Jun 17 2020 — Michael Coren — Toronto Star — Seven years ago, while I was researching my book on equal marriage, I interviewed a number of people who had been direct victims of homophobia. Several of them had as teenagers been exposed to what is known as “conversion therapy” — a pernicious misnomer in that it’s more oppression that conversion, and more abuse than […]
Jun 11 2020 — Michael Coren — TVO — As of June 12, places of worship will be allowed to open at a much higher capacity. Not all church leaders support the move — but those who do seem to have one thing in common
Jun 2 2020 — Michael Coren — Maclean's — If there is one thing we have discovered to our cost about Donald Trump it’s that he can always surprise us. Not with delight at his eloquence or empathy, or some desire for harmony and decorum, but in horror at some new presidential depth. And as the sun set over the capital of the United […]
May 27 2020 — Michael Coren — Maclean's — At the end of last week U.S. President Donald Trump followed through on a long-standing threat and called on, “governors to allow our churches and places of worship to open right now”. He continued, “These are places that hold our society together and keep our people united. The people are demanding to go to church […]
Apr 20 2020 — Michael Coren — Maclean's — Some fringe Christian church leaders are fighting orders not to hold services. Their actions have been more hysterical than holy. In 1633 the plague was ravaging Europe. In the Bavarian town of Oberammergau the people prayed that if they were saved they would stage a Passion play every 10 years. They were and they have […]
Feb 5 2020 — Michael Coren — Toronto Star — There are numerous political, social, and religious solitudes in the world, disparate groups of various degrees of insularity that gather around a creed or an ideology. They hold their truths to be sacrosanct and by extension reject the beliefs of others as being wrong or even heretical. It’s generally inevitable and to a large extent […]
Feb 4 2020 — Michael Coren — CBC — Canadians are back in the thick of the assisted-dying debate – and while that might be painful and challenging, it’s ultimately a good thing. A Quebec judge ruled last September that parts of the federal and provincial laws on medically assisted dying were unconstitutional, and gave the government six months to address this. The federal […]
Jan 22 2020 — Michael Coren — Maclean's — It was largely inevitable that there would be a conflict between Doug Ford’s Ontario government and the province’s teachers. It happened under former Tory Premier Mike Harris, and it’s happened with various right-wing administrations in other provinces. Put simply, teachers are not popular with conservatives, and their unions have been used as scapegoats by conservative […]
Jan 6 2020 — Michael Coren — Toronto Star — Twitter can be a wonderful and fascinating venue, but also a dark and unpleasant one. It empowers the good as well as the malicious, giving voice to those who want to make the world a better place, and those who thrive on other people’s pain. Last week I became the target of a very active […]
Dec 24 2019 — Michael Coren — iPolitics — The political year that was and the political year to come. The great, splashing irony of it all is that someone who is, with all due respect, unimpressive and clearly out-of-his-depth should have been so prominent before, during, and after the election. Andrew Scheer received more media than one would have considered possible, and the […]
Dec 20 2019 — Michael Coren — Globe and Mail — Well, this is quite the Christmas surprise. Christianity Today – perhaps the most influential publication in the evangelical world and described by The Washington Post as “evangelicalism’s flagship magazine” – has called for U.S. President Donald Trump to be removed from office. In a staggeringly forthright editorial signed by editor-in-chief Mark Galli, the extended article […]
Dec 13 2019 — Michael Coren — iPolitics — No matter what alleged experts might claim, nobody anticipated the results of the UK election. As late as Thursday afternoon there were predictions that the Labour Party could form a government with the support of the Scottish National Party and the Liberal Democrats. Or perhaps there would be another hung parliament. Instead, Labour suffered its […]
Dec 6 2019 — Michael Coren — Maclean's — I left Britain when I was 28-years-old, and return every year for extended visits. A number of my friends from university are senior MPs and journalists, while others do all sorts of jobs outside of public life. What unites them at the moment, however, is a deep sense of gloom and pessimism that I have […]
Oct 14 2019 — Michael Coren — Globe and Mail — Canadian politics differs from the U.S. variety on numerous levels. And one of the most obvious is the importance of the Christian vote. It matters deeply there: A quarter of voters in the past four national elections have been white evangelicals, and 81 per cent of them voted for Donald Trump. In other words, without […]
Oct 1 2019 — Michael Coren — Toronto Star — As a 60-year-old white man I didn’t feel enormously qualified to comment about Justin Trudeau’s brown and blackface travesties when the story first broke — though this didn’t seem to prevent countless others from becoming overnight experts — but I will say now that whatever their intention and however long ago, the actions themselves were […]