Monday, June 21, 1999

Freedom from religion

Jonathan Kay
National Post

It seems the National Post editorial board can't understand what all the fuss is about.

On June 10, its members criticized a petition presented to Parliament by Svend Robinson urging the removal of the reference to God contained in the preamble to the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. The board could not understand why anyone might find fault with an appeal to "the supremacy of God" in our nation's most important legal document. "It's hard to see," they wrote, "what the atheist fundamentalists find so offensive."

Really? Why don't we start with the fact that more than three million Canadians -- 12.5% of the population, according to the 1991 census -- have no religious affiliation whatsoever. Hundreds of thousands more are Buddhist, Hindu, Sikh and Muslim.

Of course, the Post's board argues that the preamble's wording serves all religions, and connotes only "that there is some being supreme to Man, and some law-maker more authoritative than any politician or judge." This would have been a nice hedge -- were it not contradicted by the editorial that followed six days later. In that piece, the board dropped the pluralist facade, and justified its position with the claim that "Our country is rooted in Judeo-Christian values that have made us a welcome refuge for immigrants from other lands." Like most Canadians, the members of the Post editorial board understand perfectly well that the God of the Charter preamble is no generic deity. He is the God who gave Moses the Ten Commandments, the One worshipped by Jews and Christians (Christians only, many would argue, given that the tacked on "Judeo" is probably used here, as it so often is, as a politically correct sop for anti-anti-Semites).

In fact, the preamble was originally supposed to contain no reference to God whatsoever. It was inserted only after Christian evangelists (led by MP Jake Epp) pushed for its inclusion. Although then-Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau didn't care much about the reference, the inclusion of the words were seen by many as a nod to Canada's largely Christian complexion, and an appeasement of those eager to maintain it.

But many Canadians -- and I am one of them -- have no need to appeal to a "being supreme to Man" to justify the creation and enforcement of sensible laws. If some Canadians derive existential succour from tales of parted seas, immaculate conceptions and pillars of salt, that's fine. But it is hardly unreasonable that those who don't would prefer that references to such mythologies, however oblique, be omitted from important public documents. As it does in the case of many issues, the Post's board postures so aggressively here on the side of traditionalism -- to fight off an imagined onslaught of relativism -- that it has given short shrift to the basic principles of democratic liberalism. Our constitutional scheme does not ensure just freedom of religion. It also guarantees freedom from religion. As Wylie Johnson wrote in Humanist in Canada when an amended preamble was being debated in 1992, "our national community includes many people whose moral and spiritual values should be respected in spite of the fact that they are not theists, do not acknowledge the 'supremacy of God' and do not conduct their lives by means of discerning God's will."

The board argues, of course, that the appeal to God contained within the preamble is legitimate because Canada's liberal tradition, the basis for the Charter and all other laws, is "rooted in Judeo-Christian values."

But even to the limited extent that is true, it is irrelevant. The emergence of liberal democracy in the West was the product of many influences. The Bible and Talmud represented only part of the equation. Roman law, English common law, geography, technological development and historical happenstance all played important roles. If Canada is a "Judeo-Christian nation" simply because Jewish and Christian doctrines informed the development of our cultural and legal norms, are we also a "white nation" because, however multi-hued our country has become, it was originally built by white hands? If it is true, as some anthropologists claim, that political organization evolved fastest in cold climates where co-operation was necessary for survival in ancient times, does that make us a nation of "Ice people" (as U.S. Afro-centrist Leonard Jeffries has stated)? Or are we "river people" because, as some argue, Europe's many navigable waterways helped develop inter-tribal trade and diplomacy?

Moreover, while it may be true that the Judeo-Christian ethos has contributed to the creation of a liberal, democratic state, that does not mean people come to Canada to become Jews and Christians. Immigrants flock to our country because they seek freedom and prosperity -- and they don't care much that certain religions alien to them once had a role in bringing them about. The faiths of the West have no monopoly on the values that make liberal democracy possible. By far the world's largest democracy, India, is predominantly Hindu. The world's third largest, Indonesia, is largely Muslim. Japan, East Asia's democratic anchor, is Shinto and Buddhist. Last time I checked, none of these nations was looking to Serbia and Russia, proudly Christian countries both, for advice on constitutional drafting.

Tomorrow: Ezra Levant will reply.