2011‑2022, and is preserved here for archival purposes.
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 ...
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...
En ce jour de la Fête nationale, mieux connue sous le nom de Fête de la Saint Jean-Baptiste, les Québécois Maxime Huot Couture et Beryl Wajsman font part au révérend Andrew Bennett, directeur de l’Institut sur la liberté religieuse Cardus, de leurs impressions concernant la loi provinciale adoptée il y a un an en vue de déterminer qui peut porter en public des vêtements religieux et selon quelles modalités ils peuvent être portés.
An English version of this conversation is available here.
Andrew Bennett: J’aimerais connaître vos réflexions sur ce qui s’est passé depuis l’ad...
Il y a un an, l’Assemblée nationale du Québec a précipitamment adopté une loi limitant le port de turbans, de hijabs, de croix et d’autres symboles spirituels dans l’espace public. Robert Leckey, doyen de la Faculté de droit de l’Université McGill, explique au révérend Andrew Bennett que le combat juridique ne fait que commencer.
An English version of this conversation is available here.
Andrew Bennett: Nous venons de marquer le premier anniversaire de l’ado...
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 ...
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...
Six years after the fall of Iraq’s second largest city to ISIS terrorists, religious persecution goes on while the world has moved on, Susan Korah writes.
It was a crash of catastrophic consequences that reverberated around the world. Six years later, many of its survivors are still picking up the debris of their shattered lives, and appealing to the world for help.
It was the summer of 2014 and on Ju...
A recent set of public demands by Canada’s Medical Assistance in Dying lobby raise serious concerns, reports Convivium's Peter Stockland.
Andrew Bennett insists a recent set of public demands by Canada’s Medical Assistance in Dying lobby amount to nothing less than imposition of MAiD ideology on religious faith.
“The agenda is truly disturbing and people need to be made aware of it” th...
Two long-time journalistic and personal friends, former CRTC commissioner Peter Menzies and Convivium's Peter Stockland, weigh the future of faith life in a Canada where churches have been shuttered by government order.
Peter Menzies: Sequestration of Church by State
Each of us, when and if this is over, will retain our own COVID-19 pandemic memories, preserved as still images in the mists of our minds.
Mine will include portraits – black and...
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...
A Saskatchewan Court decision upholding religious freedom and pluralism for parents and students shines a light in gloomy times, writes Cardus Education Director David Hunt.
It seems rare to find good news amidst the challenges of physical-distancing and self-quarantining, but a recent Saskatchewan Appeal Court ruling gives much to celebrate for educational pluralism and religious liberty.
The unanimous decision in S...
Churches keeping their doors firmly closed to prevent COVID-19 in their congregations is an act of obedience and love for one another, contends Mathew Block.
In what has turned out to be strange timing given the spread of COVID-19, I wrote an article a few months ago regarding the limitations of mo...
Convivium’s Rebecca Darwent argues that, attacks from his political and media enemies withstanding, Canadians haven’t rejected the federal Conservative leader because of his religious faith.
Jagmeet Singh pronounced last week that the 2019 election results meant something “very clear” for Canadians: Andrew Scheer cannot be prime minister. Not because of his dual citizenship, nor his fib about once being an insurance broker, nor the party’s prop...
As a very tight federal election race kicks off today, we look to the importance of democracy and debate in a time of political cynicism.
U.S.-based communications strategist Laura Williams has just published a short essay containing six words that should be inked under every Canadian’s ey...
Rabbi Reuven Bulka praises the integrity and wisdom of all sides in a legal bid to accommodate a Jewish candidate’s religious convictions by changing the federal election date.
So, the Chief Electoral Officer has spoken, and Canada's next election will take place as scheduled, on October 21, 2019.
Thus has ended the drama surrounding the date of the coming Federal election. The drama was widely reported as a source of confl...
In a world awakening to the catastrophe of anti-faith violence, Canada has apparently hit the snooze button on the alarm, reports Convivium contributor Susan Korah.
The Canadian election of October 2019 will clearly not be fought and won on the killing fields of the Middle East or in Uyghur re-education camps in China. But a foreign policy that pays little more than lip service to an important aspect of international h...
Quebec’s law banning public displays of religious symbols has affronted advocates of religious freedom across Canada. But Convivium’s Peter Stockland reports on plans by Montreal Catholics to turn the secularist tide and create strong communities of faith.
Quebec’s government has declared the province an aggressively secular society with the passage of Bill 21 banning the wearing of religious clothing and symbols in certain public service workplaces.
Montreal’s E...
Canadians, including journalists, have forgotten how vitally connected religious freedom is to other constitutionally-protected freedoms, writes Ray Pennings, executive vice-president at Cardus.
Have we lost all sense of proportion when it comes to our fundamental rights in Canada? Two recent cases suggest we have – both involving the notwithstanding clause in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which allows legislatures to temporarily bypass certa...
Quebec’s secularism bill is a governmental attempt to coerce the religiosity out of public workers, writes publisher Peter Stockland.
Today’s legislative hearings on outlawing the wearing of religious clothing or symbols by specific Quebec public servants could easily be dismissed as proverbial lipstick on a pig.
In fact, they’re worse, much worse, than a skin-deep brush with porci...
A B.C. faith-based school’s dismissal of a teacher for sexual conduct contrary to its standards is neither shocking nor discriminatory, notes Ottawa constitutional lawyer Albertos Polizogopoulos. In fact, he says, it’s protected by Charter of Rights rulings that date back to 1984.
This week, news broke about a teacher at Surrey Christian School in British Columbia, being asked approximately two y...
Now is the ideal time for non-religious Canadians to lighten up around discussions of faith, says Cardus Executive Vice-President Ray Pennings, citing polling data showing religious Canadians are happy to debate their beliefs in good humour.
Christmas often brings out the best in Canadians. We dig into our pockets for charity a little more. We volunteer more. And we make more time for friends and family than at other times of the year.
But the holiday sometimes brings out our weirder sid...
At a prayer breakfast today in Markham, Ontario, Convivium’s Father Raymond de Souza serves a reminder that Canadian Christians should be as proud to share the Christian Gospel as they are to be Canadians. The reason, de Souza says, isn’t triumphalism but the pure joy of speaking God’s Word.
I am eager to preach the Gospel to you who are in Rome.
So St. Paul writes to the Romans, and I might suggest that those words are suitable for any preacher at any time, including this preacher this morning in Markham. I thank you for the in...
TWU’s abandonment of its mandatory Community Covenant following a Supreme Court loss in June is a serious blow – but nowhere close to the end of the battle for religious freedom in Canada, writes Ottawa lawyer Albertos Polizogopoulos.
Yesterday, Trinity Western University announced its decision to make its Community Covenant (which has been the focus of controversy for two decades) voluntary for students. The decision comes after a years-long legal battle surrounding its proposal to open...
The Supreme Court’s decision to overturn itself and rule against Trinity Western University was more than just a defeat for the Evangelical Christian school. It attacked the very idea of community, writes Convivium contributor Ryan Topping.
Over the coming months, in churches, in coffee shops, in classrooms, and around kitchen tables, there will be much about which to lament.
There is the Canadian Supreme Court’s brazen disregard for precedent. Fewer than 20 years ago the same body arg...