On Supposed Christian Privilege

Friend Xerxes has written a column, to my surprise, asking his readers to try to imagine what it must be like for Christians in India, where they are in trouble if they proselytize. Canadian Christians ought to recognize their privilege.

“In Canada, we treat Christianity as the norm,” he writes. “But what would it feel like if the Christian culture you take for granted turned you into a persecuted minority?”

I don’t really have to imagine. I have lived in Saudi Arabia and in China, both places where Christian proselytizing can land you in prison.

But I also never thought of Christianity as the norm in Canada. Secularism, not Christianity, is the norm.

Xerxes points out that four of our major holidays, Christmas, Easter, Hallowe’en, and Thanksgiving, have Christian roots. That is true, but they have been largely secularized: just a day off work, just gifts or candies for the kids. I think a good case can be made that the modern secular celebration of Christmas, or Hallowe’en, or Mardi Gras, is a subversion of the Christian meaning. Indeed, such arguments are often made.

Xerxes might have pointed out, but didn’t, that our grouping of days into weeks, and our weekend rest period, is also a Christian artifact; as is our counting of years from the birth of Christ. But how significant is that? Buddhist, Muslim, and Communist nations all also use this system now, without this expressing any deep Christian commitment. What once was Christian has been secularized.

A majority of Canadians are still nominally Christian, and, in a democracy, that makes active persecution less likely. Nevertheless, a recent report for the UK government concluded that Christians are the most persecuted religious group worldwide, accounting for 80% of all cases. With the level of persecution at an all-time high, and growing.

Severe and open persecution of Christians in the past broken out in majority Christian countries: in France during their revolution, in Spain during theirs, in Mexico during theirs. In the Soviet Union and throughout the Eastern Bloc for seventy years.

There is an automatic antagonism between the secular powers, who want to do as they will, and those meddlesome priests and preachers who insist on moral standards. It can reveal itself any moment the situation permits.

We seem to be heading into such a period now in Canada and the USA. People are trying to burn down churches, stab priests at the altar, show up at services with guns and intent to kill. The rioting in the streets is growing more clearly anti-Christian night by night. Last week, a statue of the Virgin Mary was beheaded at a church near me.

In recent years, declarations by the courts that there is an inalienable human right to abortion, and to homosexual sex, seem targeted against Christianity. Yes, targeted against Christianity, not in favour of those who want to get an abortion or to have gay sex. If that were the goal, it could be accomplished just as well with legislation. Making gay sex and abortion human rights instead renders traditional Christian teaching and practice illegal, and vulnerable to official persecution. Which has begun.

How can Xerxes’s perception be so different from my own? Because, I suspect, his “Christianity” is not Christian. In mainstream Protestantism, and too often among Catholics as well, what passes for Christianity is just the current social consensus, whatever it happens to be.

Christianity is essentially counter-cultural, from its inception. Jesus was executed as a criminal. It is not the easy or the obvious way: that way leads to destruction. To endorse instead the current social consensus, whatever it might be, is to endorse the anti-Christ.

A Trip to Bountiful

A happy frontier Mormon family.

There is a court case now underway to decide whether Canada’s law against polygamy is constitutional.

For many years, the government has declined to prosecute polygamists, and I understand it is for this reason: because it is quite likely that the law, if ever tested, would indeed be found unconstitutional and thrown out. The net result being more polygamous marriages, which presumably the authorities do not want.

My friend Xerxes has chimed in with his column. His argument is that polygamy should indeed be prosecuted. His argument is that religious liberty does not take precedence over “the laws of the land,” that “a religion cannot and should not exempt its followers from obeying the laws of the land.”

This is simply a rejection of the concept of religious freedom itself.

In Memoriam, Brigham Young.

The entire point of a human right is that it is a restriction on government action, on what laws can be made or enforced. In the words of the US First Amendment, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”

It is true that the protections in the Canadian Constitution are not as strong as those in the US Constitution. Nevertheless, the onus is on government to prove that a given restriction on religion or conscience “can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society.”

What if, for example, the parliament decided to pass a law simply making Judaism or Catholicism illegal? By Xerxes’s standard, this would be fine. Where’s the freedom?

In the harem.

Of course, there are problems involved. As Xerxes points out:

“If religious convictions are granted precedence over civil and criminal law, anyone could invent their own religion. Which might authorize ignoring speed limits. Driving on the wrong side of the road. Committing ritual murder. Pouring fentanyl into water supplies to poison unbelieving communities.

At that point, courts would have to determine what constitutes a legitimate religion.”

Courts must indeed do that now, for the very reason he gives: so that people cannot invent their own religion to justify their actions. I do not think the courts have always chosen wisely. The current standard in Canada is that the tenet is “sincerely believed,” and held “in good faith.”

I think that is too loose and too subjective. I would want to see scriptural justification from a religion with some history (so it was not written by the present plaintiff or his friends for their benefit), and with some tests that it is a “religion” properly so-called: belief in a spiritual realm, in a supreme being, in a religious basis for morality. Shamanism or magical practices, for example, is not a religion; nor is “ethical humanism” or vegetarianism.

As to the current issue, of polygamy, it seems to me that the defense of freedom of religion does not apply. The religion may permit polygamy, but it does not require it. Even when Mormonism endorsed the practice, only 20 to 30 percent of Mormon marriages were polygamous. Islam still endorses the practice, but most Muslims are monogamous. Therefore, prohibiting it does not infringe on freedom of conscience.

It does, on the other hand, seem impossible to insist on a prohibition on polygamy when homosexual marriage has been declared a human right. It would seem to fall under the very same “right to privacy” that has been read into the US Constitution, and the very same Section 15 in the Canadian Constitution that prohibits discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. That is the section that was invoked to make homosexual marriage a human right: the argument being that otherwise the law discriminated on the basis of sexual orientation.

The section does not, in fact, prohibit discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation: the courts “read that in.” It does, on the other hand, prohibit discrimination on the basis of religion:

“Everyone has the right to equality before the law and to equal protection of the law without discrimination because of race, national or ethnic origin, colour, religion, age or sex.”

On that basis, I would expect the law against polygamy to be struck down as unconstitutional. The cases seem to be exactly parallel.

Let Them Bake Cake

Daniel O'Connell, the Great Emancipator

The good old “turn the other cheek” quote from the Sermon on the Mount has, predictably, surfaced as advice to Christians on the recent controversy over the RFRA in Indiana. It always does; usually in the mouths of Christianity's opponents. Someone is saying that, in the spirit of Jesus's words, true Christians, now required by law to bake cakes for gay weddings in violation of their consciences, should instead bake two, the second one presumably for free.

Now—this leaves us with a bit of a dilemma. As atheists are the first to insist, atheists can be just as moral as the religious; there is nothing about being religious that automatically makes you more righteous. Yep; agreed. Any properly Catechised Christian could tell you the same. That is just the same as saying that morality is objective, and binding on everyone.

But it follows that there are no special rules that Christians must follow and atheists need not. If it is a moral obligation to turn the other cheek when someone hits you, or to walk two miles when required to walk one, this obligation is equally binding on both atheists and Christians; not on Christians alone.

So the proper question is not whether Christians are or should be doing it in this case, but who is doing it, and who is not. Who here is going to the mattresses in defence of their claims, and who is not?

On that one, you decide.

But let's also dig a little deeper here. I think it is evident to conscience, which is innate, that in ordinary circumstances, neither Christians nor atheists in truth have a moral obligation to “turn the other cheek” when attacked. This goes well beyond the golden rule. Doing unto others as we would have them do unto us does not mean we should subjugate our interests, much less our moral judgements, to theirs, but that we should treat the two equally. The right to self-defence (not to mention freedom of conscience) is inherent and self-evident. We can forgive them, or not, later.

Jesus was not, therefore, laying down a general moral requirement. He was, instead, more or less self-evidently, offering practical advice, or speaking of one particular situation.

It is therefore best to examine the context. To whom was he speaking, and in what situation?

The Sermon on the Mount indeed begins with a precise enumeration of whom it is addressed to: the poor in spirit, those who mourn, the meek, the persecuted, the powerless (Matthew 5:2-11—“the Beatitudes”).

If you are in a situation in which you are oppressed and abused, as here, it is almost certainly futile to fight back. The same considerations apply as in the doctrine of just war: if there is no reasonable chance of winning, one does not resort to arms, because worse harm would only come of it. Jesus makes the same judgement later when he first instructs his disciples to go out and buy swords (Luke 22:36), and then, when he is taken in the Garden of Gethsemane, forbids then to use them (Luke 22:51). Wer have the right of resistance; nevertheless, resistance in some circumstances is futile.

His advice here is plainly for such situations. Saint Augustine points out an interesting detail in Matthew's account. Jesus says, to quote the phrase in full, “if anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also.” Why the right cheek specifically?

I challenge you, right now, to try slapping the person nearest to you on their right cheek. I expect that they will escape with little harm.

If, like almost everyone, you are right-handed, you will find it difficult to do. A blow with the right hand will fall on the left cheek. For the right cheek, you will need to slap them with your weak hand. Odd, isn't it?

Unless, that, is, you show your victim, as the idiom goes, the back of your hand. A backhand blow—a deliberate insult. A blow given only by a superior to an inferior.

If not that, the assailant might be attacking backhand with a stick or a whip in his hand.

Now, imagine receiving such a blow, then turning the left cheek to your attacker.

Surely this is a clear example of passive resistance. By turning the other cheek, asking for a straight blow, you are implicitly declaring yourself an equal, in a way that would be awkward for the assailant to respond to. You are shaming him.

St, Francis in later years.

Jesus goes on to say “if anyone would sue you and take your tunic, let him have your cloak as well.”

In ancient Judea, a poor man would have only two articles of clothing: his tunic, and his cloak. Handing both over would leave him standing naked before his tormentor—making a public scene that would be calculated to shame him. Similarly, when St. Francis's father pursued him to a church, demanding he return his inheritance over his plan to leave the family business, Francis stripped himself naked in front of the bishop, and handed back even his clothes. Touche.

Jesus next advises “if anyone forces you to go one mile, go with him two miles.”

Who exactly can force you to go one mile? This seems to be a reference to impressment by the Roman authority. By law, any civilian could be required by any Roman soldier to carry his burden for him for one mile. Simon of Cyrene was so impressed on the road to Calvary. But this was a maximum, not a minimum; soldiers could not require more than this. Accordingly, continuing to carry the burden for an extra mile was actually putting the soldier in violation of the law, perhaps to his peril. Imagine being caught by your superior in this situation, and having to claim that the Jewish civilian insisted on carrying the pack twice as far of his own free will. Right--who was going to believe that?

Jesus's advice is indeed extremely wise, given any situation in which conventional resistance is futile. The early Christians proved the thesis, managing with it to take over a Roman Empire originally bent on their destruction.

Daniel O'Connell, in the first half of the nineteenth century, grasped the same New Testament principle, and used it to force England to give the Irish, and Catholics, political and legal equality throughout the Empire. He had a great deal to do with giving Canada and other colonies self-government as well.

Mohandas Gandhi picked up the same concept of passive resistance in India--without properly crediting O'Connell, but properly crediting Jesus and the Sermon on the Mount. It led to the peaceful independence of India, and probably had a great deal to do with the independence, soon after, of all the European colonial possessions.

Martin Luther King Jr. tried it in the US South, and it worked again to wipe out segregation and discrimination.

But what this doctrine definitely is not is a demand to play dead in the presence of evil. That would simply be cowardice, and completely immoral.

Nor is it called for in the current struggle, involving the various RFR Acts in the US. The religious, after all, still have a vote, and quite possibly majority support. That means they still have conventional means to resist. To start baking extra cakes at their own expense now would therefore only be servile. That would be more like the Uncle Toms, the native Irish converts to Anglicanism, the kapos of the death camps, or the Sanhedrin.

Would such a display of docility attract some to the faith? I doubt it. There would be very little that was attractive about it.

Quebec's Charter of Values

Absolutely everybody is against Quebec’s proposed new Charter of Values, which makes me suspect it must be a good idea.

Mind you, it is ridiculous if its intent is, as stated, to make the provincial government religiously “neutral.” Firstly, banning religious expression does not make the government neutral; it makes it anti-religion. Secondly, this, if seriously enforced, would drive a wrecking ball through the width and depth of Quebec culture. It is not just the matter of the large crucifix in the National Assembly. There is the cross on Mount Royal, recently refurbished with $2 million in provincial funds. There is the cross in the French version of “O Canada.” There is the cross on the provincial flag, originally flown in honour of Mary. Not to mention holidays for Christmas, Easter, and St. Jean Baptiste Day, or the Christian customs of dividing the week into seven days, or numbering years from the birth of Christ. Need I continue?

Possibly too large?

But the bill does not really foresee banning religious expression. It expressly grants exemptions to religious symbols that are part of Quebec’s “cultural heritage.” The real problem with the bill, perhaps, is the hypocrisy of this. It leaves the bill wide open to criticism, indeed ridicule.

But suppose the bill were slightly reframed to instead explicitly enshrine Catholicism as the cultural heritage of Quebec, and prohibit very public displays of other religious commitments? Is that so awful?

Just as Quebec has some real reason to feel culturally vulnerable as a small island of Francophones surrounded in North America by a vast English sea, it is also and equally a small island of Catholics surrounded in North America by a vast sea of Protestants. This experience, at least as much as language, is what makes Quebec culture distinct. Witness, indeed, the cross on Mount Royal, the provincial flag in honour of Mary, St. Jean Baptiste Day, and so on.

"Car ton bras sait porter l'épée,
Il sait porter la croix."

Moreover, the religion, if measured by church attendance, seems to be under greater threat currently than the language. If it is permissible to protect the language, in part by prohibiting large public displays of other languages, why is it not permissible to protect the religion too—say, by prohibiting large public displays of other religions?

We in North America might be inclined to see this as a violation of human rights. But there has long been an established church much like this in the United Kingdom, which does not do particularly badly, overall, in the human rights tables. Similar customs are found in Germany, Norway, Greece, Finland, Denmark, Sweden, Iceland, and Israel. Also not among the most repressive countries one could name.

Let it be said, however, that any such law would not, in fact, legitimately prohibit the burqa. It is not a part of Muslim religion; it is simply an expression of feminine modesty. Just like the Catholic ban—still in force—on women uncovering their heads in church.