Where Rights Collide? State Support of Religious Education

If there is no attack on religion in New Brunswick and if the "free tuition" problem confronted by Crandall University is -- at least in good measure -- a problem of its own making, can Crandall still make a claim that the policy should apply to its students? In other words, even if the analysis of where the problem comes from is wrong, could the proposed solution -- to extend the policy to Crandall students -- be correct? There are those who will immediately say "yes" and those who will immediately say "no." The "no" side argues that the state should not be in the business of funding religious education, particularly if it is is exclusionary and discriminatory. If Crandall (or, any other institution) wants to offer courses, that is its business, but the state should not support institutions that deny the basic rights enshrined in the Canadian constitution. Those who say "yes" are equally vehement. Crandall offers an educational choice. Why should the state impose its values (the merits of at least some of which they question and suggest might not be as widely held as some people think) on particular institutions? Does it not impose a religious means test on the institutions of our society (those who don't conform to particular state-sanctioned views, don't get funded) and contravene freedom of conscience?

What I want to suggest is that both views have merits and don't. The issue is more complex than quick answers and the quick answers that the proponents of either side offer miss important issues that should be considered. My goal in this blog is to address these issues. I don't think that by so doing I will actually bring clarity to this matter. In fact, I might confuse it more. But, confusing it more might be what is actually needed. What are the complications?

First, the distinction -- as I tried to indicate in a previous post -- between Crandall and other institutions is not as great as one might think. For one reason or another, both the proponents and opponents of Crandall paint it as different, out of step with the rest of the province in terms of post-secondary education. I cannot speak to how different subjects are taught at Crandall but in terms of its relationship with the state, the distinctions are often more matters of degree than kind. Crandall, for instance, can and has benefited from state grants. It does not obtain regular operating financing from the state -- which, again, is its choice -- but over the years its obtained grants in lieu of taxes from the municipal government and infrastructure grants from the federal government. There may be others but those are the two that I am aware of. Its students can also take advantage of tax credits in the same manner as students at any other university, there is a process to transfer credits, its BEd students become teachers in the province so there don't seem to be any problems with certification at the provincial level, and its benefactors can also take advantage of tax credits as Crandall is a registered charitable institution. This, too, of course, is similar to so-called "public institutions."

If we put all this together, in other words, the sharp distinctions that paint Crandall as unique in *not* benefiting from state programmes needs to be qualified. I am not saying Crandall gets as much money as Mount A but that is not, of course, the point (since as I keep saying, Crandall has chosen to define itself differently). What I am saying is this: the idea that it derives no benefits from the state (or, is even under attack by the state) is inaccurate. One can make of this what one will, but the distinction seems to me to be more one of degree than kind, at least in this regard. And, this could be interpreted as support for either those in favour of extending "free tuition" to Crandall students or not. One could argue (a) Crandall already derives benefits from the state and so it is now asking for more -- to be treated the same as Mount
A, say, without wanting to be the same. One might continue to say that no one is saying that these benefits should change but this is the line that is in place and if people at Crandall want to change this line, they are welcome to but that involves a different relationship with the state. Conversely, (b) one could argue that since there is already a practice of state support for Crandall, why would one choose now to impose an artificial limit on that support that penalizes students for the choices that they make when we do not know why they the chose to attend Crandall. To continue: extending free tuition does not give the stamp of approval to Crandall but instead supports students who may or may not have other post-secondary educational options or who may even argue against Crandall's exclusionary policies? Is it fair to harm them particularly when the state has a history of supporting Crandall?

Second, the issue of equality under the law is clearly one that is important. I gather that some folks who support Crandall are considering suing the provincial on the grounds that its new "free tuition" policy is discriminatory in that it precisely limits its provenance to those who attend secularized institutions. This is is not a slam dunk argument, as I've now said many times, because the folks who run Crandall have chosen -- for their own reasons -- to, in some ways, be different. Hence, the issue is not necessarily state policy. But, the Canadian constitution does not simply guarantee equality before the law; it also guarantees equal benefit of the law.

This is an important concept. What does it mean? This: the law cannot actively discriminate or perpetuate discrimination by maintaining policy that produces material harm to identifiable groups of people. As an example, consider one of the original defenses of the old Marriage Act that discriminated against gays and lesbians. One of the defenses of this act was that it did not, in fact, discriminate. Gays and Lesbians were free to marry if they so chose. They just had to marry someone of the opposite sex ... like everyone else! I kid you not. People actually made this argument.

This is where the idea of equal benefit of the law comes in. In this case, the operation of the law worked in a way that discriminated against a specific and definable group of people. They were not deriving the same benefit of the law as were straight people. In fact, the law stopped them from deriving the same benefit. Hence, the issue is not just "does this law treat everyone the same?" but does it discriminate against a specific group of people that we can identify.

In some ways, the "free tuition" law does. It the example I've been pursuing across a number of blogs, it discriminates against poorer students who attend Crandall. Is that sufficient to make the law unconstitutional?

The short answer is this: I don't know. In my view, the law -- as I have said -- does not threaten freedom of conscience. It does not impose any restrictions on Crandall in terms of what it can teach. It does not limit the voices of people at Crandall in terms of their ability to make their case. It does not close down any churches or websites or stop any sermons. I don't see a law suit, therefore, that is launched on the basis that the "free tuition" programme contravenes freedom of religion as likely to succeed. The principle of equal benefit of the law is more problematic, however, and I think there might, in fact, be a case here.

Why do I say that? Well, for the reasons that I've just outlined. We may have problems with some of Crandall's policies and regulations. I do. I've said before I find them scripturally problematic and I am not at all convinced that the types of prohibitions maintained by institutions like Crandall do anything to advance Christianity. At best, they set up parallel institutions that interact poorly with the rest of society. But, even while I have objections to what Crandall does, I find it more difficult to extend -- as I was suggesting above -- that criticism to the students who attend that institution simply because I don't know their views.

At this point in the discussion, someone usually rightly asks "should taxpayers' dollars go to support institutions with which they have problems?" I've tried to explain before that that question is not as simple to answer as it seems. After all, I am required to pay my taxes (and rightly) whether or not I agree with the policies of the state ... and a great deal of the time I don't. So, the issue it seems to me is not like or dislike the policies. The issue is whether or not the state has fulfilled its obligations to equal benefit of the law through its other policies of which Crandall students can take advantage.

At this point, I should also say that I am, partly, confused by this vehemence with which some people put this issue, on either side. I do understand that LGBTQ Canadians have suffered -- and continue to suffer -- a great deal of abuse, violence, and discrimination. They do not feel that institutions that support discrimination should be funded and they have a case. This is something I don't think the people who run Crandall fully realize or have considered as fully and deeply and as sympathetically as they should. We are not dealing with people who are challenges to your religious views in the LGBTQ community, but people who are challenging the old line "God has said that this is a sin, abomination, etc." We have very long history in Canada of using God to justify this-worldly prejudices and I personally believe that this one should be challenged as well. If we look back into Canadian history, we discover that people believed God wanted residential schools or supported racism or opposed admitting Jewish refugees or sanctioned violence against women. Said differently, there are many things that Canadians have believed in the past for which we can find very little scriptural evidence and discrimination against LGBTQ people is exactly the same.

What confuses me about this issue is many things. I'm confused that it has become an issue. I don't understand why some Christians feel that they are under attack when they are so manifestly not (and, if anyone has lived in a place where their religion is actually under attack, they would know the difference between that and modern NB). I don't understand why some Christians have made sexuality "the hill do die on." I've said this before but my "hill to die on" is love God and your neighbour. Likewise, I don't quite get the pursuit of Crandall by its opponents, excepting those people who fall into the category that I just noted in my previous paragraph. Crandall is a small institution with less than 800 students. We are not talking about UoT or UNB or even Mount A.

I began this series of blogs - -which, someone might say "mercifully" -- I now end by saying that if Crandall did not exist, its opponents and its proponents would need to create it.  That might have been an overstatement. The reason this issue -- free tuition for Crandall students -- is important is because it touches fundamental issues in Canadian society that end up not being about education. The key issue, from what I can tell, really is this: is the freedom of religion also the freedom to discriminate? And, if so, how far does that right go? In the US, some people have tried to argue that it extends into society, to the point where I can deny service someone by virtue of their sexual orientation if I deem it offends my religious values.

I don't think we are talking about that in Canada but that is the issue: is the freedom of religion, the freedom to discriminate. As as Christian, I don't think it is. In fact, I am horrified that Christianity is associated with bigotry. I work hard to be open and to be caring and to promote inclusiveness because I think those are the things that are more important to Christianity. I'd be worried, I think, about a society that made that equation (freedom is the freedom to discriminate) easily. It would not be the type of society or the type of religion that is true to my heart and my conception of Canada.

The Bloom is Off the Rose? Looking Over the Border at Donald Trump

Americans will vote for whom they will. That is the character and nature of democracy, however imperfectly realized. And, I have listened too long and too often to people explaining that "we" (whomever "we" is) can disregard the leaders of Country X or Country Y because that leader has not *really* been elected democratically, not really ... to cast that line at the US. I am skeptical about it when American leaders use it, I won't use it against the US.

This said, just about everyone and their dog wants to try to explain Donald Trump. Canadians -- who, of necessity, must look across the border -- perhaps as much or more than others. Just about every day there is another column explaining Trump's popularity. I have my own views, some of which will come out in this blog. But, I think focusing on recent history -- the alienation of the white middle and working classes, for instance -- misses some key points that can be provided by an assessment that takes into account a longer time span, even if only slightly longer. Trump, I will suggest, is a combination of a series of historical processes. He is one of those figures about whom we might say: if he did not exist, he'd have to be invented. In other words, Trump's popularity likely has little to do with Trump himself and more to do with a series of trajectories that expose the fault lines of American society and the ways in which certain cultural and ideological trends have come to fulfillment. What might these be? Several. Let me address one in this blog and come back to others in future blogs.

Let's begin with the influence of Christianity on American politics. Let me be clear: I am not trying to say that Trump is a Christian or that Christianity, whatever that might precisely be in abstract, is responsible for Trump. What I am trying to say is that American Christianity is an unstable ideology. Christians can show up in a North Carolina we-are-desperate-to-find-some-way-to-still-legally-discriminate-against-gays-law and in Michael Moore films. We could spend a great deal of time -- perhaps profitably -- arguing about what constitutes true Christianity, but we'll save that for some other day. For now, what we need to understand is that being a Christian means different things to different people. While I have a strong sense that this is changing, Christian has come to mean certain things in US public life where it is associated not with the moderation of Obama but with conservative views. And, conservative views have, themselves, come to be associated with opposition to gay equality, patriarchal views, support for neo-liberalism, opposition to women's control of their own bodies, and matters like that. In other words, it is not a conservatism that Canadians in the Red Tory tradition would easily recognize or claim. Nor, does it represent the genial paternalistic conservatism of old east coast elite Republicans. I'll come back to that because it is important.

I read a story the other day saying that American conservative evangelical leaders are not sold on Trump and making his selection of a VP candidate -- someone to their liking -- a test of whether or not they will support him. But, that might not be relevant at all. Polls in the last few primaries showed that self-identified Christians were voting for Trump in greater numbers than Cruz (who had self-identified himself as their champion) and this is without any urging from their leaders. IOW, self-identifying conservative evangelicals in the US were already moving to Trump. Why?

That is not an idle question. Trump has little to do with Christianity in just about any form. His moral standards simply don't meet the standards that conservative evangelicals set for society. So, what does their support of him say? It might say that there is some hypocrisy here, but I'd be loath to use that term. Instead, I think that conservative American Christianity is more a syncretic religion than a Christian religion and Trump captures a great deal of the syncretism. He claims, for instance, to love scripture and the Bible yet knows little about it. Oddly, only his critics (say, liberals) have pointed this out. He claims to support Christianity, yet his personal behaviour indicates that his support is shaky at best (let's skip over the marriage issues he's had to think about injunctions to modesty, building up with praise, being a good neighbour, loving God and your neighbour, feeding the poor, etc.).  Trump's Christianity, if we can call it that, is a Christianity that does not take scripture seriously. It does not struggle with it; it does not wrestle with its implications; it does not shun the love of money as the root of all the world's problems; it is not self-sacrificial but self-aggrandizing. Said differently, even if we can say with some certainty (and, I think we can) that American Christianity is an unstable ideological formation, Trump's appeal to Christians -- and, he does appeal, or so polls tell us -- is odd.

Many Christians are, rightly, willing to forgive and forget and not be judgmental. And, that is right. From what I know it is a scripturally sound principle. But, they are not willing to forgive and forget some people and Trump articulates this. They are not, for instance, willing to believe that Mexicans should be forgiven and that judgement should be left to God. The folks in North Carolina seem to harbour a special animosity to trans-gendered people who, without evidence or reason, they view as a threat to their children. Even if one could argue that there is a forgiving and moving on with regard to Trump (which would be fair from a Christian perspective), there is that odd problem that the same thing does not seem to apply to other people whose sins are far less evident. Indeed, they are people who, in many ways, with whom one might find a meeting of minds. Many are Christians, many came to the US to make a better world for their children (family values), and many work in horribly-paid jobs with little future in order to make that happen (hard word, self-sacrifice). Yet, there is a desire to build a wall and to deport.

We could, given the time, draw a bunch of other connections: cherry-picking of scripture, commitment to consumerism, adoption of the culture of the world, hostility and anger (supporting someone who suggests that protesters should be violently assaulted) ... These things come together in an odd combination when merged with American Christianity.

The more important question is: what are we to make of this? Well, we should not take the popularity of Trump as an indication of the stupidity of Americans. For those of us who are not Americans -- who watch US life from across the border -- this injunction is even more true. Nor, do I think, should we focus on Trump as a person. Instead, what is most interesting and important about Trump is not who he is but what he signifies. He is, as I said above, someone who would have had to have been invented if he did not already exist. Perhaps, in some ways, he has been invented (but I'll comment on that in the future). Trump's popularity, for this reason, can become a bit of an ethnographic study. It can show us things about the evolution and current state of American culture. What we can understand in his popularity, then, is several trends and the first of these I'd argue is a syncretic religion. A Christianity that has detached itself from scripture (for Trump's Christian supporters) and, in important ways, ignores it.  This syncretic religion is a religion that is interested in statements of faith -- overt and loud commitments to the Bible or scripture -- but seemingly also uninterested in what is said after that loud commitment (a statement of protection for Christmas, say) has been made and whether or not it illustrates any understanding whatsoever of scripture.

This is not hypocrisy, I am arguing. It represents a syncretic blend of Christianity with other, secular perspectives that for a long time and by an influential group of Christians have been associated with Christianity in the US (say, concerns about immigration or the equality of women). This does not, in any way, represent all Christians but what it shows is that for some Christianity has become a syncretic religion that accepts decidedly unChristian elements fusing them into some new religious perspective that finds, in Trump, an image worth of support. The syncretic religion did not make Trump but, I suggest, it is one of the things that made him possible.

What is going on with Christianity? Part III

This series of blogs began a few weeks ago as a discussion of what a post-Christian Canada entailed. The argument I was trying to put forward was that the relationship between state, civil society, and church had changed appreciably in Canada over the past couple of generations and created what I might call a 'post-Christian' country. By this, I did not mean simply the demographics of religion, although this is part of the equation. Instead, what I meant was a system of ethical, cultural, and political order in which there were other accepted bases of the good and which grounded morality that competed with Christianity to define the systems of social, political, and economic relations that marked the lived experiences of Canadians. Christianity continued to occupy a more favourable position regarding public policy than other religions (for a variety of reasons) but it no longer worked with a guaranteed connection to public policy that had to be taken into account by the state.

This issue is, of course, more complicated than a one-paragraph summary can allow. But, I did contend that (a) this issue was important and (b) it was far from clear what post-Christianity actually was. I suggested that Christianity would continue to influence Canadian policy and culture but in ways that were different from the experiences of the United States (again, for a variety of reasons) and so we should not confuse the two.

In this blog I want to approach the same issue from the opposite perspective. If the critics of Christianity approach Christianity in a post-Christian age with a series of misplaced stereotypes, how do Christians approach it? This short answer is: from no one single perspective. Some churches have attempted to deny the changes that have done on in Canada in the last several generations; others have made an uneasy peace with them; and still others embrace them and provide (say, in the case of equality and marriage) some measure of leadership. But, one strand of Christian thought that worries me, as Christians grapple with the post-Christian age, involves a similar process of forgetting. I'll again speak using some personal examples in the hope that they capture general dynamics.

Recently, we had a guest speaker at my church who told the congregation that the Christian worldview differed from that the wider culture in a number of respects. First, he asserted that Christians believe that there is truth and that the society at large does not. It is sort of a everyone do your own thing type of thing. Second, he argued that Christianity provided a grounding and a morality that was otherwise lacking in civil society. Without morals, in other words, the society slides to disorder.  These are points that are widely believed, from what I can tell, by devout Christians so let's address them, but from the historical-transitionary perspective I am trying to lay out in this series of blogs.

What Christians need to realize is that neither of these arguments are true in this sense. In the last few years, a number of my Christian friends have much-belatedly started using the discourse of postmodernism. Frankly, I'm not certain what the term really means but I don't recognize any of the central characteristics I've learnt in their definition. They assert that postmodernists deny truth, are relatively hedonistic, and place everything on the individual. Whether or not this view of a postmodern culture is accurate (and, btw, I don't think we have a postmodern culture), what it highlights is the fears of Christians and these fears are leading them to think about society in the wrong way. How so?

It is very important to many of Christian friends (people whom I love and respect) to assert that there is truth. This is a desire for certainty and to find that certainty outside of themselves. I don't blame them. I suspect most people want to do this but the idea that truth is denied in civil society or in secular modern culture is just plain inaccurate. In fact, the problem might be precisely the opposite: it is not an absence of truth but a profusion of them. Back in the day, the dominance of Christianity connected to a series of other cultural elements that tied together into a worldview. To be Christian meant to be more, "civilized," advanced/progressive, respectable, knowledgeable, in possession of certainty, and the like. I am not arguing that all of these different strands of culture and thought necessary fit together well. What happened, however, is that they merged into a single framework, despite some potential contradictions that were papered over or edited out. Hence, "back in the day" one could associate Christianity with truth in Canada, at least within the framework of the culture of the time.

But, this is no longer so and likely never was fully true. The absence of Christianity in a person's life does not mean that the stop believing in truth. It does not mean that they don't have an ethics that allows them to separate right from wrong, or a conception of history, a sense of justice, and conception of the good and it does not mean that these things are, for them, just assertions. In other words, Christianity needs to recognize that simply asserting that "there is truth" is not going win friends and influence people because most people who are not practicing Christians already believe this.

Likewise, the idea that culture is infused by a "if its good for you ..." mentality is also problematic. It is true that this is a discourse that is widely used. Indeed, it is a language that we use and the use of that language causes problems (this, too, might be the subject for another blog), but few people really believe that, even if they use those words. For instance, if murder is good for you ... its OK? Seriously, no one believes that and they don't need scripture to tell them that murder is wrong.

The mistake that Christians make is assuming that the way people approach consumer goods is the way they approach their more serious life choices. Thus, there is really is not anything seriously wrong with according a scope for personal judgement in the music people listen to, the foods they eat, the colour they paint their walls, the types of shoes they wear. If you like brown shoes ... fill your boots ;) But, the fact that we use that logic for relatively insignificant decisions in our lives (will I watch Dr. Who or Orphan Black?) does not mean that people deploy the same logic for more serious decisions -- the values they teach their children, their perspective on the environment, their views of international affairs or justice or equality in society or labour relations. Consumerism may be an important part of Canadian culture, but it is not the only part and so we cannot and should not mistake one part for the whole.

The problem for Christians, again, is that their critique of culture falls on deaf ears because they are telling people things that they already know: hedonism is wrong. On serious matters there are and should be limits to behaviour or actions. And, in the process, Christians are also misjudging modern culture and post-Christian Canada.

The result is a situation where people talk past each other. Christians make points that are already widely accepted and misjudge the degree to which society can function without state, church and civil society marching together; critics get Christianity wrong and work with a series of stereotypes. In the process, they end up denying what I suspect are the very things they want to preserve: diversity and freedom of conscience.

Christians, on the other hand, end up with nostalgia ... lamenting the demise of a day and age whose demise they should not at all lament. They seen historical development as decline when the truth is that it is neither progress nor reversion. Society is not more or less moral than it was in the past. It functions with no more and no less dysfunction.

Post-Christianity in Canada, to sum this up, is then a situation of misapprehension, contradiction, and multiplicity.  It is a situation in which both Christians and their critics are trying to accomplish oddly similar aims but their confusion about each other leads them away from the direction in which they could actually move together and into conflicts that, frankly, do not need to happen.

What is going on with Christianity? Part II

In a previous post, I noted that I was going to write a series of blogs about Christianity and a post-Christian Canada. This is an important, I think, historical, social, cultural, religious, and political subject. The Indiana anti-gay and lesbian law interrupted my plans, largely because it was connected to the subject I was trying to address. Let me get back to the subject of post-Christianity. I used the term not in an ethical or moral sense, but in an interdisciplinary way to signify a change in the relationship between state, church, and civil society. I tried to argue that we live in a post-Christian Canada. This does not mean that Christianity has ceased to exist. It hasn't and won't. Instead, it means a number of things:

• Christians can no longer accept the "taken for grantedness" of their values and worldview 
• Christians no longer have as privileged a position as they once did in defining the boundaries of the good life and no longer have as privileged an access to the state 
• Other value systems have made a claim to public adherence and been able to demonstrate that they can promote aspects of the good life: equality, say, as an example, at least as well if not better than Christians (or, at least some of those claiming in the loudest voices to speak in the name of Christianity)
• Other values systems challenge challenge Christianity for public attention and individual preoccupation (say, consumerism) and have been remarkably successful is so doing. 
• Post-secondary education has been largely secularized in the sense that direct connections between churches and universities have been broken
• Education, more broadly, has been secularized in that Christianity is no longer taught as "right" in the public schools
• Some of the serious problems with Christian complicity in the oppression of aboriginal people, for instance, have come clearly into light and raise questions about the supposed Christianity of Christians

In this post, I want to more directly consider the implications of this. I'm arguing that some of the things we see going on about us in our society are a result of this historical transition. This includes, for instance, demands from religiously-based universities (Crandall and TWU) to equal  treatment of their graduates in the public sphere (say, becoming teachers or lawyers) and a recent demand by "Christian" doctors to opt out of the requirement that they provide care to patients if that care would contravene their (the doctors') values. I've already said I don't agree with the doctors and tried to suggest (in other blogs) that the issues regarding post-secondary education are more complicated than either proponents of Christian education or its detractors allow. What I am arguing in this series of blogs is that these individual incidents are not individual incidents but rather part of an historical process whereby Christians are trying to work out a new relationship with state and civil society. 

The implications of these changes are important, I will argue in this blog, because a lot of people get it wrong, both Christian and their critics. I'll give you an example and it is one I have used before. A number of years ago, my daughter and her friends tried to start a prayer group in their school. One can think this is good or bad. That is your right and, perhaps, responsibility. I don't want to intrude on that right or tell you what to think.  What I found interesting about the discussion was how quickly those who found problems with my daughter's group reverted to stereotypes of Christians. One person who I know well -- and who is a staunch opponent of any form of prejudice and whose commitments I admire -- told me that religion had no place in the schools. I argued that that was not his place to say because the constitution guaranteed each individual the right to practice their religion. The schools could not impose religion on students and should not, but nor should it stop people from practicing their faith, particularly if it was causing no harm to anyone. In other words, if my daughter and her friends wanted to use an empty classroom to pray ... so what? Likewise, if Muslim students or Jewish students, etc., wanted to do the same thing ... so what? Their tax dollars paid for the school, a vibrant public sphere should not limit expressions of spirituality that are constitutionally guaranteed rights. If someone wanted to form an atheists club using an empty classroom at lunch (that is, on their own time), that was OK with me as well. 

My friend had a very hard time with this and said "but I don't believe that the state should take sides with regard to religion." "Neither do I," I replied. "But, you are saying the state should take sides by allowing people to practice their religion." "How?" I asked. "Well, " my friend said, "you can teach religious studies. I'm OK with that. But, people should practice religion on their own time." "Totally agree," I said. And on and on ... talking past each other. Me arguing that preventing people from practicing religion was taking a side. Him arguing that the only way to not take sides was to stop the practice of all religion in the schools. 

My second example occurred because of the same incident. A person who I did not know well at the time, but for whom I have since also come to have a similarly deep respect, vocally opposed the prayer group. Why? Because it will be used to marginalize other children.  How? Well, bad things have happened in the past when the church was let loose. Look at the inquisition. 

Now, both my friend and this other person have, I strongly suspect, modified their views, not because of me but because they are thinking people. What I'm interested in is the implications of living in a post-Christian Canada for debates such as this. I won't say my arguments in favour of my daughter's prayer group were particularly good. (In my mind, I sounded witty and insightful as I remember it but ... well, I think I am editing history.) But, the opposition had a number of characteristics

1. It confused the individual practice of religion in the public sphere with oppression of others. Now, to be sure, it can be and certainly was in the past in Canada, and is, very clearly, being used as a justification in some parts of the US to attain precisely this result. They have some reason, in other words, for concern, to ask questions, to ask for supervision or guarantees. But, the idea that all religion is a thing of the past that has no place in the public sphere is actually (a) wrong (since the Charter guarantees freedom of conscience) and (b) actually a religious perspective. To try to use the state through the school system to prevent people from practicing their religion is the odd mirror of using the state to force people to practice a religion. It is not providing for individuality or dialogue but trying to stop dialogue and impede individuality. 

Thus, one of the characteristics of a post-Christian Canada is a misunderstanding when it come to Christianity of what state neutrality means, what diversity means, and what constitutional guarantees mean. The fact that the constitution guarantees the right of individual choice in religion does not mean that the state is imposing any religious view on people. In fact, it is the strongest guarantee we can have against the imposition of religious views on the population. I can see how someone watching what is going on in Indiana or Arkansas can have concerns and real ones. Those are things that Christians need to address. But, Canadians also need to recognize that they don't live in the US, that the stakes are different here, public policy is different, and political culture is different. 

2. The most vocal critics of Christianity often don't know a lot about Christianity. I can't fault them for that either because those people who speak in the name of Christianity often do a very poor job of it. There is a need for Christians to speak up against what the use of constitutional guarantees of "religious freedom" in the US to turn (or, try to turn) some people into second-class citizens. But ... I also can't let the critics of Christianity off the hook because they can ask questions. I  was surprised, for instance, by people who I had known for years, with whom I'd gone to parties or passed time talking about the Jays or worked with, started to refer to me as some sort of medieval cleric. "Have you learnt nothing about me in the years you have known me? I wanted to ask. Do you really think I'm attempting to regenerate the burning of heretics?" In other words, the debate (and in my telling, I am the good guy, you might have noticed) became falsely polarized. It was no longer about an individual's right to practice their religion but about something vaguely ominous that threatened others. 

3. Finally, neither Christians or members of other religions are doing anything wrong by using the established mechanisms of citizenship to try to address their concerns. I can disagree with them. You can disagree with them or with me. I frequently do. I think these doctors who are trying to establish the right to deny medical treatment to patients on the basis of their own values are just plain wrong. But, the fact that they are using the courts to put their case forward is not, in itself, wrong.  The judicial system is what we use to adjudicate disputes in a society built on the rule of law (and, I like the rule of law). They are doing nothing wrong with putting their arguments forward at election time or even trying to make election issues of them. That is a right of citizenship and I'd be concerned if someone  tried to deny them that right. I would, frankly, worry about the precedent it set. It would be, in my view, a step away from democracy. 

Now, I hasten to add, that Christian citizens also have a requirement to respect the law and to behave in a decent and mature way. Christians need to very carefully consider the implications of their actions but I'll get to that in another blog. 

What we have then, as one of the characteristics of living in a post-Christian society is a confusion about what Christianity is all about, individual rights, and citizenship rights and the proper way to put items on the public agenda. We can disagree, I say again, but Christians -- even loud-mouthed Christians -- have that right and they are doing nothing wrong with using it. The real problem, however, is that this confusion prevents us from engaging in a more constructive dialogue. It leads us to do dumb things, too (I suspect those people who used heightened language and referred to my daughter's group as the return of the Inquisition would love to take those words back) but it prevents us from understanding the character and nature of rights and the right to practice one's faith in a diverse society. The end result, oddly, is that we misconstrue the very individual rights that have come to substitute for Christianity as the centre of the Canadian value system. 

What is Going on with Christianity? Part I

Christians are on the offensive. Most of my friends who are Christians would find that statement odd.  They feel they are on the defensive, a minority under siege, they might say, in their own homes. I have sympathy for this perspective. I don't share it but is important to note because the opposite perspective also finds a lot of support: that Christians occupy a dominant or privileged position in contemporary Canada that is manipulated in ways that subvert diversity and limit opposing spiritual perspectives. I have some sympathy for this view, too, and there is no shortage of examples to which we can point. Rather than trying to adjudicate between the two perspectives, I thought I'd make an effort to figure out what is going on. The sad truth is that there is not a lot of truck and trade between these two views. Christians don't spend a great deal of time talking to their critics and their critics don't spend a great deal of time talking to Christians. Each side, I think, is less vital and vibrant in its commentary than it should be.  That is, though, an ethical view. What is going on is something different from my ethical position. What is going on is an historic transition and what is going on with Christians, in particular, is their efforts (potentially problematic) to adapt to a post-Christian Canada.  In short, Christians are trying to work out a new relationship between themselves, the state, and civil society. Resistance from civil society is part of this dialogue -- part of this effort of an effort to define relations between Church, state, and society -- for a different time.

What I'd like to do is write a series of blogs about this subject because it is an important subject for Canadian Studies and one that I, at least, address too infrequently my classes. It is an important element of contemporary Canada that defines the framework of the diversity of spiritual beliefs with which we operate. Hence, the time I want to take with this subject. In this blog I'll address the broad parameters of the changing context of Christian spirituality.  The overall argument I want to make is that there are good reasons for Christians to embrace post-Christianity. That might sound like a silly statement. Why would someone embrace something that seems to set them in the past. I don't think that will be the case. What I think grappling with post-Christianity can do is to deepen Christianity and help define its perspectives and the relationships it tries to forge in a more meaningful way. There will be those among my Christian friends who do not like this. Who will see in post-Christianity a threat. To them ... I hope to be able to show that this is not the case.

One final opening word, this is a blog. Comments are welcome, disagreements are welcome. But, it is not a refined academic piece. I'm not looking up evidence as type this or finding sources for footnotes. I'm attempting to sketch out broad parameters of change and their implications.

What does it mean to live in a post-Christian society. The term is odd because Canada has and has not been a Christian society for a long time. Official state churches were disestablished in the colonial era. Canada has also made a sincere and honest commitment to diversity and religious freedom, particularly since the 1960s. I recognize that this commitment is often honoured in the breach but I also think that we need to recognize that this commitment was something more than hegemony. It represented an effort to define the basis of what could be a good society organized around individual freedom and protection, particularly from the arbitrary authority of the state and from prejudices in society. The Charter, for example, specifies that all Canadians are guaranteed freedom of conscience and religion. What is more, increasing numbers of Canadians are exercising that right. Agnosticism and atheism are rapidly growing in Canadian society and all major religions are well represented in Canadian demographics. Moreover, the state is prohibited from discriminating against people on the grounds of religion and Quebec has moved away from its "secular Charter," which would have marginalized Muslims and Sikhs, but not Christians.

In other words, we have a great deal of evidence that shows us that Canada is not an officially Christian society in terms of rights, established  religion, freedoms, etc.

But, we also have appreciable evidence that Christianity exerts an unusual influence over culture in society. If Canada did away with state churches before Confederation, this does not mean that the churches did not enjoy privileges with regard to public policy and its implementation. The state and the churches, for instance, worked together to run Native residential schools, the Christian calendar is imprinted on the public calendar in Canada (I always get Christmas "off"). Sunday is not the "day or rest" that it used to be, but its not Monday or Tuesday, etc. either. Things do slow down on Sundays, even if some shopping is allowed. In other words, while Christians cannot claim any special rights or privileges under the law, this does not mean that some elements of Christianity were not embedded in the operation of Canada long after the demise of state churches and, indeed, up to the present day. The effect of this embeddedness is that religious freedom falls unevenly across Canadian society. Christianity is easily accommodated to the public sphere because it helped build the Canadian public sphere.

Moreover, there has been more than a bit of "push back" against secularism and diversity from the current government. The Harper Tories have ditched the idea of rolling back equality rights for gays and lesbians, but they are also trying to draw lines. These lines are draw by offices of religious freedom that are supposed to detail the abuse of Christians in other parts of the word, citizen requirements that discriminate against some Muslim women, or anti-terrorist laws that restrict freedoms and that seem to be directed against the people of certain faiths but not others.

In other words, what living in a post-Christian society means is not living, as it were, after Christianity. I personally doubt that  could happen. What it means is living with a new relationship between Christians, the state, and civil society.

This relationship is perhaps most evident in the cultural realm. The high point of church attendance in Canada was the 1950s. We can likely see why. Not only was belief in God largely unquestioned in popular culture but the Churches offered stability, ethics, propriety. They helped explain right and wrong in a society where there were serious questions about the character and scope of right and wrong, a deep desire for stability, and grounding. Attending church was an ordinary and unquestioned part of middle class life for most people. Religious observance at university, for instance, was simply taken for granted; many universities maintained open and direct affiliation with specific denominations. There were people -- and perhaps a surprising number of them -- who had questions about the churches, but they tended to keep these views silent. Christianity was a fundamental part of Canadian culture, equated with progress, civilization, and morality.

What has changed since then is not necessarily the emergence of new ideas, but their broader diffusion in society. The great protest waves of the 1960s and early 1970s put other items on the agenda that the churches did not always deal well with. Some did. There were important church figures who stood up for the poor, argued against racism, urged Canadians to adopt a pacifist stance internationally, but as Pierre Burton pointed out long ago in _The Comfortable Pew_ these voices were not always heard and the weight of counter veiling conformism was strong.

The effect was to lessen the role of churches in society and the broader emergence of a view that suggested that one could lead a good life and be a moral person without attending church or even believing in God. Indeed, at times, the views of some people claiming to speak in the name of Christianity seemed to suggest precisely the opposite: that to be a good person, one needed to move past Christianity. Some Christians may have worked in urban missions, run after school programmes for disadvantaged kids, helped operate food banks, and the like, but others stood up for sexism and homophobia. The result was an increased cultural bifurcation. Christianity, which had once been part and parcel of culture, now became something that seemed, at least at times, to stand in the way of progress.  Increasingly, Canadians who sought to promote equality, autonomy, decency, found themselves fighting against self-defined Christians. They turned other aspects of culture and politics, such as the Charter to defend their views, explain their conception of the good, and promote it in society.

Consumerism promoted a similar type of process. Consumerism, I would argue, is deeply anti-Christian (which may be one of the reasons why Christians so opposed Sunday shopping but I'll get to that in another blog). Why? Because it promotes a non-Christian conception of the good life. This does not mean, I hasten to add, that one becomes a bad person by engaging in consumerism. I do all the time and I sure hope I ain't a bad person. What it means is that the values of consumerism and Christianity are different.  Consumerism is more  complex than most people give it credit for and I'll distort its operation by reducing it to a single line, but for the sake of brevity: consumerism places its conception of the good life in material objects. Those objects (computers, cars, going to the ballgame) fulfill us, or are supposed to. Christianity should place its conception of fulfillment in relationships: one's connection to God and one's connection to other people. Consumerism turns one's job into a means to an end. One works to afford to pay for things one wants (again, I do this so I'm not slagging it.) Christianity looks at work a different way. I won't get into the details because I don't want to engage in a theological discussion, but one's job and one's skills, in the Christian worldview, are supposed to match. One is supposed to go a good job at one's job (to be equal to one's calling) as an end in and of itself facilitated by the match between one's abilities, dispositions, etc., and what one does for a living.

Consumerism has been a powerful force in post WW II Canadian culture. It provides an alternative conception of the good life, one accepted, in some measure largely unquestioned, by many people.

Finally, we can and should not demographic changes. It is not just the rise of agnosticism and atheism that is of not by the fact that Christianity is not building a new relationship between itself, state and society by itself. All religions are looking to do this. Points of dramatic debate -- say, over Sharia law -- are important for a variety of reasons but they are also about the character and scope of that relationship. To what degree should the state facilitate religious perspectives as a mater of discipline over defined communities?  The so-called "secular charter" in Quebec was about the same thing.

This, then, is the position in which we find ourselves in Canada today. We have not moved past Christianity. Most Canadians believe in some sort of deity; most Canadians self-identify as Christians, and the churches play an important role in many communities. But, the situation is complicated and cross currents run rampant. We life, in other words, with a series of contradictions where Christians believe they are fighting a rear guard action and their critics believe that Christians occupy the high ground. It is the scope and nature of these contradictions and cross currents that define post-Christianity in Canada.

Christianity and Postmodernity

Friends of mine at my church periodically give me books or recommend DVDs on "postmodernism." Yes, I can hear you saying … but a bit late in the day, no? After all, haven’t we been talking about postmodernism for … well … a generation? Is there a new interpretation (perhaps the post-modern equivalent of Jackson Lear’s No Place of Grace or Marshall Berman’s All that is Solid, to galvanize discussion?) Unfortunately … no and so that is not the subject on which I will be commenting. Instead, I thought I’d take some time to break from my normal commentary on Canadian subjects to comment on Christian ”takes” on the postmodern.

I am currently reading Graham Johnston’s Preaching to a Postmodern World, a book recommended to me by a good friend and wonderful man. I’ve not yet really had chance to discuss this book with my friend but I am not all that impressed. There a several things to note by way of introduction to this text, Christian approaches to postmodernism, and my engagement with them.

First, honesty in advertising: I’m Christian. I attend Middle Sackville Baptist Church, a self-identifying evangelical church. I’m involved, I’m an usher, teller, facilitator of corporate prayer, on the “prayer team” and I do the odd shift (with another friend) in the Sunday morning nursery. What I say, then, I say as a person who might be described as an adult convert to born-again Christianity.

Second, the Christian approach to postmodernism confuses me. In fact, I cannot quite figure out why Christians are all that concerned about it. Postmodernism is, of course, an artistic and architectural movement that may have some validity in culture as a whole in Canada, the US, and some other western and former communist countries. But, it is a contested concept. Christian texts on postmodernism seem to treat it as a fait accompli: “postmodernism says …” or “postmodernism suggests …” instead of as the deeply debated and thoroughly contested concept that it is. No one writing these texts, for instance, seem to have read (or, if they have read, paid any attention to) such important texts as Mike Davis, City of Quartz or Frederic Jameson, Postmodernism or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism. The result is that the Christian takes on postmodernism that I have read tend to be very one-sided.

And, here is where I get even more confused. This text is not a bad example of Christian writing. It is, in places, persuasive, articulate, caring, concerned, and direct. It is painfully honest and there is no doubt that the author has read far more Christian writing on postmodernism than I have (or, perhaps, will). The author is no dewey-eyed apologist for modernity. In fact, he rejects Christian efforts to find a rapprochement with the legacies of modernity. Nor, overtly, does this text draw sectarian distinctions, something to which too many Christians (perhaps including me) fall prey. In short, there is much to recommend this book.

It also has its problems and one problem is the relationship between postmodernity and modernity. Everything postmodern is, in the author’s eyes, bad. It is relativism run awol. It is individualism become hedonism. It is a-moral. Its denizens are media junkies. Just about everything you can think of that is bad is laid at the feed of postmodernity and this, in my view, is problem number one and confusion number two. I think postmodernity (whatever it might be) is problematic, but gee … is everything about it wrong? Did not Foucault’s analysis of power have something important to offer? Did not Derrida’s exposure of the metaphysics lying at the heart of rationality have something worthwhile to say?

The problem is more then a lack of balance. The problem is one of a perspective that the author cannot seem to escape. The author reads postmodernism using the language of modernity. The result is that his assessment of postmodernity is “a mile wide and an inch deep.” The author is focused on the individual and the effects of postmodernism on individualism … as if postmodern writers were talking about a modern subject. We can argue whether or not the postmodern subject is of any validity another day. The truth of the matter is that Foucault, for instance, is trying to think the subject in a way that elides modern conception of individualism. By returning to the individual (over and over again), Johnston can only read postmodernism through the lens that its key thinkers had already thrown away.

I’ll make my point even more bluntly: Johnston assumes that postmodernists are talking about the same thinking, acting, free-will individual who attracted the attention of modern thinkers. But since they are not, he cannot really grapple with what they are saying because he cannot really understand it. And, because he is trying to understand the postmodern through the conceptual framework of modernity, he  himself is trapped in a descriptive modern language that was disregarded a generation ago by the likes of Foucault and Derrida.

He falls prey to the same problem with regard to texts. Derrida never said, for instance, texts were meaningless or could mean whatever one wanted. What he said was that rationalist discourse was sustained not by reason or empirical reality but rhetoric that disguised the metaphysics needed to sustain argument. Texts were not without meaning. The instability of language created multiple meanings. These two things are different, but again Johnston cannot “get” this, because within his framework there either is meaning or there is not. Texts either communicate an authorial intention or they do not and if they do not they become meaningless .

I can agree with much of what Johnston says, but I can also wonder about it. Why, for instance, be concerned about  postmodernist irony and kitsch when millions are starving? Seriously: why not attack racism rather then express our concerns about what is, after all, a largely white, western, upper middle class cultural phenomena? I’d suggest -- as problem number four -- that the author has confused his own cultural world (or, at least one with which he interacts) with the world. The text is a decade old and so much of it is out of date (in terms of popular culture), but the same principle could apply today. He might select his examples differently, castigating Lady Gaga’s “Born this Way” instead of whatever was on the charts in 2001. My point would remain the same: surely unemployment, violence against women, racism, third world poverty are issues of more pressing concern if we want to demonstrate our love of our neighbours.

Finally, I also wonder about Johnston’s politics. He tries hard to not be political: to keep spiritual matters front and centre but he can’t quite avoid his own politics. He cannot quite avoid using homosexuality as an example of things that are wrong in the world, for instance. One story was instructive. He related a Bush Sr era speech writer’s concerns about a single pregnant teen getting her high school degree. The audience applauded (as they should). But … something was not quite right in this. Reading Johnston’s discussion of this story, it illustrates what is wrong with society: the teen should not be pregnant in the first place and we have no business saying it is OK through our applause. Both the speech writer and author are taken aback that people actually appreciate the fact that this young woman persevered in a tough circumstance and did something of note. It is not right, in their view, that pregnant girls get high school degrees. It just isn’t.

Why not? What were the alternatives? The author suggests that this is a historical transition: there was a time when teens were not pregnant and we have to get back to that time. When was that time? This is not a historical transition. This is a myth masquerading as history. This time never existed. It might have existed for individual families but it neglects that simple fact that there have been single pregnant teenage girls as long as there have been teenage girls. To pretend otherwise is to perpetrate an and this is the biggest problem with Johnston’s interpretation of postmodernism. It relies on a mythologized conception of the past that allows it only to draw false distinctions with the contemporary world and hence suggests false choices and false problems. The issue, then, is never “should we have single pregnant teenage moms.” That is not a real question: it is ideology. For a Christian to ask it, merely consigns his spirituality to the real of ideology. The real question -- and the question Christians need to ask -- is what do we do with reality? Do we applaud or not?

The same mythologized history is evident in other aspects of Johnston’s consideration of the postmodern as well. The pre-postmodern (modern) age, say before the late 1960s, is a world without racism, without violence against women, without poverty, and in which all families were kind and loving. The author does not geographically locate his study. Instead he presents postmodernism as a global phenomena. Modernism appears the same way but I would have liked to have known exactly where this modern society -- whose only real failing was enlightenment skepticism -- actually was. I suppose we are all prone to nostalgia. I bore my kids with stories of my childhood which are likely inaccurate. But, this is not nostalgia. It is history as similacra.

I’m not certain one can write large from one text. So far, however, what I’ve seen and listened to does not bode well. If Christians want to engage postmodernism using this text, they are on the wrong track. It ignores key studies into the character of postmodernism and ignores, in fact, postmodern thinkers themselves. It lacks balance and works with a mythologized history that smuggles a neo-con politics in through the back door. This mythologized history presents false options and fake choices as illusory historical turning points while ignoring real history and, in the process, turns what should be an important message into ideology. Alas …

Moral Standards

Sorry folks: this one is long.

One of the low level on-going debates here in New Brunswick relates to Crandall University, formerly Atlantic Baptist University. Crandall receives modest amounts of public support. That public support is larger then one might think if we were to properly calculate it, but let’s use the existing definition that Crandall’s critics seem to be using: direct grants from state bodies. The federal government provided some infrastructure spending last year (or, over the last two years, apologies I did not check out the facts) and the City of Moncton provides a very small grant, somewhere between $100 000.00 and $200 000.00 dollars. For those of you who go, gee … that ain’t small, for comparison Mount A (where I work) has a total budget approximating $40 million and we are a small university. Crandall is primarily supported through tuition fees and the Atlantic Baptist Convention. To be sure, then, we are not dealing with regularized state support (infrastructure grants are not regular) or on-going support in any significant way. In terms of university funding, to say this again, we are dealing with tiny amounts of money.

I feel I need to make this point because reading some of the critics of Crandall, particularly those who argue that something is horribly amiss if the institution receives state support, might lead one  to believe that mass amounts of public money are flowing to religiously based institutions. Point number one of this discussion should be to acknowledge that this ain’t the case.

Point number two should be to acknowledge that the problem with Crandall is not its statement of faith. I listened -- courtesy of a friend who sent me the link -- to the CBC discussion of whether or not religious institutions violate academic freedom. I think that anyone who seriously believes in diversity will accept the idea that in a vibrant civil society there will be all kinds of institutions. Some of these will be secular (in NB UNB), some will be semi-secular (STU), some will be secular in practice and ignore their religious heritage (Mount A), etc. In other words, different institutions will do different things and provides services to different communities. Moreover, these institutions will change over time as they direct their future. I see nothing wrong with this. I do think, however, that the argument made by critics of religiously-based education -- that it is somehow wrong -- is completely off the mark. One would need to do something more they theorize here. I’d need some evidence. In other words, I would say that one is innocent until proven guilty, a fact that a lot of the critics of religiously-based schools seem to have neglected. They assume the worst.

So, is Crandall’s statement of faith a problem? Does it hamper freedom of speech? Is anyone making that allegation who works there (as opposed to people who have visited for an afternoon and have no knowledge of how it works)? Are any students alleging that their voices are being silenced? To date, the critics of Crandall have provided no one single case. Now, I am not trying to be hard on the critics. If there is a case, let’s here about it. But, the fact of the matter is that the facts seem to be for Crandall on this point. When its president argues on CBC that the statement of faith does not hamper academic freedom, he seems to have the weight of evidence on his side.

This is important to me as a scholar. Anyone can speculate and speculation can be fun. But, we need to remember that speculation is speculation. It is not empirical reality. So, for those who don’t like Crandall, don’t speculate: send in your evidence. Post it on this blog. No “if X then  Y but also maybe Z” but actual cases.

In point of fact, if we accept the idea of freedom of religion, as guaranteed by the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, Crandall’s statement of faith is fairly innocuous. It basically says you have to be a Christian to work here. As I understand it, everyone who works at Crandall has to sign this statement of faith. Those who oppose Crandall will say that this is wrong but this raises another issue. Do we want the state telling universities who they can and cannot hire? Would not that be a violation of academic freedom? Gee … Mount A, I see that you are semi secular and you don’t have enough agnostics on staff, your next six hires will have to be agnostics. I’d argue that this would not be good. Yet, oddly, in asking for sanctions against Crandall -- financial penalties, in effect -- this is what Crandall’s opponents argue. The state should use its financial power to punish those people who take seriously the freedom of conscience provisions of the Canadian constitution.

The real issue and the crux of the matter is something other than the statement of faith. It is Crandall’s “Statement of Moral Standards.” In fact, I’d go so far as to say that the real issue is not its anti-porn provisions (most academics, I suspect, will accept that having already been convinced by feminist arguments against pornography) but its anti-gay provision. In other words: one line is cause the problem.

I am less certain how applicable this. I don’t know whether one must agree to this statement as well. Here those people like me who defend Crandall run into difficulties for a couple of reasons. Let’s start with big reason number one:

1) the theology is faulty. Yep: this statement is based on a pretty loose and weak reading of The Bible.  Let me give you two examples: the anti-gay provision is simply debatable. Sorry. If anyone takes the Bible seriously, there is no way that they can make a hard and fast statement that “God doesn’t like gay people.” End of discussion. Only an ideologue could make this statement. Jesus, for instance, never mentioned anything about homosexuality. (Again, I’m a bit of an empiricist: prove me wrong. Post your evidence. Give me a quote from Jesus.)

Moreover, this statement is a bunch of “thou shalt nots.” That is pretty shaky Christianity. Where is the “thou shalt.” For instance, references to helping the poor are mentioned frequently by just about everyone in the Bible (I read there are something like 2000 references to helping the poor). That is absent from Crandall’s statement and that is just plain wrong from a Christian perspective. I’d argue, in fact, that Crandall should be embarrassed about this absence and about their neglect of God’s word.

2) The “Statement of Moral Standards” readily acknowledges that it is not based on the Bible. Here is a direct quote: “Every community has standards.  As a Christian community, Crandall University upholds Christian standards of behavior to which faculty and staff are required to conform.  These standards derive not only from the Christian scriptures, but also from the culture of the supporting evangelical constituency.”

Here is the problem, you are not asking me to defend your freedom of religion any longer but your culture. I’m more than willing to argue that culture  is culture. The government should not be in, say, the assimilation business. Someone moves to Canada from, say, England, nothing should be done to force them to change their accent or change their diet or religion. A silly example, to be sure, but you get my point. We can defend freedom of religion and argue that this is important. It is another thing to defend the intrusion of institutions into people’s lives on the basis of something as vague as “the culture of the supporting evangelical constituency.” I consider myself part of that constituency. I don’t donate a lot of money to Crandall but they are on my list of missions to which I will be contributing this year. Yet, the anti-gay part of their moral statements clearly contravenes my culture. Culture is notoriously slippery. If the supporting culture favours Italian food, does it become a requirement?

Moreover, and this is the key point, we need to be really careful here. Crandall advocates can say “this is God’s will” (or this is Biblically grounded) but, as I have already demonstrated, they have made selective use of the Bible, neglecting key elements of God’s desire for us (care for the poor) and substituting others that are far more shakey. This is not the word of God but human beings claiming the right to tell us what the will of God is. And, let us be clear, this is something different. Christians have a bad history of interpreting the will of God for other people and imposing it on them. We don’t need to review the history such things in Canada because we can simply use the words “residential school” and that should be enough for anyone to be cautious about too much certainty.

Let’s not go overboard. If there is no requirement to sign the moral statements and agree to it, no harm has been done: no harm no foul. If Crandall permits and encourages open discussion of their statement of faith, how far it can be applied, whether or not it should be modified, etc., academic freedom has been preserved. Their president seemed to be suggesting this and so I will take him at his word. What I would suggest is that just about everyone in this low-grade debate is wrong. Those who reject state funding are wrong and, in fact, in violation of the very document -- the Charter -- on which they base their arguments. There is no mass movement of public dollars to religious institutions and, in fact, Crandall is part of a broader post-secondary educational system that includes all matter of different institutions (it is not a secular v religious black and white dichotomy). Crandall, on the other hand, needs to rethink their moral statements and needs to make them more pro-active. God is about many things, but among the things he is about are mercy, justice, and love. I’d like to see those things more directly stated.

Minor Controversies

There has been a minor controversy in some of the local papers about Christianity, homosexuality, and salvation. I promised myself I wouldn't say/write anything about this but it is awfully hard not to. The reason I did not want to say/write anything is that this is an old debate. Anyone who engages in it needs to recognize that, by and large, they are not saying anything new. I appreciate the sincerity with which different people put their arguments forward; the seriousness of heir intent, the faith they express. I'm not about to bring some new insight to this debate and my argument is clear: there is no ground on which the state can enact laws the deny equality to gay and this includes marriage. If gays or lesbians want to marry no society that takes its commitment to equality seriously can stop that. To so do would be rank hypocrisy on a social level. Moreover, I suspect that in 10 or 20 years time no one will really care about this debate. Folks: gay and lesbian marriage will not cause the world to fall apart. Moreover, to use a religious rationale to try to stop gay marriage is to enter the potentially dangerous ground of fashioning the laws of state after a particular religious perspective. We've done this in Canada in the past and the results were not good. Let's not repeat a bad history.

The real point I want to make, however, has little to do with political philosophy. Instead, I want to say something about the opposition of some Christians to gay and lesbian marriage. I'm troubled by this and here is why: I hate to say this but I find the vocal opposition of some Christians to gay and lesbian marriage troubling because it comes very close to singling out gay and lesbian Canadians for special prejudicial treatment. It recycles a discourse of discrimination that I would like to see all Canadians put behind them. What I want to do is address this issue from my own perspective as a Christian. The argument some Christians put forward in opposition to gay and lesbian marriage (and, by extension, equality) is flawed for a number of reasons.

First, those who oppose equality (in the form of marriage) for gay people claim to be Christians. And, as Christians, they are fond of saying that their arguments are based on the word of God and the word of God is eternal and infallible. They imagine that their opponents are people who would modify the word of God by historically contextualizing it, or something of the sort. I'm in this camp and this not the case at all. I think the word of God is true, infallible and eternal. I don't question the word; I question human being ability to understand it. My issue is not with the word, my issue is with the spin some people put on the word. The opponents of gay marriage seem to think that stating that the Bible is the eternally true word of God is some sort of trump card. It ain't: its Christianity 101. It is the beginning point of Christianity spirituality; not its end point.

Second, I dislike the intense selectiveness of people who use the Bible to justify positions against equality for gay people. The Bible has a lot of rules in it. To single out gay and lesbian people for special commentary or to single out the institution of straight marriage as somehow deserving special comment or special protection is to suggest that some rules are more important than others. Some people who argue against gay and lesbian marriage suggest that homosexual relations are sinful. For the sake of argument, let's allow this. Even if we did, however, why would one sin be worse than others? I notice most of those who oppose gay and lesbian marriage fail to mention the Great Commission (Matt 26: 16-20). Those Christians who don't practice the Great Commission are violating one of God's laws -- as directly stated by Jesus -- and so are sinning. Why not focus on this? Yet, virtually no Christian who comments on public issues talks about the Great Commission. Why not; its really cool. Do they feel it unimportant? It is the very fact that some Christians single out gay and lesbian people that causes me pause. Instead of writing editorials about the problems of gay marriage, it seems to me that a better approach would be write editorials about love. Yet ....

Going along with this, it seems to me that singling out gay and lesbian people for special treatment could, in fact, violate the Great Commission. As well: Jesus tells us that the two greatest commandments are love God and love your neighbour. Failure to follow these commandments is, one would then assume, pretty distasteful in the eyes of God. How does singling out specific people express love? And, let's be clear on this: God does not say "love everybody except gay people." God's love is unconditional; it is the basis of salvation. Do those who campaign against equality for gay and lesbian people think they know more than God? Do they think they should define for Him the nature of His love? I wonder this: how can campaigning against equality for gay and lesbian people illustrate love? How can campaigning against equality for gay and lesbian people encourage them to be part of the Church? Will it not, instead, drive people out? I could be wrong. I don't have an easy answer to this and I don't think we are supposed to. It seems to me, however, that we should focus on that which brings people together in the Church as opposed to that which drives people out and can inspire animosity against definable groups of people.

A few other quick points:

* Jesus never mentions anything about gay and lesbian people. He mentions a lot of other stuff. He talks about a lot of other sins and speaks at length about the forms of behaviour Christians should follow. Do the opponents of gay marriage think this is an oversight? If gay and lesbian marriage is so important to warrant special commentary on their part, do they think that Jesus just forgot to mention it (because, as I said, He mentions a bunch of other stuff).
* I find the claims of opponents of gay marriage to following the word of God ring hollow because they are not talking about following the word of God. They choose to ignore huge sections of word. The opponents of gay marriage often quote the Old Testament, yet I notice they always ignore things like (I'll pick one example) the rules for dealing with a rebellious son (Deut 21: 18-21). Why? This shows incredible inconsistency.
* The civil society argument: gay marriage in no way threatens churches or the practice of Christianity. No church can, therefore, be forced to perform a marriage, really to anyone regardless of orientation. To state otherwise -- to claim that recognizing the legitimacy of gay and lesbian marriage will result is churches being forced to perform these marriages -- is just plain wrong. (Any one parishioner might or might not object to decisions individual churches have made on their own but that is a different matter.)


Let me sum up: there is no reason in civil society other than prejudice to justify the differential treatment of gay and lesbian people. And, prejudice is not a legitimate argument. Christians who single out gay and lesbian people or have been public and vocal in their opposition to gay and lesbian equality work with a dangerous discourse that naturalizes prejudice. Eventually, I strongly suspect, this entire issue will disappear (women's equality caused a lot of heated discourse as well and, yet, today is so normal no one would debate it). Christian arguments that assert the Bible as the word of God are not a trump card. Far from this, they are common sense to Christians. Telling a Christian that the Bible is the word of God is the equivalent of teling someone that they have to breath in order to live. IOW, it tells us nothing we don't already know. Jesus did not focus on homosexual relations as a matter of special concern. Opponents of gay equality are selective in their interpretation of the Bible. And, opponents of gay marriage tend to treat some sins (remember, I accepted this only for the sake of argument) as more important than others in that they single them out for special condemnation when there is no Biblical evidence (the word of God, remember) that this is what God wants us to do. And, they tend to ignore the message of love and the Great Commission and follow a social practice that is divisive and, from what I can tell, a threat to the Great Commission.

For all these reasons, I think there is good reason for Christians to approach this particular issue cautiously. We should avoid extreme statements, avoid divisiveness, remember the Sermon on the Mount, and get on with our work.