Message Board Archives

Many Canadians now believe Catholicism, evangelical Christianity and Islam are more damaging to society than beneficial, a new survey shows, as people across the country continue to turn their backs on religion

Rania Lawendy, CEO of Action for Humanity and former Muslim Association of Canada spokesperson, says that’s because Islamophobia remains rife in Canada and Muslims are still made to feel that their religion is “not conducive to the universal values of Canada.”

Survey results showed that atheists, in particular, were overwhelmingly critical of the influence of evangelical Christians on society, but are largely positive about the perceived impacts of Sikhs and Hindus.

Daniel Béland, a political science professor at McGill University in Montreal, said Quebec was quite similar to Ireland and Southern Europe before 1960. At the peak of its influence from the 1930s to the 1950s, the church dominated people’s lives from conception to death and was closely intertwined with political leadership.]

Placed by Manitoba Premier Brian Pallister in November, the ad was a political statement more than a recruitment effort. It was called “21 reasons why you will feel at home in Manitoba,” a play on the controversial Bill 21 that was adopted in June. The law bans some civil servants in Quebec from wearing what it describes as “religious symbols” – which authorities have said will apply to hijabs for Muslim women, turbans for Sikhs, and crosses for Christians – to keep religion out of the government sphere. It’s the first ban of its kind in North America.

Reason No. 21 is what stood out the most for Ms. Chaachouch: “Manitobans embrace diversity and know that multiculturalism is a strength.”

You have time for this fcuking clown Bro?

Ten Canadian Churches Targeted by Vandals

07/06/2021 Canada (International Christian Concern) – As intolerance of religion continues to rise around the world, violence targeting Christians is becoming increasingly felt in the West. During the recent Canada Day holiday, ten churches were targeted and vandalized as a “protest” against the Roman Catholic Church’s role in the school system. One of the churches was an African Evangelical church that hosted several African refugees who had escaped persecution in Africa and had come to Canada in search of safety and freedom. The incidents of vandalism and hate undoubtedly brought back difficult memories for these survivors and their families.

Many Canadians are confused about the re-emergence of questions of religious diversity and freedom in public debates about human rights. Some thought that religion had ceased to be an important element of identity and social dynamics. Others assumed that the “separation of church and state” – along with legal guarantees of freedom from religious discrimination (the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms 1982, for example) – had put the issue to rest. Yet it is now 2012 and religion is front and centre in a variety of public policy debates in areas as diverse as citizenship, security, employment, municipal zoning, education, healthcare, justice and human rights. The new public presence of religion has inspired the Ontario Human Rights Commission – which already has a fairly progressive policy on religious freedom and protection from discrimination based on “creed” (Ontario Human Rights Commission, 1996) – to revisit the question

Protecting religious freedom in a changing society
Because many Canadians have ceased to think about religion at all, they do not recognize the persistence of religious intolerance (attitudes, values and beliefs) and discrimination (actions, practices and structures) – nor their pernicious effects. However, religious intolerance and discrimination continue to present significant barriers to the goals of any society that wants to call itself democratic, egalitarian, participatory, and multicultural. Religious intolerance and discrimination assume three main forms:

Despite great advances on some fronts, many Canadians have not overcome traditional religious prejudices rooted in the historical connection between Christianity and Canadian national identity.
Moreover, new forms of religious intolerance and discrimination have arisen in which tensions between two groups - say between Hindus and Sikhs or Muslims and Jews - are not grounded in Canadian history or in relations between local communities in Canada, but in recent international conflicts (e.g., between Hindu and Sikh communities in India after 1947 and between Jews and Muslims in the Middle East after 194.
Most importantly, the assumption that Canada is a secular society that has basically resolved the problem of religious intolerance and discrimination blinds Canadians to “structural discrimination” or “religious disadvantage” that many groups suffer (Seljak, Benham Rennick, Schmidt, Da Silva & Bramadat 2007). Certain religious groups may find themselves at a disadvantage simply because secular Canada is structured to accommodate mainline Christian religions. For example, having Sunday as a common day of rest allows most Christians to attend worship services, while members of smaller communities, such as Buddhists or Hindus, often have to move their holy day celebrations to the nearest Sunday.

The consequences of this widespread assumption (to be Canadian was to be Christian) have been lamentable. It was the basis for the dismissal of Aboriginal spirituality and life-ways, as well as the efforts to convert and “civilize” Aboriginal peoples. Eventually, this assumption led the Canadian government and Christian churches to create the disastrous system of day schools and residential schools for aboriginal children (Miller 1996). It also legitimated discrimination against non-Christian Canadians, such as Sikhs, Hindus, Buddhists, Muslims and Jews. What is often forgotten though is that minority Christian groups (such as Doukhobors, Mennonites, etc.) were also victims of this prejudice. Indeed all non-conformists lived under a cloud of disrepute, which is why new religious movements – such as those that spread in the 1970s – were greeted with widespread hostility and suspicion, even though Canada was becoming a more secular society at the time. Finally, one has to mention the anti-Catholicism that one found almost everywhere in Protestant Canada before the 1960s. Often tied to prejudice against French Canadians, who were overwhelmingly Catholic, anti-Catholicism in the first century of Canada’s existence was also linked to anti-immigrant sentiment aimed at the Irish, Italians, Germans, and other newcomers from Eastern and Southern Europe (Seljak, Benham Rennick, Schmidt, Da Silva & Bramadat 2007)