Recently, I found myself in an unexpected place: sitting in a conference room on the top floor of an office building in Ottawa, listening to a columnist from a major American newspaper describe the difficulties of being a Democrat and a journalist in Washington. Behind me, through the window, stood the Château Laurier, and behind that, Canada’s Parliament buildings. My vantage point allowed me to observe people coming and going through the office while I listened to our guest speaker.
One person made me sit up: a man in a suit and ball cap walking quickly through the office, a coiled earpiece tucked behind his ear. I looked around the table to see whether anyone else had noticed, but no one gave any indication. I have seen enough television to know what it meant: the man was either an RCMP officer or a Secret Service agent, and someone important was about to walk through.
Cardus is a non-partisan think tank dedicated to clarifying and strengthening the ways society’s institutions can work together for the common good. It is a Christian organization that draws inspiration from Catholic social teaching and the Reformed Protestant tradition. The Cardus NextGen program is a one-year professional development experience for young Canadian professionals. Something like a theological mini-MBA, it aims to help participants become as theologically mature as they are professionally competent.
With participants coming from law, medicine, politics, church leadership, and the charitable sector, I joined the program with a recommendation from my workplace, the Canadian Centre for Christian Charities. I expected to learn new ideas and meet interesting people. What I got was that, yes, but much more: a deeper understanding of Canada, Christian public life, and my place within them. One question from Cardus founder and CEO Michael Van Pelt framed the program well: “How do we understand our moment in a way that brings clarity for our institutions?” This question followed us across the country as we ruminated on many of the public policy issues facing Canadian society.
NextGen is unusual among professional development opportunities in Canada because it functions more as an investment than as a revenue stream. Cardus fully subsidizes the program, and the selection process is competitive. The course takes place across Canada through weekend seminars that are designed as both learning experiences and spiritual retreats. I met Cardus fellows and other Christian thinkers from across Canada and the United States, including several members of the Regent community, such as Bruce and Carolyn Hindmarsh and Uli Chi, and others who have taught at Regent in the past, like Steven Garber and Michael Goheen.
Unlike many professional learning opportunities, NextGen possessed a rare credibility and depth. This came partly from the generous learning culture in which Cardus staff and fellows operated, partly from the opportunity to develop mentoring relationships with experienced Christian leaders, and partly from the proximity of our conversations to actual institutions and public power. The importance of the Christian worldview was a key foundation throughout the year: Christianity not only as a source of personal devotion but also as a comprehensive account of reality, with applications to Canadian culture, policy, politics, and reconciliation.
Cardus Executive Vice President Ray Pennings made a deep impression on me by underscoring how difficult it can be to communicate that account of reality, particularly in a young province like British Columbia. As we travelled across Canada, I began to recognize that British Columbia often seemed more thoroughly secular than the other regions we visited. Faith here is not always opposed. Often it is simply unintelligible.
One of the highlights of the program was a week at Cardus’s Ottawa office. After a day of conversations about culture, theology, history, and political philosophy, we changed into formal wear and walked to Parliament Hill. The fall sitting had recently begun, and a member of Parliament had invited Cardus staff to join senators and MPs for a discussion about Quebec’s francophone identity and the future of language in Canada.
We left the Cardus office, a comfortable professional space where Christianity was a primary language. We entered the Booth Building, where policy and politics dominated the conversation and traditions such as Catholic social thought were largely absent. That evening, I watched Cardus leaders move fluently between these two worlds.
At one point, a Quebec senator made a comment that crossed from political philosophy into theology. Lacking experience in that territory, he stumbled into saying something that needed challenging. Cardus President Brian Dijkema corrected him quickly and respectfully, but also humorously, allowing the senator to save face as he accepted the rebuttal—showing, rather than telling, what Christian public engagement can look like.
The NextGen program significantly shifted my understanding of Quebec and Canada’s French heritage. Senior Fellow Father Deacon Andrew Bennett and J. C. Jasmin, Cardus’s Quebec lieutenant, shared that the Christian doctrine of the Incarnation should make Christians especially appreciative of unique peoples, places, languages, and histories. We see the dignity and value in distinct cultures, like Quebec. But incarnational theology as a pillar of human dignity must also extend beyond Quebec. Canada contains many distinct peoples and cultures, including Indigenous nations here in BC whose territories were never ceded and whose languages, institutions, and histories have endured enormous danger of being erased. Christians should be among the most faithful partners in the renewal of Indigenous languages, cultures, and institutions precisely because of our own heritage as stewards of the good news.
My conviction about this was deepened through Cecil Chabot’s teaching on Catholic social thought and reconciliation with First Nations. He described reconciliation as “building a future with our shared understanding.” His teaching exposed a weakness in the individualism of my own tradition of evangelicalism, which so often sees Christ’s redemption as a personal renewal only, with nothing to say about the renewal of creation or culture.
This more individualist account of salvation can leave Christians poorly equipped to address injustices with institutional roots. Evangelicals often sincerely desire that Indigenous people encounter Christ and find salvation, yet say little or nothing about the Christian institutions in our history that have attempted to suppress Indigenous cultures. If Christ is reconciling all creation, Christian witness must move beyond just inviting people into our existing institutions. Instead, we should be asking how we can rebuild them where they have caused harm in the past.
Having joined the program traveling from my home on Keats Island, which sometimes feels like the very far edge of Canada, I also observed subtler cultural differences during our time in Ottawa. Most notably, I saw how proximity to power changes the nature of conversation. There are ways of speaking to, and forming relationships, with those in power that can become more strategic than authentic, giving Ottawa a culture distinctly its own. The experience made me conscious of the risks that accompany power and more appreciative of Christians who can navigate political institutions faithfully.
The year passed quickly. I now find myself sitting on my porch, surrounded by fir trees, raising my children within the unceded territory of the Squamish people, and wondering whether the lessons I heard in those old stone buildings in Halifax, Ottawa, and Hamilton really happened, or were something I dreamed. From here, those places feel very far away from life in British Columbia, where questions about land, reconciliation, and institutional trust cannot be avoided.
My experience with Cardus has changed the way I understand my vocation. I have a far greater appreciation for Christian thought beyond my own evangelical tradition. I see Canadian society more distinctly through the Incarnation, the reconciliation of all creation, and the dignity of particular peoples and places. I have a clearer understanding of secularism as an inability to imagine the worldview of Christianity. I also have greater confidence that Christians can participate in public life without either retreating from society or attempting to dominate it.
The NextGen program confirmed that Regent, as an institution, and MALTS, as a program, are the right places for the next stage of my personal and professional formation. The appreciation for Jacques Ellul that I share with some Regent faculty all but sealed the decision. It also gave me a community of graduates across the country with whom I remain connected through text messages, Zoom calls, and dinner conversations whenever we find ourselves in one another’s cities. I do not expect to be in the same office as the United States ambassador again. But I am more certain about the kind of Christian I hope to become.