The front page
As with articles that somewhat address religion and secularism, my article on Canada.com’s Your Agenda has taken off:
That’s a screenshot from the frontpage today of Canada.com. No clue who that kid is, but the picture is priceless.
Go ahead and read through the varied comments too. I’ll repost and respond to some them later.
Your Agenda: Religious beliefs affect policy–so the leaders should talk about them
This is a piece I was asked to submit to Canada.com’s new “Your Agenda” election feature.
Religious beliefs affect policy - so the leaders should talk about them
The night Stephen Harper was first elected prime minister in 2006, he shocked the nation by ending his speech with a phrase that sounded almost American: “God bless Canada.” Yet, even after five years in power, the media and politicians have yet to broach the taboo subject of religion in Canadian politics.
Agreements between British Protestants and French Catholics led to the creation of our country. That multicultural spirit continues today in a country that welcomes people of any or no faith. However, this multiculturalism is under increasing strain as continued immigration brings customs that clash with other Canadian values and freedoms.
As more Canadians abandon Christianity or bring other beliefs from around the world, some of our older traditions look increasingly archaic. Some surveys have pegged the number of Canadians who don’t believe in God as high as 1 in 4, yet our anthem and Charter both explicitly favour belief in God.
When last year’s Throne Speech promised updates to the national anthem that would address some of the sexist phrasing, the uproar from conservative believers forced a retreat. Few expected such a progressive change from the current government, and many sought further improvements, but Harper’s backtracking was too fast for any actual discussion on the merits of change to occur.
Much of this uproar came from the Christian right in Canada, which has been growing over the past few years. Journalist Marci McDonald documented this growth in her 2010 book The Armageddon Factor. Organized in response to the gay marriage debates, McDonald credits evangelical Christians with rallying behind the Harper Conservatives, propelling him to victory.
Their success is such that Harper’s Minister of State for Science and Technology made some unclear statements about his beliefs on the subject of evolution while others have stood in the House (http://www2.macleans.ca/2009/04/02/james-lunney-v-science/) and defended Biblical Creationism. In 2000, similar statements led to Liberal strategist Warren Kinsella openly mocking then Canadian Alliance leader Stockwell Day on national television.
Yet questions about the personal beliefs of candidates for our highest offices seem to remain off-limits. While there should never be a religious (or atheistic) test for our government, it is greatly mistaken to think that deeply held beliefs will not affect the policy positions once in power. People have a right to know if any of our elected officials think the world will end in our lifetime.
These beliefs lead to actions like the government’s denial of funds to maternal health initiatives that might have provided access to abortions in the Third World, and to social-justice group KAIROS that apparently represents the wrong kind of Christian. Dennis Gruending documents numerous other organizations (http://dennisgruending.ca/pulpitandpolitics/2011/03/25/stephen-harpers-hit-list/), including Pride Toronto and Planned Parenthood, that have fallen victim to these seemingly ideological cuts. While past Prime Ministers have harboured varying levels of commitment to their beliefs, few have let it bleed into their policy. Until recently, most politicians seemed to take Trudeau’s legacy of keeping the government out of the bedroom to heart.
My hope for this and future elections is that we can have an open discussion about the role of religious belief in Canadian politics. We need to shed light on hidden agendas and move toward policy based on reason and evidence.
Ian Bushfield is currently a masters student in physics at Simon Fraser University and lives in Vancouver. He is president of the B.C. Humanist Association and blogs at http://terahertzatheist.ca and http://canadianatheist.com .
The Peak–Lying For Jesus
Here’s my Peak article that ran on February 28th regarding Jesus Week at SFU.
Lying for Jesus
You may not have heard, but last week was proclaimed “Jesus Week” by the Christian student groups on campus. The week featured a variety of events for these evangelists to spread their faith.
On Wednesday they put together a panel of four SFU professors to explore questions about Jesus. Unfortunately, the panel was dominated by white Christian men, none of whom were theologians, religious studies professors, or even historians. To speak about religion and history, the best professors SFU’s Christian clubs could find were two mathematicians, an economist, and a political scientist affiliated with the right-wing Fraser Institute.
Yet, despite these lacklustre qualifications, the Christian ad-machine was in full force with posters displaying quotes by Katy Perry, Bono, Albert Einstein, and Richard Dawkins. Unfortunately, only half of these quotes were honestly chosen. While she gave up gospel singing to pursue stardom, both Katy Perry and Bono are at least nominally Christian and definitely theists. The same can’t be said for the other two spokespeople.
Einstein’s poster sports the quote: “No one can read the gospels without feeling the presences of Jesus. His personality pulsates with every word. No myth is filled with such life.” While a true quote, Einstein was merely conveying respect for the Christian myths. He later made his view very transparent, stating: “It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it.”
Misquoting Einstein tends to be popular among Christians who desperately hope to add the credibility of an agnostic Jewish physicist to their arsenal, but as with any lie by omission, this is dishonest and un-Christian.
But the dishonesty goes deeper with their quote from Richard Dawkins, snipped from his satirical article “Atheists for Jesus” in which he stated, “[Jesus was] . . . a charismatic young preacher who advocated generous forgiveness, [he] must have seemed radical to the point of subversion. No wonder they nailed him,” which neglects the fact that the actual point of the article was to suggest that, were he alive today, Jesus would likely have been an atheist.
Buried on one of their many Facebook pages is the explanation that all quotes are chosen to show how Jesus’ teachings have reached and touched us all. Yet, when taken out of context and plastered across campus they appear as little more than desperate attempts to steal endorsements.
But wait, there’s more. Friday featured Kirk Durston, a recent PhD graduate of biophysics from the University of Guelph, attempting to rebut Stephen Hawking’s recent book The Grand Design. Hawking’s book argued in laymen terms how the universe could feasibly arise without God.
Never mind how disconnected modern cosmology and biophysics are: academic qualifications are apparently unnecessary during Jesus Week. Durston continues to argue that evolution is too complicated to happen and has previously suggested that genocide is just peachy if God Himself legitimately tells us to commit it. Someone who has failed to grasp the basics of evolution from first year biology thinks he knows better than the world’s preeminent astrophysicist? And here I was thinking Christians were supposed to be modest.
From the crosses that adorn the relic SFU crest, to Christmas and Easter vacations, Christianity is deep-rooted in our culture. I really have to question whether last week was at all successful at making even one person aware of Jesus who had never heard of him before February 14.
It’s generated two responses so far: David Minor’s Jesus is not a four letter word [7 March] and Kristen Soo’s Jesus’ message can be for anybody [14 March]. Also, it got the following responses in the “Reader Comments” (aka letters section)
Ian Bushfield’s opinion piece ‘Lying for Jesus’ is one of those bizarre ramblings reminiscent of Gadahfi’s recent speeches.
Bushfield presents himself as a champion of truth, yet writes an article replete with misrepresentations and sketchy half-truths.
He did not attend my lecture on Hawking’s and Mlodinow’s Grand Design. Instead, he made up an absurd report, throwing in words like ‘evolution’ and ‘genocide’ that had no association with the lecture.
It appears the ‘genocide’ comment was obtained from a gross misrepresentation originating out of an atheist blog a few years ago, which Bushfield seems to have uncritically swallowed as gospel to spice up his rather dodgy article. The actual lecture presented last week reviewed some of the major ideas advanced by Hawking and Mlodinow in their recent book Grand Design.
- Kirk Durston
And:
Taken out of context, the Einstein quote does make it sound as if he believed the gospels to be true. It is misleading.
You claim “everything [most SFU students] have heard [of Jesus] is cast in a negative light”, despite that mainstream media and North American society as a whole are still pretty Christian-friendly.
Growing up in Canada, I certainly heard more good things about Christianity than bad, and I bet it was the same for most SFU students. University is one of the few settings in which people freely but intelligently discuss and criticize Christianity, and Bushfield’s concerns over the methods used to convey Jesus Week messages are a legitimate part of such discussions.
If Jesus week really were an honest “invitation to dialogue”, perhaps its supporters shouldn’t rush to accuse students of being part of some evil Christianity-bashing movement when they speak up.
- Monica W.
Marci McDonald in Vancouver on Wednesday
Marci McDonald, author of The Armageddon Factor, will be in Vancouver on Wednesday.
Her book set off a storm of controversy over the summer by drawing attention to the strength of the Christian Nationalist lobby within Stephen Harper's government.
She'll be responding to some of the criticisms levelled at her, and likely giving a bit of an update to what's happened since her book was published.
For more information, check out the page at the BC Humanist Website.
Muslims run unchecked in Canada?
This is the latest YouTube video that’s making news in Canada:
A few thoughts cross my mind:
- Does this shaky spy-cam action and rock music show anything other than the film-makers bias?
- Why does this paranoid bigot feel the need to film a check-in gate?
- And does this not worry airport security more than a family of travellers who have already passed the main security gates?
- On a related note, what’s the real, scientific explanation of why we feel this need to see faces? We know people are very easily deceived, so what does seeing someone’s face actually accomplish?
- If they are not who they say they are, won’t getting through customs in England be quite a bit more difficult?
- Why question the gender of one of the passengers other than to suspect that most Muslims are terrorists?
- If this “error” was so egregious, then I guess we must just be lucky that these veiled “women” didn’t use this opportunity to strike with plastic knives and bring down the plane. Or of course, there is no real need to be any more secure at the gate other than to ensure that people paid for their seats.
And while I deplore Islam and its brutal subjugation of women, ignorant accusations like this do nothing to help bring peace and freedom to the victims.
Book review: Losing Control
Hot on the heels of Marci McDonald’s bestselling The Armageddon Factor, comes another expose on the religious right in Canada. I just finished Losing Control: Canada’s Social Conservatives in the Age of Rights, which was written by gay activist Tom Warner and published by Between the Lines.
Full disclosure: My review copy was provided at no charge by BTL publishing. Nevertheless, take my review as my honest opinion on this book.
Losing Control provides a good supplemental reading to the narratives provided by McDonald. While McDonald provides the detailed look into some of the cast of characters involved in the religious right, Warner adds an academic history in the events that date back to the formation of the modern rights movements in the 1960s.
Warner documents a shift in Canadian thinking from it’s Christian roots to a secular society that prizes individual and minority rights. This shift has obviously come hard for the social conservatives in the country, who have since rallied around various conservative parties, from the Progressive Conservatives to the Reform, Canadian Alliance and modern Conservative Party.
Warner breaks his treatment thematically, treating the abortion debate, repressive sexuality laws, gay rights and gay marriage in successive chapters. He finishes with some discussion about the social conservative inroads in politics.
Unfortunately, he only has passing references to the debates over evolution vs. creationism and school prayer, both of which have been hot topics for social conservatives.
In The Armageddon Factor, McDonald used mostly original research to compose her book, however the vast majority of Losing Control is based on 29 pages of third-party sources. This extensive bibliography provides a valuable resource for anyone wanting to get the dirt straight from the source.
I partially criticized McDonald for minor editorializing at points in The Armageddon Factor, and while Warner uses the mostly neutral term social conservative to refer to Canada’s vast network of religious right figures (which includes evangelical protestants, Catholics, conservative Jews, Sikhs and Muslims), he does end many of his chapters in a more of a warning style.
As an example, at the end of the chapter on regulating sexuality he states:
Sadly, there is no realistic reason to believe that members of Parliament will take the next logical step and actually decriminalize prostitution and repeal the repressive bawdy house sections of the Criminal Code. As has so often been the case in the past, the best hope for progress on those issues rests with the justices of the Supreme Court and their interpretations of the rights guaranteed by the Charter.
This is of course not to say that I disagree with anything Warner has to say, I’m with him almost the entire way through this book. He does come down firmly with the BC Civil Liberties Union and criticizes other gay activists who have used the Human Rights Tribunals to censor hate speech, to which I’m still undecided upon, but otherwise I’m in total agreement.
I think the greatest value in Losing Control is in its framing the battles with the religious right in terms of conflicting societal values. It’s secular rights (which include religious freedoms) versus theocratic ambitions to regulate morality.
One final chapter I was hoping for was for Warner to connect the dots (something McDonald attempted to do) and discuss the main organizations that have been active in the fights against progressive minority rights. Such organizations as REAL Women Canada, the Evangelical Fellowship of Canada, the Catholic Civil Rights League and Focus on the Family Canada. At the very least, a brief perusal through the comprehensive index will identify the organizations that routinely come up in church-state separation debates.
Overall, Losing Control is a well-researched book that covers the history of social conservatives in Canada and the battles that have been fought and progress that has been made since the introduction of various Bills of Rights and the Charter. While not an outright replacement for The Armageddon Factor, it does make a good supplement for anyone who wants to dig a bit deeper into these issues.
Do religious symbols matter?
Coming up this Saturday I’ve offered to moderate a CFI Cafe Inquiry at Harbour Centre on the topic of whether or not religious symbols in public matter.
I’m going to use this post to get my thoughts in order for Saturday, so if you don’t want a spoiler, don’t read the following until after.
This topic is especially topical for myself as this morning I got a call from one of the Wardens from the Corporation of the Seven Wardens – the group that oversees the Iron Ring Ceremony.
First some history. The Iron Ring is a ceremony dating to 1922 for engineering graduates in Canada that symbolizes their commitment to upholding the high standards required of their profession (as in we want bridges that don’t fall down). The process to obtain a ring (upon successful graduation) begins with signing an obligation which features the following lines:
…I will henceforth, not suffer or pass, or be privy to the passing of, Bad Workmanship or Faulty Material in aught that concerns my works before mankind as an Engineer, or in my dealings with my own Soul before my Maker.
…Upon Honour and Cold Iron, God helping me, by these things I propose to abide. [emphasis mine]
In the spring of 2009, I requested the option to strike the words “God helping me” from the obligation. When my request was turned down, I walked away from the Iron Ring. I soon typed a letter about the ceremony and forwarded it to the Corporation and various engineering bodies (including the UofA Engineering Faculty of Engineering who promotes the Iron Ring and provides space for sizings and APEGGA – Alberta’s engineering professional association). The letter made the rounds and the Corporation discussed it at a meeting last October but then I didn’t hear any more from them.
Then this morning, I got an update. The delay was no one’s fault (a medical issue), but I did get some good information. The Warden admitted that adjustments have been made to the obligation in the past (about a decade ago), mostly to respect women in engineering by moving to gender-neutral terminology. And while it didn’t sound like change was planned, the issue will be discussed at their upcoming plenary meeting.
He also stated that the only other time it has really been brought up was when a pair of Muslims objected. Their complaint was withdrawn when they agreed to interpret the God of the obligation (likely Kipling’s Freemason deistic God) as Allah.
I guess the only reason I was privy to a return call after these months was how impressed the Wardens were with my letter and approach to the situation. I guess there is still something to be said for a rational, well-worded letter in some instances.
So, getting back to the topic at hand, why does this symbol, and ones like it, matter? And, perhaps more importantly, is this something that atheists should get up in arms (note: “fundamentalist” atheists are prone to write books when they’re angry, as opposed to some other worldviews) about?
Obviously, given my history, my answer is yes.
My general response is that the invocation of religious language actively alienates a portion of the population. This portion is as high as 1-in-3 among young-adult Canadians (those who would be convocating or earning Iron Rings).
Events like convocation from a university degree, singing the national anthem, or earning an Iron Ring are cultural rituals. The point of these rituals is to unite people and develop a sense of community. While using religious language can strengthen that connection between theists, it prompts reactions from rolling eyes to righteous indignation in non-theists.
Another issue I noticed while attending my fiancées recent convocation, as the Chancellor used her opening invocation to give a little prayer to “our Creator” (perhaps to spite His reduced role later in the ceremony), was that religious language devalues the effort and hard-work of the people who have earned their degrees, rings, or founded this nation. By focussing on the supernatural, we neglect the natural.
I understand that we are supposed to feel humbled by the good graces that are bestowed upon us from up high (whether it be God, the universe, or even just our elders), but in ceremonies that are meant to honour achievements, shouldn’t the focus be on those who have made the achievements?
Some will want to share their moment, and recognizing friends, family, and other support networks, and that’s fine – but it’s worth recognizing that not everyone has the same networks. Some are religious, other are not. By presuming the religiosity of the audience and attendees, those in charge of the ceremony belittling the accomplishments of those who aren’t religious.
Now, what about atheists who just aren’t bothered by God in ceremonies and speeches? The live-and-let-live apatheist type.
For them, at very least, parts of the ceremony or anthem are of little to no value to them – and are therefore a waste of time to repeat.
But more importantly, it’s worth recognizing that members of the Religious Right utilize religious language in public ceremonies as an argument for more public pronouncements of faith, or for scripturally-inspired laws.
Should Canada ban abortions? It says God in the anthem and charter, so Canada must be a Christian Nation, which ought to follow Christian laws.
Finally, on a purely strategic note, going after these symbols nearly always gets press attention, and if utilized properly, can be very positive for a group. The media still loves the God debate and atheists fighting to kill God gets attention. The UofA’s convocation charge received national media coverage both when it was initially brought up, and when the changes were finally approved (convocating last, I chose not to release a statement as I crossed the stage).
With all of that said, I think there are a lot of challenges out there for secularists and atheists. We each have interests and cares, and many campaigns only take a few people (but showing your support for such movements helps) to at least bring attention to the offending language. I can understand the desire not to take on some long established symbols, but in other cases, like the Iron Ring, I could not sign the obligation without violating the very intent of the document.
Symbols are important, but only so long as they are still applicable to the communities they represent. Values progress and change, and our ceremonies and rituals ought to reflect that progression.
CFI Ontario – now with free parking!
Apparently the easiest way to get out of a parking ticket in Toronto now is to claim you were with a religious group at a worship service.
I guess the best way to see if this law is truly discriminatory or not is for humanists meeting at the Centre For Inquiry Ontario (just blocks from the University of Toronto campus) is to try to get parking exemptions.
Parking fines either apply universally (people can walk/ride/transit to church) or they don’t apply to anyone.
What’s the point of a law if you just give exemptions left, right and centre?
(h/t Friendly Atheist)
Book Review: The Armageddon Factor
Sorry for the delay in posting this review, I was hoping to have this piece published in The Peak’s Arts section but they choose to go with a 2,000 word piece about a museum’s shoe exhibit instead, but that’s a whole different rant.
The Christians are coming!
In The Armageddon Factor: The Rise of Christian Nationalism in Canada, Marci McDonald attempts to raise the awareness of our own growing Christian Right. She purports to show how they have quickly and subtly gained an alarming amount of influence in the government.
In the first chapter, McDonald outlines Stephen Harper’s personally religious history, a topic that is not spoken of very much by Harper of the media. Harper became a born-again after moving to Calgary and joining Preston Manning’s Reform Party movement. However, Harper, unlike Manning and much of the Reform Party, was more comfortable keeping his faith and politics mostly separate. McDonald notes that it was only later when, as leader of the new Conservative Party, Harper attempted to reach out to the evangelical communities.
But it was still hard for McDonald to measure the level of influence the Christian Right has had under Harper’s consecutive minority governments. There have been few socially conservative policy changes, and of those most have disappointed the very factions McDonald seeks to expose. Harper has repeatedly turned away from the abortion debate and upon winning his first minority government in 2006 he quickly allowed for his promised free vote on same-sex marriage – a vote that was actually earlier than many evangelicals had wanted, since it provided them less time to mount a defence. Similarly, by breaking his fixed-election date law in 2008, Harper killed several of his caucus’ private members bills, including an unborn victims bill that was called the “first winnable abortion bill” in years.
However, McDonald does point out that perhaps Harper’s greatest success has been in his “incremental” changes, evidenced by his countless appointments of partisans and born-agains to all levels of courts, the senate and the civil service. Within the Prime Minister’s Office, Harper counts many evangelical leaders, including the former leader of Focus on the Family Canada, Darrell Reid.
Similarly, Harper has been able to make many changes by the mere stroke of a pen. In recent months Harper has cut funds to Status of Women Canada and KAIROS, a social justice charity that apparently represented the wrong-type of Christians for this government (like McDonald has been told she is). He has sent tens of millions of stimulus dollars to Bible Colleges and after he cut funding to abortions for overseas aid, a crowd of 15,000 pro-lifers rallied on the steps of the House of Commons.
McDonald also briefly discusses the so-called “Christian Left,” which included Tommy Douglas, the father of Canadian medicare. She points out how both Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff and NDP leader Jack Layton have reached out to various faith communities through acts like the revival of the NDP Faith and Social Justice committee. Contrary to some interpretations, it does not seem to me that McDonald is against these, or even Harper’s, attempts to dialogue with people of faith in principle, but merely that she hopes that such activity is acknowledged publicly.
The Armageddon Factor is an enlightening read, regardless of your personal views, but unfortunately the book strays from neutrality enough that it reads as a bit more than just a who’s who of the Christian Right. My initial hope was that it could have been more like the documentary film Jesus Camp, which, for the most part, just lets the subjects speak for themselves.
Either way, the book does shed light on much of what has been going on in the dark. No democracy is served by secrecy and backroom lobbying. At the very least, this book will hopefully force Canadians to decide what kind of country we want this to be, because if we do not, there are those who have a scripturally-inspired version of what they think it should be.
Why the debate matters
It comes up frequently enough, aren’t the same old religious debates just tired and boring? Since most of the “New Atheist” arguments were developed in the Enlightenment to counter medieval Christian theology, it is easy to depict the debate as repetitive. And I have to somewhat agree, the answers to questions about God, creation and morality seem to be well established by modern science and philosophy. So the question that remains is: Why do hundreds of people routinely turn up to existence of God debates?
One answer lays in these are called the “big questions” for a reason. And while some may have determined their personal answers, they are still worth continual questioning and reconsidering. As many of the religious so frequently claim, our immortal souls may hang in the balance.
But for each of us who are willing to reconsider our personal answers, there are still many more that have already decided theirs and are ready to murder those who claim different answers. Others are not so absolute in their convictions, but are still so righteous that they believe that they have the justification to force their views on others.
The first example is a recent incident involving an 11-year old girl in a New Mexico public school who tripped, scraped her nose and loosened two teeth. Her teacher, a pinnacle of regressive bigotry, decided that her parents did not need to hear about this incident, nor did the girl need to see the school nurse. It was because of the teacher’s religious objections to the fact that this girl had two mothers that something so reprehensible to occur. This persecution is further evidenced by the fact that after the girl had submitted an assignment earlier in the semester, that described her parent’s summer wedding, the teacher called it disgusting and tore it apart in front of her.
In another case, Swedish artist Lars Vilks has received death threats for drawing Mohammed’s head on body of a dog. He was recently head-butted by extremists while giving a talk at Uppsala University. This happened for the sake of a crude, poorly-drawn sketch.
But we do not need to look to the American South to see such prejudice. Right here in Vancouver a popular music teacher at Little Flower Academy, a partially-public funded Catholic school, was denied maternity leave and essentially fired due to the fact that when she went home she was greeted by her loving wife.
So the real reason that it is worth debating these “dead horse” issues is that they continue to fuel religious fundamentalists who want to reshape our progressive society into a God-fearing theocracy. Dawkins’ recent success has more to do with his willingness to expose religion as a detrimental sacred cow than the originality of his arguments.
This negative effect is most obvious in the recent scandals in the Catholic Church. While pedophiles can gain access to children through a variety of means, such as sports teams or elementary schools, most organizations stand up for the victims and make efforts to prosecute the perpetrators for their heinous crimes. However, it takes an organization that believes it has divine providence, like the Catholic Church, to systematically shuffle pedophiles between congregations, swear victims to secrecy, deny the charges, and finally blame the victims for crimes of their priests.
Religion far too often creates a structure that favours blind devotion to doctrine and authoritarians. The hope for humanists is to demonstrate that a positive and fulfilling life can be lead without the need for uncritical adherence to scriptures. When people stop thinking, they have a great capacity for evil.
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