Religious Freedom

  • London Murders Wound Us All

    The killing of a Muslim family in the southwestern Ontario city demands empathy for the victims, but also renewed commitment to freedom of faith, Father Deacon Andrew Bennett writes.

    The news from London, Ont. regarding a murdered Muslim family is horrifying. It is chilling even to write about a driver deliberately ram...

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  • Canada’s Common Spiritual Hunger

    After last week’s online National Prayer Breakfast, Cardus Executive Vice President Ray Pennings reflected in his weekly Insights newsletter on how to pray in public – and pluralistic – spaces. Convivium reprints his text.

    Cardus Insights strives to “connect the dots” among faith, business, and public life. Ray’s weekly reading summaries can catch you up or provide you with more insight into the headlines you may have seen this week. And you can look forward to a...

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  • Yes, We Can Understand Each Other

    Restoring trust in language goes beyond improving the sad state of our political debates. It’s vital to our common humanity, Daniel Dorman writes.

    Our political discourse is a demoralizing spectacle. In most public forums, and particularly in the House of Commons, we generally listen to what can’t (in any serious sense) be called ‘debate.’ Most of it is mere partisan verbiage.

    Character assault...

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  • At Home in Houses of Worship

    Cardus Executive VP Ray Pennings breaks down for Convivium’s Peter Stockland new data on the eagerness of Canadians across faith traditions to gather again in their churches, mosques, synagogues, and temples.

    The COVID-19 pandemic has meant bitter medicine for Canada’s religious faithful but its aftermath could be the good news churches and other houses of worship have been waiting for.

    Poll resu...

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  • Religious Freedom Equals Educational Freedom

    The latest call to defund Ontario’s Catholic schools both rewrites Canadian history and goes counter to international schooling norms, Cardus Education Program Director David Hunt argues.

    In terms of cultural insensitivity, the latest call for ending Ontario’s Catholic school funding wins the shamrock, coming...

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  • A COVID Cold Shoulder for Churches

    Peter Stockland reports on a group of B.C. Canadian Reformed Churches going to court to be allowed to come in out of the rain and worship together.

    As Christians around the world raise “hosannas” to their Saviour this Palm Sunday, the congregation of Aldergrove Canadian Reformed Church might also be putting up umbrellas.

    Members of the church located near the western end of B.C.’s Fraser Valley ...

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  • When Covid Constraints Come to Church

    Don Hutchinson considers the complementary roles of Church and State vis-à-vis the pandemic and public health.

    Governments have reacted, some say overreacted, to a declared pandemic by moving beyond giving advice for the good of our health to legislating behavioural constraints. Those restrictions have come to church, generating contradictory responses.

    Wash ...

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  • An Error Plagued Affront to Liberty

    In Convivium’s series exploring the line between freedom and COVID-19 responses, Douglas Farrow argues Quebec’s curfew and lockdown cut off our noses to spite our masked faces.

    The Quebec government, by order in council, has locked down the province for a month and deprived its citizens of their constitutional rights, on the grounds of a “public emergency” that does not presently exist, under cover of a pandemic that has almost ru...

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  • Saying “Non” to Potpourri Pluralism

    There’s much wrong with increasingly closed secularism in France and Québec yet both societies understand diversity requires strong ground rules, Robert Joustra argues.

    Unity and civility can be abusive demands when placed on us by the powerful. But diversity and pluralism, likewise, are also not self-evident goods. The hallowed middle ground – a modest unity – is the sacred but lost country so many multicultural explorers...

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  • When Believers Become Invisible

    COVID-19 has revealed an uncomfortable reality, Jonathon Van Maren points out: closure of churches isn’t State persecution but widespread ignorance of what goes on inside them.

    For the past several months, Christians have been bombarded by headlines warning us that places of worship are being unfairly targeted by government COVID-19 restrictions and lockdowns. Most insinuate persecution without making the accusation outright, ...

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  • Religious Persecution’s Red Letter Day

    Canadian churches turned red recently hoping to open Canada’s eyes to violence against believers, Susan Korah reports.

    The red-lit facades of Mary Queen of the World Cathedral in Montreal, St. Michael’s Cathedral in Toronto, and the Embassy of Hungary in Ottawa stood silhouetted against the dark November sky, in silent tribute to the 260 million Christians around the world ...

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  • Is Politics Putting POGG on Ice?

    Canada’s Constitution gives paramountcy to peace, order and good government (POGG), but Don Hutchinson argues bills on conversion therapy and medically assisted death prioritize progressive expediency.

    As the Second Session of the 43rd Parliament started last month, the Trudeau Government promoted two bills as high priority in the legislative queue. Both make use of the Criminal Code to tread the constitutional line between federal and provincial jurisdic...

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  • Bidding Loyola a Long Goodbye

    Paul Donovan’s retirement as president of Montreal’s Loyola High School ends his 39-year association with the historic Catholic institution, which included a major religious freedom victory in the Supreme Court. Peter Stockland reports.

    When young Kevin Donovan left Montreal’s Loyola High School 67 summers ago, he could hardly foresee having a son who would one day lead the school to a landmark legal victory for religious freedom.

    Yet his graduation picture in Loyola’s Class of 1953...

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  • Canada Must Boycott Beijing Olympics

    Ottawa lawyer Don Hutchinson says it’s “beyond belief” Canada would participate in the 2022 Winter Olympics given the Chinese regime’s reprehensible persecution of religion.

    Just before Parliament adjourned in June 2008 for summer break the Religious Liberty Commission (RLC) of The Evangelical Fellowship of Canada released a report called Broken Promises: The Protestant Experience with Religious Freedom in China in Advance ...

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  • Yazidis Refuse to Become Yesterday’s News

    Northern Iraqi religious refugees who fled ISIS-generated genocide six years ago fear Ottawa is turning the page on its promise to help them heal, Susan Korah writes.

    About 100 Yazidis and their supporters held a peaceful demonstration in London, Ontario yesterday to commemorate August 3, 2014, the day ISIS terrorists unleashed torture, sex slavery and genocide against the religious minority. They were raising their voic...

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  • When Mass Kneeling Replaces Faith

    A generation raised without religious faith is suddenly dropping to its knees to plead its causes. Peter Menzies asks whether it’s the spirit moving – or another triumph of marketing.

    A few Sunday mornings ago, I came across the broadcast of a church service on Radio-Canada and, not surprisingly, there was almost no one in the congregation.

    The service aimed at francophone audiences was applicably Roman Catholic. The eglise...

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  • Sounding Out Quebec’s Clash of Symbols

    On today’s Fête Nationale, also known as Fête de la St-Jean-Baptiste, Quebecers Maxime Huot Couture and Beryl Wajsman give Rev. Andrew Bennett, director of the Cardus Religious Freedom Institute, their take on province’s one-year-old law controlling how and by whom religious garb can be worn in public.

    La version française de cette conversation est disponible ici.

    Andrew Bennett: I'd like to get your thoughts on where we've come in this year ...

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  • Challenges Ahead for Quebec's Ban on Religious Symbols

    One year ago, Quebec's National Assembly hurriedly passed legislation limiting public wearing of turbans, hijabs, crosses and other spiritual markers. Robert Leckey, Dean of the Faculty of Law at McGill University tells Cardus’ Rev. Dr. Andrew Bennett the legal fight has just begun.  

    La version française de cette conversation est disponible ici.

    Andrew Bennett: We've just marked the on...

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  • The Invisible Persecution of Religious Women

    Violent subjugation inflicted on women of faith is a global iniquity that rarely counts because it differs from the persecution of male religious leaders, Janet Epp Buckingham reports. 

    In March, The UN Special Rapporteur on Religious Freedom issued a report on gender-based violence in the name of religion, which it said occurs everywhere in the world. 

    “Gender-based violence and discrimination is being perpetuated both in the publi...

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  • Passing Over Difference

    Rabbi Reuven Bulka says no one celebrating Passover can be indifferent to the difference the COVID-19 crisis will bring. What matters, though, is what endures.

    My first thought before any other is to express the hope that you are all well, and that you and the entire world will get through this crisis of existence.

    On Passover, coming up soon, the marquee event is the Passover Seder. It is a time when famil...

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  • Public Prayer in a Viral Time

    Cardus Executive Vice-President Ray Pennings faced a challenge today of leading our dispersed staff in a reading of Scripture and praying out loud. In these days of isolation, anxiety, and deep need for God’s comfort, Convivium shares the answer he found.

    The responsibility of leading a group in devotions is always a significant one, but especially so in a time of anxiety and crisis.   What passage to pick?  What to say – or not say – in prayer?

    Public prayer differs from personal prayer. It is, after...

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  • Smudging Indigenous Religious Freedom

    A B.C. court decision declaring native smudging ceremonies as mere cultural practices is troubling whitewashing of the bond between spiritual practice and religious meaning, argue Brian Dijkema and David Hunt.

    Most court decisions are a zero-sum game. One side’s win is the other’s loss. But this was not the result last week at the B.C. Supreme Court in Nanaimo. Both sides, and the public, lost in ...

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  • A Tolerant Canada

    Ray Pennings examines the findings of a recent Angus Reid Institute study, which cites both hopeful and worrisome numbers in its summary of Canadians' opinions towards religious freedom. 

    Disagreement is normal, if not necessary, in a healthy democracy. Being intolerant and disrespectful toward those with whom we disagree, however, is fatal to that democracy.

    Historically, we’ve had the Charter of Rights and Freedoms (and the Bill of ...

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  • The Killing of Conscience

    Defeat of legislation protecting the conscience rights of doctors has Albertans expecting the unexpected from Premier Jason Kenney’s normally conscientious United Conservatives, Jason West contends.

    Albertans may well have expected we’d seen the lowest level of political discourse for a while with the passing of the recent Federal election. After all, the images of Justin Trudeau in brownface are hard to top. Nevertheless, Alberta’s politicians and com...

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