Black History Month and Racism in Canada

In Canada, February is Black History Month, an event that has existed since 1995 to celebrate the achievements and contributions of Canadians with African or Caribbean heritage. At DMC, we thought it would be good to interview someone with Caribbean heritage. So, we approached Bernadette Arthur, Race Relations Coordinator for the Office of Race Relations…

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A Conversation with John Schuurman

“Shalom is the first thing that comes to mind,” he says, in between bites of potato leek soup. “When I think of justice, I think of the Lord’s shalom, especially as it relates to those who are oppressed—including creation.” John Schuurman says these words with a quiet confidence, not realizing how profound they sound off…

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LGBTQ+ Christians and Your Church: 5 Steps Towards Hospitality

CC Image courtesy Lars Lundqvist (@arkland_swe) on Flickr

The above photo, “Reykjavik Pride”, is copyright (c) 2009 Lars Lundqvist and made available under a Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.0 license. “Responses to the question ‘Do you ever hear comments from church members that you believe would be offensive to people in your congregation who are attracted to the same sex?’ were . . . alarming: 61…

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Visualizing Restorative Justice (Part Two): An Infographic

While brainstorming for my next post on restorative justice, I ended up taking some time to create this infographic based on an appendix in Howard Zehr’s The Little Book of Restorative Justice. Take some time to look through it, and feel free to print it off. I think that this list provides some excellent reminders on…

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Visualizing Restorative Justice (Part One): Tapestries, Spider-webs, and Doilies

“Restorative justice” is a phrase that sounds very nice. It likely conjures up images of people smiling, of sunlight pouring through windows, of trees swaying in the wind—the stuff of daydreams. On the other hand, some might think of courtrooms, prisons, prisoners, lawyers and judges. Yet still others might think of “talking circles”, victim-offender conferences,…

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