Institute for Christian Studies

10/09/2026

Reflecting on her first 90 days as President of ICS, Beth Green considers what gratitude looks like amid anxiety, change, grief, responsibility, and imperfect community. The result is less a celebration of “success” than a reflection on practices we can return to: encouragement, prayer, ethical action, and thanksgiving grounded in grace.

Read the full piece here: https://instituteforchristianstudies.substack.com/p/the-practice-of-gratitude-and-the

10/08/2026

A few moments from A Faithful Future in Grand Rapids last night, with Nicholas Wolterstorff, Ryan Struyk, and ICS President Beth Green.

We’re grateful for everyone who joined us for an evening of conversation, music, and community, and for the chance to keep imagining what faithful Christian witness can look like in our present moment.

10/06/2026

What does it mean to inherit a Christian tradition marked by both liberating good news and the long history of empire? In this reflection on Matthew D. Taylor’s Defying Tyrants, Ron Kuipers considers Taylor’s image of the “colonized God,” the temptation to remake Jesus in Caesar’s image, and the fragile work of resisting the weight of Christianity’s imperial legacy. It is a meditation on power, service, faith, doubt, and the possibility of learning the “stooping dance” of Jesus.

Read the full piece here:
https://instituteforchristianstudies.substack.com/p/what-else-is-as-heavy

10/02/2026

What happens when a history of white Christian womanhood in the United States sounds uncomfortably familiar north of the border?

In her reflection on Kristin Kobes Du Mez’s new Live Laugh Love, Angela Reitsma Bick traces the Christian books, CCM, direct-sales living rooms, and assumptions about success and authority that travelled easily across the Canada–U.S. border. The similarities matter. So do the differences in where Christianity may now be headed in each country.

Read the full reflection here: https://instituteforchristianstudies.substack.com/p/where-live-laugh-love-hits-close

09/29/2026

As you settle into the rhythms of fall, consider a new one: monthly giving.

A gift of $30 a month helps sustain ICS as a place to learn, ask honest questions, and grow in faith together.

Become a monthly donor: https://donate.icscanada.edu/monthly

09/25/2026

In his latest for our Substack, Taylor reads the Gospels against Roman imperial power and argues that Jesus’s teaching challenges hierarchy, domination, and Christian nationalism. It is a provocative theological argument about power, discipleship, and the church’s public witness.

Read Taylor’s complete article: https://instituteforchristianstudies.substack.com/p/how-do-we-recover-the-politics-of

09/18/2026

In a new article, Mark Standish reflects on Matthew D. Taylor’s definition of Christian supremacy and asks what happens when the impulse to control shows up closer to home: in classrooms, churches, families, and the stories Christians tell about who has “the right way.”

Read the full piece, then join Free to be Faithful’s free Big Read with Matthew D. Taylor on October 8. You can find it here: https://instituteforchristianstudies.substack.com/p/the-ways-of-christ

Mark Standish reflects what Christian supremacy looks like when it moves from politics into classrooms, communities, and our own habits of faith.

09/17/2026

"Christian antichrists (n.): those who use power to harm others in the name of Jesus."

Join us on Thursday, October 8 at 7PM ET for an online conversation with Matthew D. Taylor on his new book Defying Tyrants.

Register and we'll send you an excerpt → f2bf.icscanada.edu/big-read

An evening with Matthew D. Taylor. Thursday, October 8, 2026, 7:00 PM ET. Free, online, and open to anyone. Register and we'll send you an excerpt of the book.

09/08/2026

In her latest reflection, Beth Green writes about the strange mix of anticipation and nerves that arrives with a new school year, and turns to Ray Bradbury’s Dandelion W**e for a way of thinking about memory, loss, and the passing of summer.

At ICS, that transition also means welcoming new students, beginning new courses, and making room for another season of learning together.

Read the full piece here: https://instituteforchristianstudies.substack.com/p/back-to-school-edition

**e

09/04/2026

In this new reflection on Wendell Berry, Matt Bonzo writes about loss, memory, work, community, and what it means to “practice resurrection” after the communities we love have been fractured. Berry’s wisdom does not offer an escape into a simpler past. It asks us to remember what is good, resist what destroys people and places, and do the work at hand.

Read Matt’s full reflection here: https://instituteforchristianstudies.substack.com/p/the-long-way-home