executors of a living will, and directed them to reach out to the charities on their own. Doing so allowed me to have meaningful exchanges with these good folks, which graciously provided me an opportunity to form new relationships with them. I guess what strikes me most is the wisdom behind this gesture, to have the donation become a form of witness on many different levels—to ICS, to his children, and, through my telling, to you, ICS’s wider community of support.

This donor’s wisdom, finally, led me to ponder charity as a form of love. The English word ‘charity’, as is well known, derives from the Latin caritas, which was used in the Vulgate to translate the Greek word agape. In a world that relies too heavily on charity as a band-aid to cover the wounds of injustice, we must also not forget that, even so, charity remains an act through which we may become conduits of God’s never-ending love for the world. And whenever we receive these cheerful gifts, we feel that love, as well as the responsibility to extend it to everyone we serve. Thank you for your generous faithfulness, friends! Be well!

-President Ronald A. Kuipers

Prayer Letter: August 2020

Monday, August 3 - Friday, August 7:

On Thursday this week, ICS will be hosting its third virtual Open House for the Masters in Educational Leadership (MA-EL) program. This time we have invited potential students and other "champions" of the MA-EL program (e.g. principals and influencers) to attend. Edith van der Boom, our new Assistant Professor of Philosophy of Education and Practice of Pedagogy, and Director of the MA-EL program, will introduce herself and her vision for the program. EIizabet Aras, our Academic Registrar, will explain the application process and present the program design. Please pray for Edith and Elizabet, and all the participants, that the Open House will be an effective vehicle for promoting the program.

Please pray these next two weeks for those students wishing to begin the Masters in Educational Leadership program this fall. ICS is accepting applications until August 15 so please pray that the recruitment efforts that have been going on all summer will bear fruit with a strong third cohort.

The Critical Faith podcasting crew and our Senior Members are hard at work recording snapshot interviews about this fall’s courses—all of which will be offered online for the duration of the semester. With discounts available for first-time auditors and ICS alumni/ae, an array of course topics on offer, and the ease of a once-a-week online seminar format, this is an unprecedented opportunity for students to participate in an ICS classroom from anywhere in the world. Please pray for the crew and for our Senior Members as they continue to spread the word and prepare for these courses ahead of the coming semester. If you’re interested in knowing exactly what we’re offering this fall or if you want to encourage someone to try an ICS course for themselves, you can find details on our website at www.icscanada.edu/fall-2020.

In light of the growing unrest about systemic racism and violence, and as a first step toward deep and long term institutional reflection on the ways we at ICS are complicit in and benefit from systemic racism, the CPRSE will introduce a series of reflections on our Ground Motive blog beginning this week. The series will feature some voices from within the ICS learning community in a conversation that will expand through the inclusion of BIPOC communities and organizations, and diverse philosophers and theologians. Keep an eye on Ground Motive for the start of this series and pray for those contributing to it, that they might speak graciously and insightfully. Please also pray that these efforts will indeed be a first key step in examining and wrestling with the various forms of privilege and complicity at play within the ICS community, and in asking how we might continually learn to better love our neighbours in our day.

Monday, August 10 - Friday, August 14:

Please pray this week for our Registrar, Elizabet Aras, as she prepares for student registration and the virtual fall retreat to be held in the second week of September. As well, Elizabet and Gideon will be hosting a pre-registration meeting for program students who need to take courses in the fall term on August 11. There are myriad details to take care of, so we ask God for clarity and discernment in the planning and implementation of these important events at the start of our school year.

On Thursday of this week, ICS will host its fourth and last virtual Open House. The Open House will follow the same format as the August 6th one (see above). So once again, we ask you to pray for Edith and Elizabet as they make their presentations and for all the participants that it would prove to be an informative and inspiring event.

The month of August marks the official beginning of our Fourth Annual Undergraduate Workshop. This time, we will work remotely with undergraduate students from across North America as they reflect on the concepts of evil, resistance, and judgment through an interdisciplinary lens. Please pray for the ICS/CPRSE team as we engage this keen group of students in dialogue and help them hone their scholarship skills in these unprecedented times.

Monday, August 17 - Friday, August 21:

Please pray this week for Gideon Strauss as he leads the last course in our Summer Online Learning Initiative: Lead From Where You Are: Making a Difference in the Face of Tough Problems, Big Questions, and Organizational Politics. This is a one-week intensive designed to help students develop a leadership language and use a set of tools and frameworks to assist them with diagnosing and addressing the toughest problems experienced by organizations, communities, institutions, and societies. Pray for Gideon and the students as they work out fresh insights and new skills together in a workshop format.

The Master of Educational Leadership program starts up this week. Cohort 1, which started the program in September 2018 will be doing two guided readings. Cohort 2, which began in August 2019, will be enrolled in Lead From Where You Are, which is also running this week. Cohort 3, which comprises the new students in the program, will be taking the first course in the program, Finding Joy in Learning. Please pray for Elizabet as she administers the registration and online classrooms for these courses, for the students who will be participating, and for Gideon Strauss and Edith van der Boom as they lead the learning process.

We also want to pray for the various projects which our Junior Members are working on: theses, proposals, reading lists, dissertations, independent research, presentations and coursework. We pray that the summer season has been an opportunity for them to follow through on these projects and that it brings renewed inspiration and vigour for the upcoming school year.

Monday, August 24 - Friday, August 28:

We ask for your prayers this week for our administrative staff as they seek to ensure that all the pieces are in place for the beginning of the school year. Pray too for our faculty as they prepare their courses for online delivery this semester. We ask for God’s grace and wisdom as they work together, and for keen discernment in meeting the opportunities and challenges facing ICS at this time. We give thanks to God for sending each of them to serve the Institute’s mission with commitment and dedication.

Normally at this time we would ask for prayer for our Junior Members, both returning and new, as they prepare to come to Toronto to begin a new academic year. However, all our classes will be wholly online for at least the fall semester so we will only be able to see our students virtually. Please pray for our faculty and administrators as we prepare to provide the optimum learning experience online. And pray for both our new and returning students that they will have a fruitful online learning experience and that we will all find creative ways to build community at a distance. 

Monday, August 31:

Please pray today for Elizabet Aras as she flies to Sweden on September 2nd to be with her parents who have just recently been reunited after being separated during the COVID-19 pandemic. Pray that the travel arrangements will go smoothly and that Elizabet will be at peace during the flight and when she arrives in Stockholm. We ask God to watch over her as she re-integrates into life with her family again and that the family will remain healthy.

As we take a moment to look back over the summer, please also join us in a prayer of thanksgiving for all the Summer Online Learning Initiative courses that were delivered over the last few months. We thank God for each of the many students that took part in the five courses that were offered, and for each of the course leaders for the gifts of their time and efforts spent crafting these individual courses and guiding students’ learning experiences. 

In Memoriam: M. Elaine Botha

by Gideon Strauss

Belovéd of God, Elaine Botha (1938-2020) rests in peace and will rise in glory. She was a pioneering scholar, a wise mentor and a dear friend to many, and a brave voice for justice and love.

As a scholar Elaine worked primarily on metaphor and the philosophy of the social sciences, and made innovative contributions to her own Reformational tradition. She completed two doctorates at the beginning of the 1970s, one at the then Potchefstroom University for Christian Higher Education in her native South Africa, advised by C. N. Venter, and the other at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, advised by Hendrik Van Riessen and André Troost. She taught philosophy at the Potchefstroom University (1969 to 1995) and served as academic vice president (1995 to 2000) and director of the Dooyeweerd Centre (2000 to 2004) at Redeemer University in Canada. In 2005 she was a visiting scholar of the Center for Semiotics at Aarhus University in Denmark. She also taught as an adjunct faculty member at the Institute for Christian Studies.

Many people can attest to Elaine’s kindness and hospitality as a mentor and a friend. My own experience of her as a mentor and friend began in the early 1990s, when Elaine and Craig Bartholomew co-founded the Christian Worldview Network. The CWN brought together academics in the Reformational tradition, artists seeking a Christian imagination, and activists working with a Christian democratic vision for the political and societal transformation of apartheid South Africa. The CWN invited South Africans towards an integral vision of Christian life in its gatherings and with its magazine, The Big Picture, and continues to influence Christians making art in South Africa through its 1993 manifesto, Christians and the Arts in South Africa. But perhaps to the most enduring effect, the CWN served as a context in which many of us then in our twenties could enjoy the wise mentorship offered by Elaine.

Much of Elaine’s courage was practiced quietly and privately. In public life, she worked against the racism, misogyny, and patriarchy of Afrikaner Christian-nationalism for decades, not least so at the Potchefstroom University where she studied and taught. She was a signatory of the 1977 Koinonia Declaration, denying a biblical foundation to the racism of apartheid political theology, at a time and in a place where making such a public statement came with a considerable cost, both professionally and socially.

Late in life Elaine married Bob Goudzwaard, the Dutch Reformational economist and politician, with whom she retired in South Africa.

Along with Elaine’s friends, students, and colleagues I pray for her rest in the embrace of God and look forward to continuing our conversations in the world to come.