NEWS DIGEST: Religion in Canada

c. 2004 Religion News Service High Court Hears From Faith Groups on Same-Sex Marriage OTTAWA (RNS) Canada’s Supreme Court will rule next year on legalizing gay marriage after some religious opponents to the proposal had their say, capping two days of hearings. Several religious organizations appeared before the court to argue against same-sex unions, including […]

c. 2004 Religion News Service

High Court Hears From Faith Groups on Same-Sex Marriage


OTTAWA (RNS) Canada’s Supreme Court will rule next year on legalizing gay marriage after some religious opponents to the proposal had their say, capping two days of hearings.

Several religious organizations appeared before the court to argue against same-sex unions, including Islamic congregations, Mormons, Seventh-day Adventists and Catholic bishops. They argued that homosexual marriages are forbidden in their theologies.

Canada’s Liberal government last year referred proposed legislation to legalize same-sex marriage to the court, which heard 28 submissions.

Supporters of gay marriage include the attorney general of Canada, the Canadian Human Rights Commission, gay rights groups, the United Church of Canada representing Presbyterian and Methodist congregations, the Canadian Unitarian Council and a coalition of liberal rabbis.

The courts of six Canadian provinces or territories have ruled to allow same-sex marriages.

“If not marriage, what institution in society can we, as faith communities, promote that accomplishes what heterosexual marriage now does?” asked Bruce Clemenger, president of the Evangelical Fellowship of Canada, part of the Interfaith Coalition on Marriage that includes the Catholic Civil Rights League and the Islamic Society of North America.

Canada’s Supreme Court to Hear Kirpan Case

OTTAWA (RNS) The Supreme Court of Canada has agreed to hear the case of a Montreal Sikh boy who was forbidden to wear his kirpan, or ceremonial dagger, to school.

Gurbaj Singh Multani was barred in 2001 from wearing the dagger at l’Ecole Sainte-Catherine-Laboure, where he was in grade seven. His parents had argued that his religion required the wearing of the kirpan, which is important to orthodox Sikhism.

The case dates back three years when authorities confiscated Multani’s 20-centimeter kirpan and told him to leave it at home if he wanted to return to school the following day.

Parents argued the kirpan posed a danger to other students. But the school board voted to let Multani wear it to class as long as it was kept inside a wooden sheath.


However, the high school’s governing board rejected the plan, and the school board later reversed its original decision.

In 2002, the Quebec Superior Court ruled that Multani could wear the kirpan as long as it was wrapped and checked by school officials. But Quebec’s Court of Appeal overturned the ruling, saying the ban was a reasonable limit on religious freedom.

The case will be watched closely as one that pits individual religious liberties against the interests of the broader society.

Multani now attends a private high school that permits the dagger.

B.C. Government Declines Apology to Doukhobors

VICTORIA, British Columbia (RNS) British Columbia’s government has declined to apologize to the adult children of the Sons of Freedom Doukhobors, or accept responsibility for the actions of the provincial government that took them away from their families, reports the Globe and Mail.

As members of the group listened intently, Attorney General Geoff Plant on Oct. 4 expressed the government’s “sincere, complete and deep regret” for the pain they suffered when they were removed from their homes in the early 1950s and kept away from their families, some for up to six years.

Plant added the government “recognizes and regrets the anguish (the policy) caused.”

However, for Linda Essex, who was taken away from her family when she was 9 years old, Plant’s statement fell far short.


“I would personally like to hear someone say they are sorry for what I went through,” said Essex, 54, who said she still has nightmares about the day police chased her through a forest to grab her and take her away from her parents.

In 1953, the province took about 200 children from their parents during an increasingly bitter battle with the Sons of Freedom Doukhobors sect.

The Russian immigrants, who settled in southeastern British Columbia, were pacifists and owned no possessions. They bombed public buildings in protest against government control over their lives. They protested naked and burned down their own homes to show their anti-materialism.

The government placed their children in residential schools in an attempt to force the next generation to assimilate and abandon their culture.

Other adults who as children were taken from their parents also lamented the province’s statement, pointing out that five years ago, B.C.’s ombudsman urged the government to offer a full apology and compensation to the group.

Majority of Quebecers Report Experiencing God’s Presence, Study Finds

MONTREAL (RNS) The Montreal region may be increasingly godless, but Quebecers in the rest of the province are starting to find their way back to church on Sunday, reports the Montreal Gazette.


A new survey indicates that church attendance across Canada is at its highest level in 30 years _ a rise attributed to the participation of people age 18 to 34 _ and many of those who haven’t seen the inside of a church in years say they still believe in a deity.

The new study, by University of Lethbridge sociologist Reginald Bibby, found that 63 percent of Quebecers say they have personally experienced God’s presence in their lives.

And even though many people no longer support institutional religion, Bibby says, 80 percent of Quebecers are still believers.

The number of people who go to church in Quebec, however, is still low: Twenty years ago, two out of every 10 Christians in the province attended services at least once a week. Now, it’s one in 20.

Only 7 percent of those under 35 who call themselves Roman Catholic, for example, go to church on a regular basis.

In the Montreal region, the number of those who say they have no religion has increased by more than 50 percent since 1991, to 260,000.


But Bibby said there are still signs of life in the Catholic Church in Quebec.

“What I find intriguing is that large numbers of Quebecers still identify themselves as being Roman Catholic, even though they don’t go to church,” said Bibby. “Eighty percent of them say they still engage in prayer.

“Quebec continues to be thoroughly Catholic. If a renaissance occurs, it will be a Catholic renaissance.”

Swaggart’s Anti-Gay Tirade Prompts Complaints

OTTAWA (RNS) A viewer’s outrage over comments on homosexuality by American evangelist Jimmy Swaggart has sparked an apology by the television station and a complaint to the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC), reports the Ottawa Citizen.

Vance Strickland wrote to Omni 1, a multicultural station based in Toronto, and to the CRTC after hearing Swaggart’s comments aired last month.

According to a transcript of the program, the flamboyant evangelist said: “I’ve never seen a man in my life I wanted to marry. And I’m gonna be blunt and plain: If one ever looks at me like that, I’m gonna kill him and tell God he died.”


At this point, the audience applauded and Swaggart said: “In case anybody doesn’t know, God calls it an abomination, it’s an abomination, an abomination! These ridiculous prosecutors, district attorneys and judges, they should have to marry a pig forever!”

Sandy Zwyer, Omni 1’s program information coordinator, called Swaggart’s remarks “a serious breach” of broadcast regulations. She said Omni 1 will likely issue an apology, as it did in 2002 after Swaggart called for the expulsion of Muslim students in the United States, demanded the profiling of passengers with “a diaper on their head” and suggested violence against Muslims.

Strickland’s complaint to the CRTC has been forwarded to the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council, which handles such issues.

Churches Press Immigration Minister on Changes

OTTAWA (RNS) A review of the refugee determination process will begin this fall when the government holds consultations with churches and other stakeholder groups, a spokeswoman for Citizenship and Immigration Minister Judy Sgro says.

Sgro met with seven church groups in Toronto this month. The churches sought the meeting after the minister urged them this summer to stop granting sanctuary to failed refugee claimants.

Sgro reiterated her desire that churches come to her first before agreeing to give failed claimants a haven, said Mary Corkery, executive director of KAIROS, an ecumenical social justice group.


Late last month, representatives of the Canadian Ecumenical Justice Initiatives, a coalition of 11 churches and church-related organizations, met with Sgro in Ottawa to express concern that Canada has to date refused to implement merit-based refugee appeal included in the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act of 2001.

“As leaders rooted in the Christian faith, we called on our government not to link refugees with threats to national security, a dangerous association that fosters a climate of fear and hostility,” noted Jane Orion Smith, general secretary of the Canadian Friends Service Committee (Quakers).

Montreal to Get Jewish Museum

MONTREAL (RNS) The city has approved a $30 million Jewish museum/office complex in the downtown core that developers say will be unique in Canada, reports the Canadian Jewish News.

Montreal will sell a 20,000-square-foot lot to the Montreal Jewish Museum committee and has approved the architectural plans.

Construction must begin within one year, according to the deal, and officials believe the facility will open in 21/2 years. Despite the name, the museum is to be national in scope, reflecting the Jewish experience in Canada, they added.

The complex will consist of a 50,000-square-foot museum on three floors _ two below street level and the third above a main-floor concourse. Above that will be eight to 10 stories of office or residential space.


The complex “will show the contributions Jews have made to Canadian society,” said project co-chair Herschel Segal. “It will be the first of its kind in Canada, and a multifunctional institution providing our community with culture, education and entertainment.”

A fund-raising campaign, which started last month, aims to raise $15 million to $20 million.

World Council of Churches Head Visits Canada

OTTAWA (RNS) An official visit to Canada by Samuel Kobia, general secretary of the World Council of Churches, culminated Oct. 2 at a citywide ecumenical service in Southminster United Church, in which Kobia outlined his understanding of a shifting global ecumenism.

He said it’s one characterized by increased bilateral dialogue, the shift of Christianity from north to south and a growing hunger for spirituality.

Kobia said that while mainline churches may be on the decline in Europe and North America, Christianity is thriving in the countries of the Southern Hemisphere. In the North, he said, there is also an emerging and vital church, especially in the Pentecostal and evangelical sectors.

He urged his Canadian churches to seek “a holy ground on which to stand, from which we Christians may be able to exercise leverage on a world in need of transformation.”


Kobia’s five-day visit began Sept. 30 in Winnipeg, where he met with Aboriginal leaders, who updated him on the residential school scandal that has resulted in lawsuits against Canadian churches.

In Toronto on Oct. 1, he addressed the “Impact of Interfaith Relations on Ecumenical Theology and Practice” to mark the 40th anniversary of the Canadian Centre for Ecumenism.

He also met with leaders of three large member churches of the WCC _ the Anglican Church of Canada, the Presbyterian Church in Canada and the United Church of Canada _ and with the 19 members of the Canadian Council of Churches.

Prior to leaving for the annual meeting of the U.S. Conference for the World Council of Churches in Atlanta, Kobia met with theology students of African descent.

MO/PH END RNS

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