The Examined Life

The Role of Art in Life and Faith

Abdu Murray is a speaker, author, and attorney who specializes in addressing issues where religious faith and emerging cultural trends intersect and collide. Since founding Embrace the Truth ministry in 2004, Abdu has spent decades analyzing how the major religious and nonreligious thought traditions have attempted to address emerging cultural issues.

Do All Roads Lead to God?
Andy is the Director of Solas and a highly in-demand speaker, writer, and broadcaster. From universities to churches, cafes to pubs, schools to workplaces, Andy regularly addresses audiences of both Christians and those of all faiths and none on issues related to faith, culture, politics, and society.

He was co-editor and a contributing writer for: Have You Ever Wondered? and authored How To Talk About Jesus Without Looking Like An Idiot,Do Muslims and Christians Worship the Same God? andThe Atheist Who Didn’t Exist. He also co-hosts two podcasts, PEP Talk and Pod of the Gaps and presents the Short Answers video series for Solas.

Is Tolerance Overrated?
As a child growing up in the church, Alycia always had questions. She wanted to dig deeper into the Christian faith beyond the Sunday morning sermon. That fueled an independent search, which led to her digging into the larger questions of life. While studying for a degree in Criminal Justice and Sociology at Robert Wesleyan College, Alycia discovered Apologetics. It changed the course of her life. Her quest for a deeper understanding of her Christianity had a name.

She went on to get her Master’s in Social Justice from Marygrove College to further her passion for serving those in need in the developing world. This led to various volunteering opportunities at orphanages, prisons, and shelters for the homeless in various countries, including Haiti, Honduras and the Dominican Republic. A few years after her travels were completed, she was able to spend a year studying Apologetics in England.

How Do We live with our Deepest Differences?
Logan Gates is passionate about grappling with questions of truth, justice, and meaning through deep study of the core texts of Western civilization - ancient, modern, and biblical. He holds a PhD in Political Theory from the University of Toronto and wrote my dissertation on the theories of rights of John Locke and Bartolomé de Las Casas, the sixteenth-century Dominican friar and advocate for Indigenous peoples. His research uncovers in Las Casas an early but robust articulation of rights, toleration, and freedom, paradoxically embedded in the Christian practice of evangelism.

Before his PhD studies, Logan served for four years as an itinerant public speaker and Christian apologist, speaking on questions relating to faith and culture at colleges, churches, and conferences across Canada, the US, and Latin America.

The Allure of Power
Daniel Gilman is Professor of History and Interim Faculty Chaplain at Redeemer University, where he teaches history and core courses. He is completing a PhD at Cambridge University on the art of public speaking and conversations in the campaign to end the slave trade. Daniel serves as an apologist with Apologetics Canada.

He is a former speechwriter in Canada’s Parliament and now advises the Interparliamentary Taskforce on Human Trafficking as a Legislative Assistant. Through FEUER Academics, he trains scholars in Europe to share Christ with clarity and courage in university settings. He also directs the Centre for Public Speaking, coaching Members of Parliament, professors, and pastors in speaking and preaching. He and his wife Alexandra love hosting faculty and students for brunch at their home.

Fallacy of Freedom: Myth of Autonomy
Michael has extensive experience in business development, advising, and strategic initiatives. He launched his professional experience as a project manager for interdisciplinary study abroad program design and development, collaborating with universities, businesses, and NGOs throughout India.

Subsequent studies at the University of Oxford generated the opportunity for Michael to continue his professional experience as an international advisor, consulting senior government officials, political leaders, and industry executives on strategic communications and issues pertaining to ethics, religion, and public life.

He is also an experienced presenter and public speaker, having led seminars and engaged in public discourse at some of the world's most prestigious universities. Michael has travelled to 20+ countries for business, consulting, and advisory engagements.

Why We Work
Michael Ramsden is a renowned international speaker and the co-founder of The OCCA, The Oxford Centre for Christian Apologetics. He spent most of his childhood in the Middle East and later moved to the UK, where he worked for the Lord Chancellor's Department, investing funds.

Our Quest for Freedom
Rev. Dr. Joseph Boot (M.A., Ph.D.) is a Christian thinker and cultural apologist, Founder and President of the Ezra Institute for Contemporary Christianity. He is an adjunct instructor for culture and apologetics at Bryan College, Tennessee. He also served as the founding pastor of Westminster Chapel, Toronto, for 14 years.

Now resident in Great Britain, Joseph has worked in the fields of Christian apologetics, worldview education and church leadership for over twenty-five years on both sides of the Atlantic. He has spoken and guest lectured globally at numerous university events, seminaries, churches, colleges, and conferences. He regularly addresses pastors and Christian leaders as well as academic, medical, legal, and political professionals and has publicly debated leading atheistic thinkers and philosophers in Canada and the United States.