Posted on June 27, 2015 at 6:42 am by Dr. Jim
A big brouhaha has been brewing in southern Alberta for a while over the return of the Lord’s Prayer to Dr Hamman School in Taber (East of Lethbridge). I’ve blogged about this earlier, posting my April 25 letter to the Lethbridge Herald. Since then, I’ve been spoken on the issue at a meeting of the Southern Alberta Committee on Public Affairs (not a great turnout, but it was fun), written another letter (to the Taber Times) and published an op-ed piece in the Herald. Recently, the two newspapers both published an article in which explained the school division’s policy and it looks like I’m going to jump into the fray again. First, because of what the official did and didn’t say, and second because the reporter never spoke to any of the opponents for the move, thus turning news into a soapbox. In any case, I thought I would post my earlier scribblings.
First, my Op Ed from the Herald (June 13).
Controversy has surrounded the Horizon School Division’s plan to reintroduce the Lord’s Prayer at Dr. Hamman School in Taber after a great majority of affected families voted in favour of the practice. The Alberta Act of 1905 (an amendment to the Canadian Constitution that established Alberta as a province), allows school boards to direct a school to recite the Lord’s Prayer. In April, 2015, however, the Supreme Court of Canada ended the recitation of prayer before city council meetings in Saguenay, Quebec as it violated the freedom of conscience of non-religious attendees and the duty of the state to remain religiously neutral (Mouvement laïque québécois v. Saguenay [City], 2015). The provision in the Alberta Act, therefore, appears at odds with the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, and there has been considerable discussion in southern Alberta media about the wisdom of the Horizon School Division’s plans.
Some proponents of the prayer at Dr. Hamman School have asserted that majority rights must not be curtailed as this amounts to discrimination against Christians that is typical of the secular era we now live in. Lost in such claims, however, is the distinction between the neutrality the Court demands and the anti-religious rhetoric of some atheists and agnostics who seek an end to religious privilege in society. The Saguenay decision declares that “sponsorship of one religious tradition by the state in breach of its duty of neutrality amounts to discrimination against all other such traditions”. This neutrality requires the state to abstain from religious questions and to “neither favour nor hinder any particular belief, and the same holds true for non-belief”. A little later, the ruling reads,
“When all is said and done, the state’s duty to protect every person’s freedom of conscience and religion means that it may not use its powers in such a way as to promote the participation of certain believers or non-believers in public life to the detriment of others.”
The Supreme Court recognizes that the Charter of Rights protects minorities from the “tyranny of the majority”, the suspending the rights of the few to accommodate the wishes of the many. In April of this year a Calgary private school, the Webber Academy, was fined $26,000 by the Alberta Human Rights Commission for discriminating against two Muslim students by forbidding them to pray on school property. Some observers considered this as an example of tyranny of non-Christian minority and others saw it as a failure of secular values. It was neither. It is a great example how Canadian law protects the rights of the religious in an inclusive secular environment. The ruling does not require the school to lead prayers but merely to permit believers to pray on their own accord. Likewise, if Dr. Hamman School does not make the Lord’s Prayer a scheduled part of the school day, Christian students would still have the right to pray on their own before classes, during recess, or at lunchtime, and the School should take reasonable steps to accommodate them.
Sensationalist anti-religious rhetoric by some non-religious and anti-religious activists certainly exists in the world today as evidenced by numerous best-selling books and popular websites. It is understandable that many religious people are wary of virtually all secularist movements and are led to interpret state neutrality as a threat. But we should not let the anti-religious voices dominate discourse about an inclusive, but neutral public square. Many secularists find such rhetoric objectionable and divisive and Canadian courts recognize that excluding religion entirely from public life compromises the neutrality the Charter of Rights and Freedoms demands of the state. A balance needs to be struck between religion as a private matter and a social phenomenon. Courts rule against religious practices by the state, they allow individual’s expression of religious values in political decision-making. Chief Justice Beverly McLachlan, in a case over the acknowledgement of same-sex parented families in schoolbooks, writes that school boards have an obligation to consider the religious viewpoints of the students’ parents, saying that religion “cannot be left at the boardroom door”. She adds, however, that “Religious views that deny equal recognition and respect to the members of a minority group cannot be used to exclude the concerns of the minority group” (Chamberlain vs. Surrey School District, 2002).
So what is the way forward? Clearly, reducing the situation to a “Pro” vs. “Anti-“ religious dichotomy is counter-productive. There can be no winner in a struggle like that, and especially not children who will inherit a more polarized and distrustful world. Through the ideal of a religiously neutral but inclusive state, a number of routes to a compromise that respects the rights and dignity of the various sides may be found. Hopefully, the Horizon School district will explore these before the start of the new school year.
Here is my Taber Times letter of June 17.
I am not sure what subjects Ray Sheen taught or still teaches that he gets so much wrong about the nature of a free democracy, but I would like to point out that there is a fundamental difference between a bunch of school kids voting whether to play soccer or football and which of those children will have their fundamental rights suspended by a choice made by their classmates’ parents. Mr. Sheen says in his letter of June 10 that he never saw any social cost being paid by pupils who declined participation in their school’s religious rituals. This may be due to his very presence that kept the majority in line, or to his not actually looking hard enough.
The Supreme Court, which is charged with protecting the fundamental rights of everyone in this country, has determined in a number of cases that stigmatization from non-participation in state-sponsored prayer is harmful. Allowing non-believers to sit out the prayers forces them to self-identify and thereby open themselves up to hurtful stigmatization. This can occur without violence or harsh words. In February of this year, a mildly autistic Florida boy invited all of his kindergarten classmates to his sixth birthday party. There were no responses. The boy’s pain was not the result of bullying but exclusion. Had his parents not complained through social media the teacher might have remained oblivious.
What Mr. Sheen is affirming is not the democratic principle of majority rules but the willful abuse of children’s rights through the “tyranny of the majority”, something the Supreme Court rightly finds contrary to the fundamental rights as guaranteed in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.