Prayer Letter: September 2024

Monday, September 2 - Friday, September 6:

September marks the beginning of the 2024-25 academic year, and a continuation of distributive learning at ICS. This year, Senior Members will continue to offer virtual seminars, sessions, and guided readings to our Junior Members residing both in Toronto and elsewhere in the world. Our Junior Members are all at various stages of their programs, and as well as starting up classes once again, are also starting or continuing to work on their respective research and projects. Please pray for all our instructors and students, both new and returning, as they begin this new academic year at ICS.

We are looking forward to welcoming a number of new Junior Members this fall in our different programs! 

• Four new MA students: Clinton Stockwell, Tyler May-Gruthusen, Chris Christiansen, and Alayna Erickson.

• Four new MA-EL program students: Amanda Breimer, Keeler Kauffeldt, Danyse Nywening, and Brooklyn Sinclair.

• And one PhD student: Benjamin Strachan.

Please pray along with us that these JMs will have a successful start to their studies at ICS!

Monday, September 9 - Friday, September 13:

This is the first week of classes at ICS! Please especially pray for each Senior Member as they continue to find creative ways to teach course material virtually, dive deep into important and complex topics, and provide experiences that enhance a sense of community in their classrooms. Pray also for the students participating in each class that, despite the differences in time and place, it will be an inspiring and interactive learning experience for all! These are the courses to keep in your prayers this week and throughout the semester:

• Biblical Foundations: Narrative, Wisdom, and the Art of Interpretation with Dr. Nik Ansell (Wednesdays, 6:00-9:00pm ET). This course will explore the Bible 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. In asking whether and how the biblical story may find its future in our ongoing narratives, we will attempt to identify which hermeneutical methods and sensitivities might help us discern its significance for present day life, including the academic enterprise.

• Cultivating Learning Communities of Belonging with Dr. Edith van der Boom (Blended Online Synchronous/Asynchronous). This is a course for instructional leaders and administrators considering school and classroom cultures. Course content will include attention to social and cultural contexts, racial justice, Indigenous perspectives, human sexuality, restorative practices, and how these topics impact and form school and classroom cultures. 

• Facing the Darkness: The (Human) Nature of Evil with Dr. Nik Ansell (Tuesdays, 10:00am-1:00pm ET). This interdisciplinary theology seminar shall probe the origin and nature of evil by engaging key biblical, philosophical, psychological, and anthropological resources. Central to the class discussions will be a sapiential (wisdom-oriented) re-reading of the Fall narrative of Genesis 3–4, set against the backdrop of the good, yet largely wild, creation of Genesis 1–2. In addition to surveying a variety of contemporary theodicies read up against the challenge offered by both “protest atheism” and the biblical lament literature (especially the book of Job), students shall also pay special attention to the correlation between victim and agent in the ongoing dynamics to “original sin” and to the concomitant role of fear in the construction of culture. 

• Philosophy at the Limit: Richard Kearney with Dr. Ronald A. Kuipers (Thursdays, 2:00-5:00pm ET). This course is a study of Kearney’s trilogy Philosophy at the Limit as well as his book Anatheism, focusing on his exploration of that “frontier zone where narratives flourish and abound.” Participants will examine Kearney’s attempt to sketch a narrative eschatology that draws on the work of Heidegger, Levinas, Derrida, and Ricoeur.

• Religion, Life, and Society: Reformational Philosophy with Dr. Neal DeRoo (Tuesdays, 2:00-5:00pm ET). The course tests the relevance of this tradition for recent developments in Western philosophy. Special attention is given to critiques of foundationalism, metaphysics, and modernity within reformational philosophy and in other schools of thought.

• The Aesthetics of Compassion with Dr. Rebekah Smick (Thursdays, 10:00am-1:00pm ET). Looking to such writers as Plato, Aristotle, Seneca, Augustine, Dante, Shakespeare, Dostoevsky, Friedrich Nietzsche and Simone Weil, this course 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. 

• The Craft of Reflective Practice with Dr. Gideon Strauss (Blended Online Synchronous/Asynchronous). In this course we will learn how to do critical reflective practice, primarily by telling stories about our everyday professional lives. We will zoom in on the story of an ordinary day at work, and then zoom out to the story of our career to date, zoom out further to the story of our work community, and zoom out even further to the overarching story of God’s world. In the process we will learn qualitative research skills, receive an introduction to phenomenology (the philosophical study of lived experience), develop our own approach to praxis (that is, the craft of morally-oriented, theoretically-informed, and theory-generating critically reflective practice), and, most significantly, come to terms with who we are in what we do.

• The Radical Theopoetics of John D. Caputo with Dr. James Olthuis (Tuesdays, 6:00-9:00pm ET). This seminar will explore John D. Caputo’s Theopoetics, a "weak theology" of narratives, prayers and praise in response to the call of God in contrast to a "strong" theology of predicative claims about the existence and nature of God. 

Please continue to pray for our Senior Members, Junior Members, and students in these courses during this term. Pray that they might experience a close, communal learning environment as much as possible via Zoom and across various time zones.

Monday, September 16 - Friday, September 20:

We share the sad news that ICS Board Trustee and Former Board Chair Marci Frederick passed away on August 25, after a battle with cancer that spread aggressively to her brain in June. Marci was an ICS alum (M.Phil.F. 1992) and ICS Director of Library and Information Services (1992-98), and was a great friend to ICS throughout the years. Marci was a person of fierce intelligence and abiding faith, a keen advocate for social justice, and an engaging interpreter and preacher of the Word. We ask you to join us in prayer as we mourn her passing and celebrate her life and herculean contribution to our community. A memorial service for Marci has been planned at Immanuel Mennonite Church, and will be livestreamed on Tuesday, September 17th at 6:00pm EDT. (Follow this link for the memorial service livestream: https://www.facebook.com/events/s/memorial-service-for-marci-fre/1016575846616517/)

We would appreciate prayers for the Leadership Team as it continues to work out the ICS strategic plan, which is geared to enhancing our academic programming and increasing our tuition revenue and institutional longevity. We pray also for the ICS Academic Council as it resumes the work of academic governance during this month. The council will focus on ICS's academic policies with regard to the assessment of student work during this term. Pray for clarity and wisdom in our thinking as we develop, and continue to implement, ways that will enable us to keep pursuing our goal of offering truly distinct educational opportunities to the students who come our way.

Please pray for those involved in preparing and contributing to our upcoming fall issue of Perspective as authors, editors, organizers, designers, and printers. This issue will highlight some of the voices and stories of our incoming Junior Members (among others) and should offer an exciting glimpse into their work. We ask our Lord to grant all contributors creativity and insight as we aim to send this issue to our supporters in the coming months.

Monday, September 23 - Friday, September 27:

We ask for your prayers for Director of Finance Harley Dekker as he prepares for the auditors and the preparation of the year-end statements this month. This is always a very detailed and lengthy process, so please pray for strength and clarity of mind 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.

During the month of September, the CPRSE team will be planning its annual cycle of research projects, publications, and public outreach events. This year, many of our events and publications will focus on questions surrounding the notion of tradition, particularly as our institution seeks to carry forward the rich tradition of inquiry and scholarship that animates the work and lives of our Senior and Junior Members. Please pray that the CPRSE’s work will be fruitful and responsible, and that the programming offered can serve as a space for transformative reflection for our community and beyond.

We pray for the families and households, friends and faith communities of the members of our ICS scholarly community. We are grateful for their company and encouragement, aware of their sacrifices, and prayerful for their flourishing. As summer shifts into fall, we pray for the adjustments in our schedules and in our priorities to go well, and for our hearts to beat along with the seasonal rhythms of our lives. For everything there is a season and a time for every matter under heaven (Ecclesiastes 3, NRSV).

Wild God

The voice of the Lord flashes forth flames of fire. 

The voice of the Lord shakes the wilderness;

the Lord shakes the wilderness of Kadesh.

 

The voice of the Lord causes the oaks to whirl,
and strips the forest bare;

and in his temple all say, “Glory!”

 

—Psalm 29:7-9

 

Mere days after wildfires ravaged Jasper, Alberta, my family and I were getting ready to attend a Kuipers family reunion at my sister’s cottage near Golden, BC. Golden was under an evacuation alert at that time too. Fortunately, the winds changed, the temperature cooled, and we were able to go ahead with our much-anticipated visit.
 
At a bookstore in Golden, on a hazy day choked by smoke from the surrounding fires, I chanced upon a book by the musician Nick Cave, a long form interview with his friend Seán O’Hagen entitled Faith, Hope, and Carnage. What an apt title, I thought, and bought the book. While this book is many things, it is also a moving testimony to Cave’s Christian faith, a hard-won faith, born of suffering, in a God who, hovering over the roiling and dangerous possibilities of the fathomless deep, yet considered it well worth the risk to plunge into that abyss and transform its sheer possibility into a liveable cosmos, a wild world for God to love and for all God’s creatures to frolic.
 
But the history of this cosmos of proliferating possibility is also a history of carnage. In this world, taking up the joyful gift of life also means accepting the inevitability of suffering and grief. It’s part of the deal. The wild God blew a hole through Nick Cave’s life when he lost his teenage son Arthur in 2015. Instead of turning inward, however, Cave decided to work through his grief publicly, through his music and writing, in the hope that sharing his story might help others enduring similar pain.
 
Surprisingly, in the bowels of his pain and suffering, Cave discovered in himself and other grievers an emerging zeal, “an audacity in the face of things, a kind of reckless refusal to submit to the condition of this world.” (159). Simply sharing his grief, he noticed, also created the possibility for people to show him their care, offering small, loving touches and gestures that helped carry him and his wife Susie through their grief, leading him to draw the following incredible conclusion:
 

…I came to the conclusion that the world wasn’t bad, at all—in fact, what we think of as bad, or as sin, is actually suffering. And that the world is not animated by evil, as we are so often told, but by love, and that, despite the suffering of the world, or maybe in defiance of it, people mostly just cared. Susie and I instinctively understood that we needed to move towards this loving force, or perish. (170)

There is a deep message in Cave’s journey through the work of mourning—a journey from carnage to, dare I say, glory. His moving story of opening himself up to receiving a loving, albeit wild force amid his suffering, indeed a force that carried him through his suffering, will stay with me for a long time. It is a message well worth pondering at the start of a new school year, as we help students engage the pieces of our Maker’s wild, broken creation, and encourage them to discern the different, surprising ways these scattered shards can be put back together again.
 
Shalom, friends
Ron Kuipers

In Memoriam: Marci Frederick, Fierce Intelligence Meets Abiding Faith (September 30, 1960-August 25, 2024)

 by Ron Kuipers

Gay Marcille Frederick, or “Marci” as she was known to her family and many friends, first walked through ICS’s doors at 229 College Street as a master’s student in 1987. Since then, she was a constant and encouraging presence in the life of our academic community.

In addition to being an ICS alum, she served as ICS’s Director of Library and Information Services from 1992-98, and later as an ICS Board Trustee from 2018 until her passing on August 25 from an aggressive brain cancer. She ably undertook the responsibilities of ICS Board Chair from 2022-23, until her cancer treatments forced her to step down from that role. 

Marci achieved ICS’s Master of Philosophical Foundations degree in 1992, defending a thesis entitled Haydn White on Historical Narrative: A Critique under the supervision of C. Thomas McIntire. This was one of three master’s degrees Marci earned, in addition to a Master of Library Science and a Master of Arts in American History, both from the University of Wisconsin.

I first met Marci in 1992 when I joined ICS as a master’s student. Among many delightful details, I remember her passion for and deep knowledge of all things baseball, which she would share with anyone interested during our 3 o’clock tea times. I also recall when, as librarian, and after learning that I had a keen interest in the philosophy of Ludwig Wittgenstein, she gifted me a copy of his Philosophical Investigations that the library was discarding. I still own that green, hardbound copy, which has since accumulated many years worth of repeated readings, underlining, and marginalia—and is even more precious to me now.

In the role of Library Director, Marci carried her passion for supporting students in their studies from ICS to King’s University in Edmonton (1998-2006), Trinity Christian College in Palos Heights, Illinois (2006-15), and finally Eastern Mennonite University in Harrisonburg, Virginia (2015-24). In fact, she remained my de facto librarian long after she left ICS. As I perused my record of email exchanges with Marci in preparing this memorial, I came across many spontaneously sent emails with links to book notices and reviews, just because she knew I would be interested. That was Marci.

Marci was also a passionate advocate for social justice, both on campus and off. She served on university committees on environmental sustainability, racial/ethnic diversity, and gender equality. Her sense of justice was formed by her Mennonite faith and her love of scripture. Marci was a regular preacher, and at the time of her death she was working toward the completion of a Master of Divinity degree. In June of 2023, she sent me a copy of a wonderful sermon she preached on 2 Corinthians 2:12-3:6. Her message was about how God in Christ calls us to share our power by giving it away. Two memorable lines from her sermon stay with me: “God is not concerned about getting something back. God is concerned with passing something on.”; and “Sharing power is the gospel, because sharing power is what love does.”

Marci was to me that rare Christian who practiced what she preached, sharing her life until the end. She is survived by her husband Paul Cook, and her child Blue, also known as Jocelyn.

In Memoriam: Arvilla Sipma, an Inspiration to Adventure and Difference

by Dean Dettloff

Whenever Arvilla Sipma (1947-2024) was preparing to travel, which she did often, whether to somewhere new or somewhere familiar, she always seemed to have a related book, usually an historical novel. Reading was one of many means by which Arvilla primed herself to receive and explore the world around her, and she was eager to invite others into that exploration. If my wife Emily and I were planning to go somewhere, she would immediately recall a book or article she had read about this or that place, from Barcelona to Kathmandu, and more likely than not she could produce it within the day from a basement filled with texts. 

Her adventurous nature was in stark contrast to her origins in rural Iowa and Minnesota, where she grew up on a farm in a challenging environment. It did not take long for her to travel, first to university, at Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and then to Paris and across Europe. A bout of cancer as a young woman gave her a perduring feeling that her life was a gift, one she was determined not to take for granted. Landing in Toronto, Arvilla made a career teaching languages with foreign students, always interested in the wide variety of human experience. From taking courses at the Institute for Christian Studies to living in the Innstead Co-op, Arvilla found a community of courageous and creative young people interested in faith, thoughtfulness, and justice.

Arvilla was an adventurous sort not only geographically, but spiritually, too. She had converted to Catholicism, but she clearly retained her formation as a Calvinist in the ICS mold, coming to inhabit the two spiritualities seamlessly. As a Catholic student at ICS myself, her example was a comfort to me, showing that one didn’t need to make some final choice, but could appreciate wherever the God of love and justice was speaking. Whether at Beaches Presbyterian Church where she and her husband Jim Olthuis attended or at Our Lady of Lourdes, a parish served by the Jesuits where she also went to Mass, Arvilla loved the Lord and her neighbor without friction between her ecumenical commitments.

When Emily and I moved to Toronto from the US, both from small towns ourselves, Arvilla became a fast friend. Eager to support ICS students, not only because of her marriage to longtime ICS Senior Member (now Emeritus) Jim Olthuis but also because of her own history with the Institute, Arvilla quickly welcomed us into the home that she and Jim had lovingly nested in not far from our apartment. Through the hospitality of Arvilla and Jim, we got to know the coffee shops, restaurants, characters, and community of our neighborhood.

As US expatriates, we routinely discussed the strange feeling of living outside of one’s home country, even one next door, especially as so many bizarre events have transpired in our shared country of origin. Arvilla would at once wish US Americans would take a wider view of the world, something she had worked so hard to cultivate, and in the same breath beam with pride when discussing an author or activist who shared our national identity. And as dual citizens, we would discuss the many benefits of the country we had all come to call home, while acknowledging so many of its problems mirrored the ones across the border. 

It strikes me only now, reflecting on Arvilla’s identities and generosity, how postmodern her life in fact was, embracing what others might take to be contradictions—Catholicism and Protestantism, dual citizenship, rural and urban life, etc.—as non-oppositional differences, unified in the course of a life well-lived and open to the Other.

What I will remember most about Arvilla is her love and care. It would be typical to find Arvilla in a coffee shop, where she was known warmly by staff, writing letters on stationary to friends and relatives, some of whom she had been writing with for decades. She talked regularly about her brothers, whom she cared for deeply, and about her cousins in North America, the Netherlands, France, and Sweden. 

Most of all, her relationship with Jim was one of mutuality, tenderness, and excitement, supporting one another’s well-being and ambitions and making room for each other’s unique expression of “human be(com)ing,” to borrow a phrase from Jim.

Arvilla passed unexpectedly in hospital on June 2nd, following six weeks of illness. As she joins the many saints who have preceded her, I find myself thinking of her willingness to take risks, her generosity and openness to newness, and the abiding love with which she cared for so many of us, all of which she will undoubtedly take with her on this next adventure.

Arvilla Sipma, pray for us.

* * *

Arvilla was an avid supporter of the work of the Institute for Christian Studies. At the request of the family, donations may be made in Arvilla's memory to ICS at www.icscanada.edu/support or by phone at 416-979-2331 ext. 223.

Héctor Acero Ferrer Appointed Director of Lifelong Learning

ICS is delighted to announce the appointment of Héctor Acero Ferrer to the position of interim Director of Lifelong Learning on a term-limited contract basis starting on August 1, 2024.  Héctor has been the Associate Director of the Centre for Philosophy, Religion, and Social Ethics (CPRSE) at ICS since the beginning of the 2017-2018 academic year and co-editor of ICS's Perspective magazine since September 2016, and he continues in those positions. Since 2022, Héctor has also been the Interim Program Coordinator of the BA in Christian Studies & Global Citizenship of Martin Luther University College at Wilfrid Laurier University. In that capacity he has not only chaired the BA Program Committee and taught extensively in the program, but has also facilitated the review of the BA in Christian Studies & Global Citizenship and  the creation of a new BA degree program. Héctor has been the Graduate Student Director of the Society for Ricoeur Studies since October 2021 and the Chair of the Young Adult Committee of the North American Interfaith Network (NAIN) since May 2021. He also served as the President of the Board of Directors of Shalem Mental Health Network from 2016 to 2021.

Héctor completed a Master of Divinity degree at Regis College in the Toronto School of Theology at the University of Toronto during 2010-2013 with a thesis titled, “Ministry as Theological Therapy: A Reinterpretation of ‘The Pastoral’ through Ludwig Wittgenstein’s Language-Games” and a Master of Arts in Philosophy at the Institute for Christian Studies during 2013-2016 with a thesis titled, “Liberating Tradition: An Exploration of Liberation Theology through the Lens of Paul Ricoeur’s Hermeneutics.” At present Héctor is working on a doctorate in philosophy in the joint PhD program of the Institute for Christian Studies and the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, with a dissertation on the topic, "Imagining Liberation Amidst Violence: Liberation Theology, Social Imagination, and the Voices of Conflict Survivors in Colombia’s Ecclesial Base Communities." 

In addition to many published papers, reports, and a book chapter, Héctor was one of the editors of both Gestures of Grace: Essays in Honour of Robert Sweetman (2023) and Seeking Stillness or The Sound of Wings: Scholarly and Artistic Comment on Art, Truth, and Society in Honour of Lambert Zuidervaart (2021). His two most recent conference papers were presented in 2023: in June, at the Sixième édition des ateliers d’été du Fonds Ricœur: Soi-même comme un autre in Paris, with the title, “Our-self as Another? Understanding the Development of Narrative Identity in Ecclesial Base Communities through the Lens of Paul Ricoeur (Part I),” and in October, at the 17th Annual Society for Ricoeur Studies Conference in Toronto, with the title, “Our-self as Another? Understanding the Development of Narrative Identity in Ecclesial Base Communities through the Lens of Paul Ricoeur (Part II).” Héctor was also instrumental in designing and presenting the recent ICS conference Beyond Culture Wars.

In his new role as ICS Director of Lifelong Learning Héctor will be tasked primarily with conducting a comprehensive review of the institution’s current public outreach initiatives and a survey of potential areas of growth in the field of continuing education, with the goal of developing a cohesive lifelong learning program in collaboration with the administration and faculty. We are grateful for Héctor's service in this new role and welcome his insights and expertise in developing this initiative at ICS.

Neal DeRoo Appointed Interim Director of MA-PhD Program

The Institute for Christian Studies is pleased to announce the appointment of Neal DeRoo to the position of Interim Director of the MA-PhD Program for a twelve-month period as of July 1, 2024. Dr. DeRoo has been a Senior Member and Professor of Philosophy at ICS since the beginning of the 2023-2024 academic year. Before coming to ICS, Dr. DeRoo served the Christian community in a variety of ways, including as Canada Research Chair in Phenomenology and Philosophy of Religion at The King's University in Edmonton, as Director of the Andreas Center for Reformed Scholarship and Service at Dordt College, and on various boards, including the Editorial Board of Christian Scholar's Review and the Board of Trustees of the ICS (2014-2016). He was also instrumental in designing the recent ICS conference Beyond the Culture Wars.

In addition to his work in Christian scholarship, Dr. DeRoo is also well known in academic philosophical circles, where his work reinterpreting spirituality as a foundational element of how we experience the world has made important contributions to topics as varied as racialization and genderization to how we worship God. He is the author or editor of eight books (with a ninth forthcoming), and has been invited to give lectures and lead seminars throughout North America and Europe.

These extensive connections throughout both Christian scholarship and academic philosophy will serve him well in his new role, as the Director of the MA-PhD Program will be tasked primarily with coordinating a comprehensive review of ICS's MA-PhD program during the 2024-2025 academic year, helping shape that program and its role at the ICS for the next 10 years. A secondary responsibility will be to work with ICS's Recruitment Coordinator in the recruitment of students into this program.

We are grateful for Dr. DeRoo's service in this role and welcome his insights and expertise in shaping ICS academic programming.