Much ink has been spilled castigating the Trudeau government for requiring an abortion and LGBTQ rights “attestation” in the Canada Summer Jobs grant application.
I want to spill more ink reflecting on what the federal government’s determined policy of secularism, if unchecked, could do to the future of religion.
Christianity is the dominant faith in Canada, but political secularism also impinges on Muslims, Jews, Sikhs, Buddhists, Hindus and those of aboriginal faiths, just to mention the religions practised in Mountain View County.
The erosion of religious freedom, by requiring faith groups to accept government policy that is at odds with their beliefs as a condition of obtaining public service is anti-democratic.
The Trudeau brains trust is gambling that religious freedom won’t be a ballot question in federal elections until it is too late to make a difference.
They see empty churches and conclude that they can trample the rights of the remaining minority of members with impunity.
This moment in Canadian life is overflowing with ironies.
Canada is one of the oldest continuous democracies in the world. Some 150 years ago we were considered a refuge from the dangers of the American revolutionary experiment. We have a constitutional monarch who is the supreme head of a state Christian church.
But we are now one of the western democracies in which Christianity is least free. The cold comfort is that it’s a constitutional peril that is shared by other faiths in this country.
The Trudeau government’s antipathy to religion strengthens the argument that Muslims’ freedom to practise Islam can only be guaranteed by the introduction of Shariah law.
In Communist China the Christian church is growing rapidly, compared to its decline in Canada, although in China it is an underground movement. The Chinese church soon will be, if it isn’t already, the largest Christian national body in the world.
In Canada, church partnerships with the federal government have proved disastrous, from the Indian Residential School system to the Canada Summer Jobs program.
In world history, the church has always thrived in adversity, from the Roman Empire of the New Testament to North Korea and China in this century.
Mountain View County, Alberta and Western Canada were religious refuges for the Hutterites, Mennonites and Doukhobors.
Hindus, Jews, Sikhs, Confucians and Buddhists had to overcome racial prejudice and endure decades of government rejection to gain admittance to Canada and find freedom to practise their faiths. They settled in the West in their thousands.
This was a land of religious liberty. When I arrived in Alberta 50 years ago, it boasted that it was home to 135 of the world’s faiths and sects.
Now a federal government that thinks it is the landlord of religion has given notice that the lease of liberty is expiring.
Historically, thrown back on its faith, and relying on God, Christianity thrives in adversity.
Travelling on its knees, the church goes where it is not wanted and always finds a home.
– Frank Dabbs is a veteran journalist and author.
