Athée Canadien
Posts tagged religion
Occupy the Vatican
Oct 28th
I’ve been supportively following the Occupy protests, but have avoided any discussion of it here since I didn’t find it directly topical (not that I believe we need to just focus on atheist/religious topics). Now that issues out of the way since there’s an offshoot protest going on in Vancouver this weekend:
October 30th: Occupy the Vatican – Holy Rosary Cathedral (Dunsmuir & Richards) – Occupy Vancouver organizers have stated they intend to occupy the cathedral from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. on Sunday.
This idea is brilliant. I’ve been thinking we’ve needed to push for an Occupy the Churches protest, which would coincide with the OWS protests. As church’s are private property we’d be more likely to get kicked out, but it would be a way to draw attention to a couple key issues – i.e corruption in the Catholic Church.
There’s more info from The Province:
A Facebook page, predictably, leads the charge, but locally organizers have promised to occupy the Holy Rosary Cathedral in downtown Vancouver this Sunday at 10 a.m., right in the middle of church services.
“Jail the Pope, Occupy the Vatican, Expel the Catholic church from our lands,” comes the none-too-subtle online call to arms, complete with a Photoshopped image of the pope behind bars. “Join the worldwide Occupy the Vatican movement this Sunday Oct. 30.
“Squamish elder Kiapilano has banned the Catholic church from Squamish Nation territory – Help us enforce this eviction order this Sunday.”
The Facebook page is pretty anti-Catholic, and it’s not clear how big Sunday’s occupation will be.
Anyone going to church this Sunday?
Update – Prayer at City Council Meetings
Oct 25th
The issue of a Christian prayer being recited at the beginning of Peterborough city council meetings was not discussed at the October 24 meeting. I attended the meeting, despite my objection to prayer at a public meeting, because one of the topics on the agenda was the Kawartha Pine Ridge District School Board’s recommendation to close the only downtown public high school in Peterborough. The topic was successfully resolved:
Peterborough city council voted 8-2 to support the foundation’s request for an administrative review of the process by the Ministry of Education. . . .
Before the October 24 meeting, and after I wrote and posted “Prayer at City Council Meetings,” I emailed the URL to the mayor and my city councillor. Mayor Bennett replied that while the Lord’s Prayer is on the agenda, those in present in the council room are invited, not required, to recite the prayer. I replied to the mayor’s message by asking if Peterborough Council’s Procedural Bylaw complies with Ontario’s Court of Appeal decision of 1999. The mayor replied that it does.
While it was difficult for me to see all the councillors because they and the audience were sitting down, it appeared that all the councillors recited the Lord’s Prayer when invited to do so.
In a comment under my first post on this topic, Randy asked, “[D]o they refer to your mayor as ‘Your Worship?’” Yes, Randy they do, and every time a councillor asks a question of a person making a delegation, the councillor says “through your worship to . . . .” As DavidH pointed out, this practise certainly has “religious undertones.”
I remain convinced that reciting Christian prayers in a public meeting is illegal. I have contacted CFI Canada/Ontario for help and advice, and I hope the members of the Atheist Community of Peterborough will get together very soon, so we can address this issue.
Prayer at City Council Meetings
Oct 23rd
Larry Moran at Sandwalk posted on this topic on January 18, 2007 and January 27, 2007. Moran says, “The practice [reciting the Lord's Prayer at city council meetings] was declared illegal following an Ontario Court of Appeals ruling in 1999.” However, the members of the Peterborough City Council have chosen to ignore the ruling. The agenda for October 24 reads
Remembrance Day Observance
The Lord’s Prayer
Thirty Seconds of Silent Reflection
National Anthem
Why the Peterborough City council is observing Remembrance Day more than two weeks before November 11 is not the focus of this post. Reciting The Lord’s Prayer and the thirty seconds of silent reflection are. I intend to attend the October 24 meeting because one of the topics on the agenda is the Kawartha Pine Ridge District School Board’s recommendation to close the only downtown public high school in Peterborough. I can’t avoid The Lord’s Prayer and the thirty seconds of silent reflection because the school closing is a hot topic, and the chambers will fill up quickly. I will use the thirty seconds of silent reflection to reflect on why the mayor and the council feel it is necessary to call on the Christian God for help as they perform their secular duty.
Religion enters the NDP leadership race
Oct 3rd
Before I begin, in the interests of full disclosure, I should state that I am a member of the NDP. I first joined during the 2008 election, and re-joined the in BC after letting my membership lapse so I could vote in the leadership race earlier this year. I will be voting next year for the federal leader.
The race to succeed Jack Layton as leader of the Official Opposition exploded over the weekend, jumping from two declared candidates to five. Declared candidates include party president Brian Topp, Cree leader and MP Romeo Saganash, and now BC MP Nathan Cullen, Ottawa MP Paul Dewar, and Nova Scotian pharmacist Martin Singh.
In an article on Pulpit and Politics, former MP and Christian commentator Dennis Gruending reminds us of Dewar’s view that “faith is political.”
You cannot be a person of faith without being political, says Paul Dewar, the New Democratic Party MP for Ottawa Centre. In early 2009, Dewar spoke to my Faith and Public Life class at the Ottawa School of Theology and Spirituality. “Faith and politics are congruent and we have no option but to be political if we are going to live the gospel,” Dewar said. “We have to constantly question what the Christian message is, and we can never stop trying to change the way things are in society.” Dewar added that for him the word “political” includes electoral politics but also transcends it. “Our response to faith must be lived out in community,” he insisted. “Faith is something that we must do and not only think about.”
Dewar is a Roman Catholic, but seems to have a similar view of Christianity as CCF and NDP founders like Tommy Douglas who believed more in a social gospel where Christians are motivated to support the less fortunate. Generally, I support the aims of the social gospel movement, while disagreeing with the premise.
Dewar does emphasize though that he avoids discussing his religious beliefs, stating
…when speaking in a political capacity I am reluctant to do so because I fear I could be misunderstood, and I do not want to use religion to score political points.
He further mentions that his mother (also a religiously-motivated politician) kept her faith private because she understood that faith didn’t belong in the public sphere.
A secularist by any other name.
Meanwhile, Martin Singh entered the race for similar reasons.
He was born Martin Hill, but is now Martin Singh after changing his name as part of his conversion to the Sikh faith.
…
"This campaign that will start on Oct. 2, and this campaign that will travel right across this great nation will teach Canadians about who we are and that our values, Sikh values, are the same as Canadian values and that Canadian values are the same as Sikh values and that we care so very deeply for this country and we want to play a part. This, this is what I want to bring to this election race," [Singh] told the crowd.
While we have generally conflated strong religious belief with right wing politics, here we have 40% of the candidates for our left-leaning party already professing strong religious motivations for politics.
I wonder if we’ll actually see any candidates for this race (or the eventual Liberal race) declare their non-belief?
Alan Wilson
Sep 26th
Alan Wilson, the PC candidate for Peterborough riding, has become famous for his absence at key events during the 2011 Ontario election campaign. While Dave Nickle, the NDP candidate, enthusiastically participated in the Peterborough Pride Parade on September 17, Wilson’s absence was noted. More troubling is the fact that Wilson did not attend three all-candidate debates: the debate on mental health and addiction; the debate at Trent University, and the debate on social justice issues.
Wilson had two reasons for not attending the debate on social justice issues:
Wilson told The Examiner that part of the reason he didn’t attend was because Conservative MP Dean Del Mastro’s was “seriously insulted” during a federal all-candidates meeting in April that was organized by the same people who hosted the social justice issues meeting Friday.
Wilson, who is Del Mastro’s former senior advisor, said Yvonne Del Mastro is a “dear friend.”
Wilson said he was also attending Pedal for Hope’s Concert for Hope fundraiser at Calvary Pentecostal Church on Friday night.
Why is Wilson’s refusal to meet with the voters so troubling?
Wilson chose to include in his campaign “Bio” the information that he “is a graduate of Tyndale Seminary in Toronto with a Master’s Degree in Theology”:
Tyndale Seminary is a trans-denominational, evangelical university college and seminary that prepares leaders for the ministry, marketplace and global mission of the church.
Tyndale . . . offers a Doctor of Ministry program, designed for persons in ministry who are seeking to further develop their capacities for effective leadership.
While it is troubling that Wilson attended a religious institution to “develop [his] capacity for effective leadership,” it is a sign of his hypocrisy that he doesn’t apply what he has learned. Showing concern for mental health, addiction, university students and social justice is a requirement for a politician seeking to represent a riding. Alan Wilson, the PC candidate, has failed to demonstrate that he would be an effective MP for Peterborough.
Catholic School funding… almost an election issue
Sep 21st
Xtra! News has an article out about the recent Canadian Secular Alliance rally. The rally, held on September 18th, was in support of gay-straight alliances, which have been denied by Ontario’s publicly-funded Catholic School Boards.
The article is very supportive and had an earlier title, which can be seen in the URL, of “Ontario Catholic school funding becomes an election issue.”
Sadly, an editor must have changed her mind and decided that the Ontario Green Party – polling around 5% – does not get to dictate the issues, as they are the only party to oppose the discriminatory status quo. Election issues are far too often dictated by the media, and while Xtra! is not necessarily mainstream (as say the Toronto Star or Globe & Mail), they could have helped propel this issue into the dialogue.
The issue is moving forward though, and it’s great to see positive press.
If Ontario’s Catholic schools fall, Saskatchewan and Alberta won’t be far behind.
Genocide equivalent to tearing a piece of paper
Sep 20th
It’s 2011 and we still have to deal with garbage like this, from Brad Hirschfield:
Fanatical atheism is no worse and no better than fanatical religion, though it may be more bitterly ironic. There is something pretty odd, dare I say hypocritical, about a bunch of people who call themselves “freethinkers” and “humanists” not only verbally abusing people of faith, but actually tearing up verses from the Bible as an act of protest, as they did on a pier in Huntington Beach, California Saturday morning. It doesn’t sound terribly humane to me, and I am quite sure that destroying texts, however much one may object to them, is the opposite of free thought.
Murder, genocide, female genital mutilation, and indoctrination don’t “sound terribly humane to me.” Ripping out parts of the Bible that no one even follows is proving a point – one which apparently flew right over Brad’s head.
Nearly half of Canadians don’t believe in God
Sep 19th
In addition to the swath of new reality, cop, and comedy shows, there’s a new “news” show coming to Global this fall called Context.
Context promises to discuss “life beyond the headlines” (the quotes are on their Who We Are page), meaning news from a Christian world view. The show is hosted by Evangelical Christian journalist Lorna Dueck, who previously hosted Listen Up.
I was going to go through the Answers provided by Context, or how she responds to her “atheist friends” that science has disproved god but it’s fairly standard Christian mumbo-jumbo. I don’t have the will power to go through it right now, maybe I’ll pick on it later, or you can demolish it in the comments (or if anyone wants to actually read through it all, send it to me and I’ll post it here).
What’s more interesting than picking on another evangelical TV show (which shows at roughly 11:00 AM local across the country), besides the opportunity to crash her set if you’re in Toronto, is the results of the poll that they commissioned to launch their show.
They hired reputable firm Ipsos Reid, who polled 1129 Canadians earlier this month. Among their findings:
- Only 53% of Canadians believe in God. This puts a combined atheist/agnostic/unsure response rate at 47%, the highest ever reported. Worth noting is the 1 in 3 Catholics and nearly 1 in 4 who attend Church service weekly do not believe in God.
- The same number of believers also think religion is a net positive, while the remaining 47% agree that religion does more harm than good.
- Only 29% of Canadians believe in heaven, and only 19% believe in hell. So sticks and carrots aren’t dictating our morality.
- 71% don’t think that religious people are necessarily better citizens – which means sadly that 29% still think atheists are lesser than the rest.
- 64% think religion raises more questions than answers.
- Finally, a slim majority – 51% – do not think “religious practice is an important factor in the moral lives of Canadians.”
I think the TV show is trying to play these results off as demonstrating the need to evangelize more, given their tweets:
Regardless of their thoughts, these numbers show the success of the secular and atheist movements.
Keep it up!
So close but still wrong
Aug 7th
This article in Vancouver’s Georgia Straight really annoyed me.
Yes, it’s great that some religious groups have realized that it doesn’t matter who you sleep with, you’re still a human being.
But the entire article reads like a touchy-feely, look-how-great-religion-is, when no single force has done more to set back gay rights than religion.
This quote, by Pride Past-President/current Vice-President Shawn Ewing is expected, but still disappointing:
“I’m an atheist, so I don’t practise. But I certainly know that friends of mine that are spiritually based are being able to find places where they can be themselves and not be condemned and still worship their gods.”
Regardless of all the fuzzy hugs in this article, what steams me most is they completely neglect the strong and growing atheist/humanist contingent in the Parade, both this year and last.
For shame Georgia Straight.
Comments