Doug Sikkema
Doug Sikkema is a part-time associate editor of Comment in addition to being an assistant professor of Core Humanities and English at Redeemer University. He holds a PhD from the University of Waterloo in English literature, with a research focus on contemporary American fiction, theology, and ecology. Doug is a founding member and board chair for Oak Hill Academy, a classical Christian school that serves the greater Hamilton area. He and his wife Vanessa, their four children, two dogs, and cat all live very happily in the "surrounding area" of Binbrook, Ontario.
Bio last updated October 11th, 2022.
Articles by Doug Sikkema
The Haunting Presence of Time in Linklater’s Boyhood
By Doug Sikkema
August 26, 2014
Given the temporal scope of the film, it’s no real surprise that time is one of the dominant themes of the movie and in one of the last scenes, just as Mason is about to go off to college, his mother makes the most significant (in my humble opinion) remark of the film This transcendent reality also gave form and meaning to life in the pre-modern understanding, but in our secular age, most would likely have little issue with cutting the entire “problem” of such a dubious eternal reality from the picture: time proceeds chronologically with a rather mechanical march onwards
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Inside the Islamic State
Doug Sikkema
August 14, 2014
After watching these brief clips on the Islamic State, I reread Jonathan Chaplin's piece about his kind of Christian nation ...
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What Anonymity Does to Communities
Doug Sikkema
August 8, 2014
I'm not saying that Debra Harrel's decision was a good one, and that parents at the park shouldn't have been concerned, but what kind of world allows the first plan of action to be delivering a mother from your neighborhood to the anonymizing forces of the State? It seems to me that this would be a ...
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Longing for our Lost Home
Doug Sikkema
August 1, 2014
Doug Sikkema discovers that prophets of the past can help make us whole
The work, then, becomes finding ways to recover the "home place" by re-membering the past and employing these community ideals in suburban or urban or whatever new contexts in which we might find ourselve. As Port William's barber, Jayber becomes not only the purveyor of the community's stories and ...
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Sages and Saints
Doug Sikkema
July 25, 2014
The problem, though, is that for many the loftiest ideal for education is job creation So what if we went even deeper or bigger? What if we could, in a move that might be so countercultural and subversive that it would blow even a few of our private Christian institutions away, recover the ideal tha...
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The Problem With Buzzwords
Doug Sikkema
July 21, 2014
And this dynamic interplay between the self, the world, and the community is essential to any good use of language Just read Ontario's Ministry of Education document on "Inclusive Curriculum" and you'll find a good example of an opaque language, couching a value-laden agenda in seemingly neutral des...
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Marching to the Beat of the National Narrative
Doug Sikkema
July 4, 2014
Whether you celebrated Canada Day earlier in the week or are celebrating Independence Day today, this is usually the time of year when the flags are unfurled, the fireworks lit, and national narratives reinforced So this week, as we hear the stories and themes we've grown familiar with, perhaps we n...
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On Camping and Pipelines, Wilderness and Culture
Doug Sikkema
June 20, 2014
Particularly with a lot of the rhetoric around why not to build a pipeline, many people imply that wilderness, if it is to maintain its pristine goodness, is not to be touched by the marring human hands of culture In its nominal renunciation of culture, camping puts a lot of undue pressure upon many...
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Do We Need Stories?
Doug Sikkema
June 6, 2014
Contrary to our common sense, Parks notices a curious attraction to Rushdie's idea that "all the different stories of the world flow together in a great ocean of narrative And the reason Parks is suspicious of such storytellers is due to his low opinion of most readers: "People tend to use stories o...
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What Are People For?
Doug Sikkema
May 30, 2014
Our munus is perhaps the answer to Wendell Berry's question: What are people for? But we could expand the question and also ask: what are neighbours for? What are families for? What is the State for? The church? The school? The corporation? It seems that we can't begin to discus the proper differe...
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Academic Freedom
Doug Sikkema
May 20, 2014
A few weeks ago a California primary school, in an attempt to teach how propaganda works, required its eighth grade students to investigate whether or not the holocaust actually happened Some people claim the Holocaust is not an actual event, but instead is a propaganda tool that was used for politi...
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Still and Still Moving
Doug Sikkema
May 12, 2014
While apologists of place and defenders of localism might hear this and start wringing their hands at such placeless mobility, they do so failing to realize the wonderful human resilience evident in our ability to adapt and change to new places and our ability to be "home" in multiple places ...
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3 Things to Consider About the Don Sterling Debacle
Doug Sikkema
May 2, 2014
Again, in a free society, are we not a bit concerned that private conversations that might not have held up in a court of law are now held up to the court of public opinion in order for swift justice to be enacted? Recall that the NBA knew Sterling had racist views and that Sterling had even settle...
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March Madness: Rooting for the Underdog
Doug Sikkema
April 4, 2014
Doug Sikkema writes on how the anticipation of spring, Easter, and March Madness all tell us a little bit about who we are by kindling, albeit subtly, some of our most basic desires.
Of course, good and evil don't map easily onto our sports worlds (unless Duke is playing), but our shared desire to see the underdog succeed, again, seems to almost universally resonate within spectators We await the end of winter with the arrival of spring, the end of Lent with the arrival of Easte...
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Enchantment and God's Green World
Doug Sikkema
April 1, 2014
Doug Sikkema sees Eliot and Milton in the spaces of urban parks and the conviviality of community gardens
In Eliot's time, the metropolis was still a relatively new phenomenon that many were trying to grasp, and one of the recurring observations of the time was that the city was radically reorienting our understanding of the natural world and our interaction with it We might not often think of socks as ...
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We Work in Beauty
Doug Sikkema
March 28, 2014
It's easy to talk a good game about the need for a liberal arts approach to education and the overlap in various disciplines, but when push comes to shove and we need to solve real problems, "How," as Joustra cheekily asked, "can beauty save the world?" And to save the world is not simply a matter o...
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World Down Syndrome Day: Who Are the Least of These?
Doug Sikkema
March 21, 2014
There may be many reasons why this might have been, but I’m convinced (and others were as well) that it had a lot to do with the fact that this class was the only one which had a girl with Down Syndrome fully integrated into their daily routines since they were all five This connects to the second r...
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Ukraine: Does it Matter Where you Stand?
Doug Sikkema
March 7, 2014
Yet the fact that many in Russia would like to overthrow Putin, while many in North America are apathetic to the takeover of Crimea, suggest that understandings are in no way as clear cut between East and West as our Western media (or Russia’s for that matter) might like to project In fact, as Andre...
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Waking to the Wonder
Doug Sikkema
February 28, 2014
But if all this exploratory research anesthetizes us to the fact that this world is more a playground than cubicle, maybe it’s time to wake up and see the world, again and again, with the insatiable eyes of a child. But why? If a child’s delight is really a product of ignorance, shouldn’t this be ea...
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Yada Yada Yada: What Was That?
Doug Sikkema
February 21, 2014
In his op-ed for the New York Times, Kristof argues two things: 1) our current anti-academic culture is dismissive of academics (ok, a bit redundant); and 2) looking at the language many academics use, it's really no wonder why All this to say that Kristof's call for more intellectuals to translate ...
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In Defense of Suburbia
Doug Sikkema
January 31, 2014
I agree with Greusel that suburbs lack certain civic spaces, but such a reduction of people and their place is hardly a charitable reading of what suburban spaces really offer ...