Trinity Western University Changes Course on Community Covenant, and There's No Backlash

It was big news when the Supreme Court denied an appeal by Trinity Western University (TWU) to have a decision against its law school overturned because of the university’s stance against homosexuality.

It was even bigger news when the school made a change to that stance.

In June, the Court ruled that the law societies of British Columbia and Ontario could refuse to accredit TWU’s proposed law school because of its community covenant.

The chief objection by the societies was how all students were required to sign the covenant, which included a provision that students “abstain” from “sexual intimacy that violates the sacredness of marriage between a man and a woman.”

In making the ruling, the Court agreed with the societies that the covenant discriminated against LGBTQ students.

For many Christians in Canada, the decision was evidence of how the standing of the church in Canada has changed, as well as a blow against religious liberty.

Then, in August, TWU did something unexpected when it decided to make signing the covenant voluntary for students.

In an interview with Faith Today, Canada’s leading evangelical publication, TWU President Bob Kuhn emphasized that the covenant itself had not been changed—it still exists, and faculty and staff have to sign it annually.

By making it voluntary for students, he stated, the school was clarifying that it “does not discriminate in terms of enrollment for any person from any belief or any LGBTQ or other group.”

He went on to say something that also caught some people by surprise: TWU already has LGBTQ students, and many of them say they feel “welcome and embraced and supported” at the school.

They also say it is easier to come out as gay at TWU than at public universities—also quite a statement for him to make.

After hearing Kuhn’s comments, I immediately wondered about the reaction. Would donors cease giving? That’s the big fear church-related organizations have when they think about changing their stance on LGBTQ.

In the back of everyone’s mind is what happened four years ago to World Vision USA when it changed a policy related to LGBTQ.

It was in 2014 that the organization altered its employee conduct manual to recognize same-sex marriage as being within the norms of “abstinence before marriage and fidelity in marriage.”

Then-president Richard Stearns explained to the U.S. evangelical magazine Christianity Today that, in making the change, the organization was not endorsing gay marriage.

Instead, he said, World Vision USA was simply recognizing that gay marriage was like other issues churches that support it disagree on—things like divorce, remarriage, modes of baptism, female clergy.

The change simply made the policy “more consistent with our practice on other divisive issues," he said.

The response was quick and very negative. About 5,000 child sponsors cancelled their donations, a loss of over $1.2 million for the organization. Major evangelical leaders in the U.S. also loudly criticized the move. 

Within two days, World Vision USA reversed course.

Now that TWU has done something similar, would it suffer the consequences? I contacted them to find out.

According to James Tweedy, TWU’s director of marketing, “we haven’t experienced a negative impact on donations. In fact both donations and enrollment continue to be stronger than in prior years.”

Overall, he added, “the response has been largely positive,” although he acknowledged there have been some criticisms based on the mistaken belief the school has eliminated its covenant.

Thinking about the TWU experience makes me wonder if there aren’t some lessons for other church-related organizations facing a similar challenge.

Today, many church-related organizations find themselves in a difficult place. They know they need to modify policies about LGBTQ issues, or face losing a younger generation that is generally more open to gay relationships—their future supporters.

But they worry if they do then their older donors—the ones who donate the most and keep them afloat today—will stop giving.

Maybe the TWU experience shows those fears are overblown—in Canada, at least. 

If a thoroughly evangelical school like TWU can modify its stance on LGBTQ, perhaps other church-related organizations can do the same.

Maybe TWU has done them all a great service by opening the door, and not experiencing a negative response.

Based on a column first published in the Sept. 8, 2018 Winnipeg Free Press. 

"Awesome, a once in a lifetime experience": Winnipeggers React to Meeting President of Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

That's me in the foreground interviewing President Nelson (right).

If you are Roman Catholic, imagine what it would be like to meet the Pope in person.

If you are Muslim, imagine going on the Hajj.

If you are Jewish, imagine praying at the Western Wall in Jerusalem.

Some members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints in Winnipeg don’t have to imagine what something like that would feel like. They know because they met the leader of their church—a man they regard as a prophet of God—last month.

Over 1,300 people came to hear president Russell Nelson on August 17, with some lining up over four hours before the event started.

The 17^th man to hold the position, the 93 year-old Nelson is considered by the faithful as God’s representative on earth.

His visit is only the second time a president of the church has come to Winnipeg. The other was Gordon Hinckley, who came in 1998.

Nelson came to Winnipeg to visit the church’s new temple, which is under construction in the southwest part of the city. It is scheduled to open in 2020.

“As the temple is prepared for the people, the people need to prepare for the temple,” he told the gathering, going on to describe ways members of the church need to become “temple ready.”

Prior to coming to Winnipeg, Nelson was in the news about changing the name of the church from Mormon, which is commonly used, to its official name: Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

In the few minutes I had to speak to him before his address, I asked about that decision.

By announcing the change, he said he was trying to “correct an egregious error” that had taken root over generations.

He added he “loves” the prophet Mormon, from whom the name is derived.

But “this is not Mormon’s church,” he said. “I think Mormon himself would be embarrassed if people thought this was his church.”

“I’m trying to make clear this is his [Jesus’] church,” he said, noting that Jesus had impressed this on his mind.

The instruction he received is “an amazing revelation,” he stated, and it will be “a wonderful thing” for the church. 

At the same time, he acknowledged that changing the name won’t be easy. But when “we know what the Lord wants, we move in that direction,” he said.

For members of the church in Winnipeg, it’s clear his visit was a memorable event.

“This is a once in a lifetime chance for people in Winnipeg to see him,” said Ken McInnes. “It’s a very special moment.”

“It was a wonderful privilege to have him come here, to remind us of what we need to do to prepare for the Temple,” added his wife, Silvia.

“We see them on TV [the presidents], but it’s different to be in the same room.”

Not only Winnipeggers were there. Dhafne Rasera is from Brazil.

“It was an amazing experience,” said the University of Manitoba student of her first time seeing a prophet. “I felt the Holy Spirit. It was powerful.”

Fiona Nauna of Papau, New Guinea is doing her mission service for the church in the city.

“It was awesome, a once in a lifetime experience,” she said, adding “I am the first one in my family to see a prophet in person.”

It was the same thing for Baley Godderidge of Logan, Utah, also doing her service in Winnipeg.

“I feel very lucky, to be in the right place at the right time,” she said, laughing at the irony that someone who lives near Salt Lake City—the headquarters of the church—would need to come to Winnipeg to see its president.

Added Allan Robison, a long-time member of the church in Winnipeg: “This is the highest honour, to have him visit us . . . it’s thrilling to me whenever I can hear a prophet.”

As someone who grew up in a church tradition that doesn’t have a pope or bishops, or even sacred places, the reverence and rapture members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Winnipeg showed for Nelson was hard for me to relate to. But it was still moving to see how much his visit meant to them.

Now I just need to get used to not calling them Mormons.

Roman Catholic Abuse Scandal Puts Cloud Over All Priests, all of Christianity

Things are unfolding quickly in the Catholic church, what with the new allegations against Pope Francis. Writing a weekly column means playing catch-up; this was written after the release of the Pennsylvania grand jury report.

In light of the scandal rocking the Roman Catholic Church in the U.S., what can one say? Words like sorrow and sadness for the over 1,000 victims of sexual abuse by about 300 priests in six dioceses in Pennsylvania seem wholly inadequate.

What about those who, for decades, covered it up? That’s much easier: Words like anger and rage come quickly to mind.

That’s the sentiment one easily finds when reading reports in both the church press and mainstream media.

“It's impossible to step into the sickening whirlpool of that Pennsylvania grand jury report . . . without feeling angry,” wrotelong-time U.S. religion reporter Terry Mattingly.

“Some of the details in the report are so vile and lurid they would have been rejected from the writer’s room of Law and Order: Special Victims Unit,” says Michael Brendan Dougherty, a senior writer at National Review.

“Awful, disgusting, horrifying, sickening—one runs out of adjectives in describing the actions of abusive priests chronicled in the just-released Pennsylvania grand jury report,” addedJesuit priest Thomas Reese for Religion News Service (RNS).

Just as disconcerting, he added, “is the failure of many bishops in the early days of the crisis to respond appropriately to the abuse. The best you can say about them is that they should have known better.”

Why didn’t they know better? The most obvious reason was the wish to avoid scandal, to keep up the pretense that the church was better and more holy than it really was, or is.

This is something all faith groups have done, to their detriment. The scale of the problem might not be as bad as what is happening to the Catholics, but every group has experience with covering up problems—including, sadly, sexual abuse.

But this particular moment belongs to the Roman Catholic Church. They are the ones on the hot seat today. They have much to answer for, and many people to answer to.

One of those groups are their own priests, many of whom are feeling the impact of this scandal.

There are over 400,000 priests in the world today. The vast majority do their jobs quietly, decently and with dedication to their faith and their parishoners.

Only a tiny fraction have committed crimes against children, like have been revealed over the past number of years.

Today, as I think about those crimes, in Pennsylvania and other places, I wonder how those many other priests are doing, and how they are handling being unfairly vilified for the actions of a few.

Imagine how betrayed and angry they must feel not only at the perpetrators who have tarnished their profession, but also at those in the hierarchy who covered it up.

As Fr. Phillip W. DeVous of Kentucky put it on Twitter: “I read the papers or catch the evening news and I see cardinals and bishops that I know for a fact are lying with impunity deploying weasel words and fake emotions.”

He expressed gratitude for the media, noting that without it “the bishops would still be lying, obfuscating, and making asinine and entirely forgettable remarks about economics and immigration while ignoring corruption, abuse of power, criminal carnality, abortions procured by predator priests, systemic homosexual predation, pedophilia, sexual harassment, and rape  in their own ranks.”

It must be hard for many priests to go to work each day, wearing their clerical garb in public, knowing how so many people feel about the actions of their church.  

Let’s hope what happened to Fr. Goyo Hildalgo of Las Angeles doesn’t happen here.

Writing on Twitter right after it happened, he posted that he was walking in a store when “someone yelled at me, ‘pedophile priest’ . . . I am still paralyzed. I didn’t know what to do or say.”

Those of us who aren’t Catholics might be tempted to ignore the scandal—not my church, not my problem.

But just as acts of terrorism committed in the name of Islam tar all Muslims around the world, this scandal puts a dark cloud over all of Christianity, and maybe also over all of religion.

Right now the ball is in the court of the Catholic Church, and especially with Pope Francis.

If that church wants to move forward, it will need to confront this darkness head-on—for the sake of those who were abused, for the sake of all those innocent clergy who are now swept up along with the scandal, and for the sake of all who consider themselves to be people of faith.

From the August 25, 2018 Winnipeg Free Press.

Want to Boost Self-Esteem for Girls? Hire More Female Clergy

In 1990, my church—River East in North Kildonan, part of the Canadian Conference of Mennonite Brethren Churches—was the very first church in that denomination in North America to hire a woman to be its lead pastor.

At the time, the decision was very controversial. But eventually there was a change of hearts and minds, and it was decided women in the denomination could lead churches.

At the time, I was glad for the women who now could follow God’s call in their lives to be pastors.

Later, when my children were born, it was great to know they were growing up seeing it was normal for women to be clergy—especially for my daughter.

It turns out there was another reason why this was a great idea: Seeing women in leadership in religious groups is also good for the self-esteem of girls.

That’s the conclusion of a new book She Preached the Word: Women’s Ordination in Modern America, by Benjamin Knoll, an Associate Professor of Politics at Centre College in Danville, Kentucky, and Cammie Jo Bolin, a Ph.D. student in political science at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. (Oxford University Press.)

In the book, the authors indicate that research has consistently shown that positive adult role models contribute to the health, education, and overall well-being of young people. This includes learning about gender roles.

“When children see a behavior modeled exclusively by men or by women, they internalize that behavior as distinctly masculine or feminine,” they say about the world of business, politics and other places of work.

“The more children see positions of power occupied only by men, the more they come to think of leadership as an exclusively masculine role.”

This, they add, can “implicitly generate an association between gender, leadership, and self-confidence.”

They wondered if what was true in society in general was also true in churches. Does the presence of female church leaders affect the self-worth and empowerment of girls and young women?

The answer, they say, is yes.

Based on a U.S.-wide survey of churchgoers, “one of our most striking findings is that women who had female congregational leaders in their youth enjoyed higher levels of self-esteem as adults.”

What about men? Do they experience less self-esteem if they have a woman as a pastor?

Apparently not. “Men who had female congregational leaders frequently growing up have levels of self-esteem that are just as high as those who never had a female pastor or priest,” the authors say.

Why is this finding about the effect of female church leaders on girls important?

One reason, they say, is because “low self-esteem has been linked to higher levels of depression and anxiety as well as lower levels of relationship success, job satisfaction, and motivation for personal improvement.”

Another is that women whose most influential leader in church growing up was a woman are likely to be employed full-time, and to advance further in university.

To the authors, this “strongly suggests” that the lack of women leaders in many churches “is at least partially to blame for the contemporary gender gap” in society.

Increasing the proportion of women in pulpits “would not only improve women’s psychological well-being, but would also likely help close the gender gap in the workplace and other positions of societal leadership,” they state.

If that’s the case, then churches have some work to do. Research a few years ago in the U.S. by the Barna Group showed that one out of every 11 Protestant pastors is a woman, and that one in five seminary students are female.

A survey by the Presbyterian Record in 2016 found that 24% of Presbyterian clergy were female, compared to 39% of Anglicans and 56% of United Church.

For religious parents of girls, what might this mean?

If you want them to grow up strong and secure, there are many things you can do to encourage them—in and out of religious services. But it might also mean choosing a church or other place of worship where women are given equal access to leadership, including preaching and teaching.

And it wouldn’t be a bad thing for boys to see that girls can do anything they want, too.

From the April 18, 2018 Winnipeg Free Press.

Church Headed for Millennial Iceberg: Author of The New Copernicans

I had a chance to talk about church with a couple of evangelical millennials recently.

During the conversation, they expressed a deep commitment to their faith. But they weren’t so sure about the churches they attend.

The way church is being done today just doesn’t seem to be doing it for them—especially the emphasis on the sermon. Services felt too much like educational programs, with a few songs thrown in.

“I can get all the information I need about faith on this,” said one, pointing to his phone.

So what did they want from church instead?

“I want to experience the presence of God,” he said, as the other agreed.

They aren’t alone. Growing numbers of younger Christians feel the same way says John Seel, author of the new book The New Copernicans: Millennials and the Survival of the Church.

Seel, who directs the New Copernican Empowerment Dialogues at The Sider Center at Eastern University in St. David’s PA, uses the experience of 16^th century astronomer Nicolas Copernicus as the central theme of this book.

Just as Copernicus posited the then-heretical idea that the earth revolves around the sun, today’s new Christian Copernicans see the world of faith different from what their elders are telling them.

For Seel, 65, and a father of three millennials, the book is a warning to church leaders—especially evangelical leaders—to start making space for this new way of believing.

“There is a looming cultural frame shift, largely carried by millennials, which if ignored is poised to threaten the evangelical church,” he writes, adding this shift also affects mainline churches and Roman Catholicism.

According to Seel, this shift is marked by how millennials reject enlightenment and analytical ways of practicing faith—a binary approach where things are either/or, true/false and right/wrong—to a more intuitive, exploratory, non-judgmental and inclusive approach.

It’s also a rejection of the more propositional approach to faith characteristic of so many churches, a way that starts with the head before moving to the heart and hands.

Millennials, he says, do it the other way around.

They “prioritize lived experience over abstract reflection,” he says, not the “intellectualist model of education” which many churches continue to promote today.

They are also more open to different ways to ascertaining truth, he says.

For them, faith is “an uneasy and ever-changing mix of viewpoints and perspectives . . . more opaque angles than straightforward reasons, more picture than proposition, more poetry than prose.”

Their spiritual journey is “best understood as trust, rather than merely a cognitive category associated with certainty . . . more open road than mental fortress,” he states.

If churches that still have youth want to keep them, they will need to create space for them to share their views and find ways to accommodate new ways of thinking about faith, he says—not double-down on biblical absolutes, doctrines and moral codes.

And if they don’t?

Then millennials will drift away, he states, noting that the ranks of the “nones” are already being filled by many young people who no longer feel welcome in established churches.

For me, the book resonates with my experience with many millennial Christians—and with older Christians, too.

It makes me think that being a new Copernican isn’t a matter of age; more and more Christians of all ages are feeling a sense of dis-ease about the way Christian faith is taught, promoted and practiced by many churches today.

One thing that surprised me about the book was how few references there were to the LGBTQ issue. This has become a demarcation line between many younger and older Christians, today.

When I asked Seel about that, he acknowledged it’s a key issue. But he didn’t write much about it, he said, because of the polarizing way it is framed by many evangelicals today.

To spend too much time on it would have distracted from the main point of the book, he suggested—and maybe prevented some from reading it altogether.

Another thing I wonder is how sociologists and historians might view Seel's sweeping view of history and philosophy—about the change from enlightenment thinking to how many view the world today..

Not being a scholar of either of those disciplines, it's hard for me to tell if his observations are correct.

Yet I share Seel's conviction that something is different today—something has indeed, shifted in the way many North Americans see the church and their Christian faith.

Along with Copernicus, another image Seel uses in the book is the Titanic.

Just as the captain of that doomed ship believed it was unsinkable, some church leaders today are overly-confident of the future of their way of practicing faith.

But there are icebergs ahead, Seel writes, so they better take heed of the danger.

The iceberg presented by millennials, he says, “isn’t going anywhere, the only question is how soon we will have to face it.”

From the August 5, 2018 Winnipeg Free Press. 

Click here to read a follow-up interview with the author, John Seel. 

Things Are More Dire Today: An Interview with John Seel, Author of The New Copernicans

In addition to writing about John Seel’s new book, The New Copernicans, I called him. I had a few questions about the book, and about his argument that a new generation—millennials—is bringing a new way of viewing the Christian faith to the church in North America. Find that interview below.

What is the reaction to the book?

There has been positive reaction from younger church leaders. They find in the book an on-ramp for the way they view faith, a new way of being Christian that isn’t so reactionary.

Leaders of the institutional church are another story. They have not responded as positively. I think we will have to enter into a more crisis mode before those who are currently in power in the institutions of the church begin to see the need to make changes.

The book is a warning, but not alarmist. Was that a deliberate choice?

As a social scientist, I always want to be careful not to predict the future. Things can always turn out differently!

But I also felt it was best not to say “the sky is falling.” That can sometimes push people away from dealing with your arguments.

On the other hand, a lot has changed since I started writing the book in 2016. Things are a lot more dire than I anticipated. If anything, I think my tone is more moderate than reality would suggest.

You use the Titanic as a metaphor—that the evangelical church, like that doomed ship, is headed for an iceberg. What are the parallels with the evangelical church today?

I say the Titanic was sunk by hubris—the belief that the ship was unsinkable. Some evangelical church leaders may feel the same way about their denominations today, that they have the truth and they will prevail.

But that is only one part of the problem. That hubris created the conditions for the crisis that faced the Titanic. What also contributed to the sinking was the way the captain reacted to the crisis when it emerged.

If he had made a different decision, the ship would not have been sunk.

I see institutional church leaders behaving the same way. Instead of changing course to deal with the crisis, they are doubling-down on the same course.

I’m seeing organizations adopt strict and narrow statements of faith that employees have to sign. Christian colleges and universities are doing the same thing, adopting draconian lifestyle policies.

Instead of becoming more open and welcoming to the way millennials see the world and their faith, they are building bigger walls and firmer boundaries.

You seem very positive about the way these new Copernicans view faith.

I am! I think their perspective is an improvement over the way we do church today. They are more Trinitarian, incarnational, communal and revolutionary than those of us who are older. They are more like Jesus, in my opinion.

Which isn’t to say they have it all figured out, or they won’t make mistakes. But the church can really learn from them.

You wrote this book as an American, and to American evangelicals. What is your take on the state of American Christianity today?

One of the big problems in the U.S. is the belief in our exceptionalism—that we are special, the best, that we have it all together.

This makes us think we have nothing to learn from others; our borders are the biggest one-way mirror in the world. When we look at other countries, all we see is ourselves, looking back.

That makes us blind to the things we could learn from other places, like churches in Canada and Europe.

Canadians are 10-20 years ahead of us in dealing with this crisis, and the European churches are ahead of Canada. We could learn a lot from Christians in Canada and Europe, if we could see beyond our borders.

You don’t mention the LGBTQ issue much in the book. Yet that is a critical demarcation line between younger Christians and their elders. Why not?

That is a pivotal issue. The problem is that it is so polarized. I didn’t highlight it because it could have been all blown out of proportion, causing some not to read the book.

I don’t like the way the debate has been framed. Some churches and organizations have made it a primary issue. It isn’t the most important issue. Following Jesus is the most important thing, not building walls and doing border maintenance to see who is in and who is out.

I am opposed to a binary approach, that it is either right or wrong. I like the way Pope Francis responded when asked about it [LGBTQ]: “Who am I to judge?”

Personally, I am an aggressively affirming traditionalist. But I don’t want to get drawn into a battle over it.

What is your take on the situation in Canada? For example, Trinity Western University recently lost its case to start a law school.

I think supporters of TWU need to stop seeing everything in terms of liberty issues, that evangelicals are being put upon. They should stop playing the victim.

This is a huge opportunity to redefine who they are, to reach out in a new way to younger generations. Otherwise, this is going to blow up in their face.

One of the reasons schools like TWU, and other church organizations, are reluctant to change is because their donors may stop giving if they do.

That’s true, and I understand that. But if they don’t start to change, millennials will blow right past them and find other places to support when they are in a position to do so. 

Religion and Aliens, or Where is Everybody?

“Where is everybody?”

That is the question famed physicist Enrico Fermi asked in 1950 about the absence of contact with alien life.

Today the question is known as the Fermi paradox. It describes the apparent contradiction between the probability that the vast universe must certainly be home to other earth-like planets and civilizations—and the absence of any evidence they exist.

Over the decades, there have been many attempts to explain the Fermi paradox. Sone say alien life is either not able to contact us or unwilling to do so. Others say we are not sophisticated enough as a species to communicate with them.

Underneath it all is a feeling that we just can’t be alone in the universe—there must be something, or someone else, out there.

But now a team of researchers at the University of Oxford says no.

According to paper released in June by Anders Sandberg, Eric Drexler, and Toby Ord of the Future of Humanity Institute (FHI), and titled “Dissolving the Fermi Paradox,” there is a high probability “of there being no other intelligent life in our observable universe, and thus that there should be little surprise when we fail to detect any signs of it.”

This result, they go on to say, “dissolves the Fermi paradox, and in doing so removes any need to invoke speculative mechanisms by which civilizations would inevitably fail to have observable effects upon the universe.”

The authors are not making a definitive claim about whether or not aliens exist. They are just suggesting that the preponderance of evidence indicates we are likely alone.

Such a conclusion has a number of implications for science—none of which I am qualified to explore—and also for religion.

The question of whether human beings are unique and have a special relationship with God has prompted a great deal of speculation about what it would mean for religion if it could be proved that aliens existed.

The question led Vanderbilt University professor of astronomy David Weintraub to write a book on the topic, titled Religions and Extraterrestrial Life.

In the book, Weintraub describes the view of different religions about extraterrestrial life—Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism and others.

He concludes that Asian religions would have the least difficulty in accepting the discovery of extraterrestrial life.

For example, some Hindu thinkers have speculated that humans may be reincarnated as aliens, and vice versa. And Buddhist cosmology includes thousands of inhabited worlds.

He says there are passages in the Qur’an that appear to support the idea that spiritual beings exist on other planets, but notes that these beings may not practice Islam as it is practiced on Earth.

Weintraub found very little in Judaic scriptures or rabbinical writings on the subject. He quotes a Jewish scholar who asserts that the discovery of extraterrestrial intelligence wouldn’t change the special relationship God has with the Jewish people.

As for Christians, he says that Roman Catholics have done the most thinking about the possibility of life on other worlds.

Protestant thinking is all over the map, in keeping with the thousands of different denominations that make up the Protestant world—some are open to it, while others deny it could be possible.

One commonality across Christianity is the belief that the need for salvation is universal, and the saving power of God must apply everywhere.

All of this may be moot, of course, if the paper by the Future of Humanity Institute is correct.

But that raises another question for people of faith: If this planet is indeed all that there is when it comes to intelligent life, how should we be treating it?

Right now, there are significant debates about fossil fuels, pipelines, use of plastics, and climate change—not to mention the ongoing threat of nuclear war. What is the religious response to those issues? What is our religious responsibility to this planet?

As for me, I don’t know if aliens exist—and neither do the world’s top scientists. So until we hear differently, I’m inclined to side with Carl Sagan who said in his book, Pale Blue Dot:

 “In all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves. The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life . . . the Earth is where we make our stand.”

From the July 27, 2018 Winnipeg Free Press.