PARKER: What’s next for Canada’s Christians, as church and state collide?

Calgary-based Shafer Parker pastored churches for more than 40 years, and in retirement remains an activist apologist for Bible-based ChristianityIt’s the end of the Christmas season, and at first glance something wonderful seems to have taken place. Canadians have rediscovered their nation’s Christian roots. Or have they?Cheerful evidence that they have can be found in the 40 or so cities and provinces, including Toronto, Saskatoon, Calgary, and Saskatchewan, that for the first time have officially declared December to be Christian Heritage Month. The movement only began some six months ago and after such rapid growth, Molly Banerjei, chief executive officer for the Christian Heritage Initiative, has high hopes that it will influence Canadians to return to their Christian roots, including “the values of love service, and compassion that define the Christian community.”Perhaps. Unfortunately, evidence for the negative is just as strong. Maybe stronger, even. Where daily life is concerned, there is little evidence that influential Canadians see the nation’s Christian heritage as anything more than a combination of Scripture passages etched on Parliament’s walls. That, and Handel’s Messiah at Christmas, and the memory of outmoded customs, morals, and ethics. They're seen today as appropriate only for TV shows like Anne of Green Gables or Murdoch Mysteries, and even there to be presented so as to make 21st-century viewers glad to have escaped such joy-killing antiquated ideas of right and wrong.You want proof that Canada’s Christian heritage has little to no effect on modern behaviour? Witness the official response in November when Saanich, B.C. mom Angie Tyrrell complained that after a swim in Commonwealth Place pool her ten-year-old daughter shouldn’t have to shower and change alongside a muscular, hairy man dressed in a child’s pink, sparkly bikini.Neither the people at the reception desk nor assistant manager Bree Dobler took seriously Tyrrell’s concerns for her daughter’s modesty. At the end of a multi-email exchange Dobler declared that “everyone’s gender identity and expressions are valid,” making it clear that his goal was to make the man feel “safe.” Then he thanked her for “helping us make our community more inclusive.” In Tyrrell’s final response the outraged mom suggested that if Dobler truly believed a man is a woman “because he was wearing a bikini,” he is guilty of “magical/religious thinking.”Bottom line? As Western Standard columnist Jonathan Van Maren put it last month, “When Canadian progressives talk about ‘inclusion,’ you can be sure that Christians are about to be excluded.” As an example Van Maren referenced last month’s directive from the Canadian Armed Forces insisting that chaplains be “inclusive” at Remembrance Day ceremonies, but meaning, in fact, that Christian prayers and traditional symbolism were to be excluded.Van Maren also reported on Comfort Sakoma-Fadugba, vice-chair of the Vancouver Police Board, but only until she wrote about the erasure of “Christian values from the lives of our children,” and how they were being “replaced by those of a new dominant group,” namely adherents of Hinduism. Sakoma-Fadugba explained Hindus have a right to practice their religion but went on to advocate for “Canada to remain true to its own roots,” meaning the “unique values and identity which is what always made us who we are.” Then she made it clear that in her mind Christianity should remain the core identity of the country. According to Van Maren, she “appear[ed] not to realize that all this is heresy now.” In November Sakoma-Fadugba was asked to resign from the Vancouver Police Board.The questions facing Canadian Christians are fairly straightforward, then. First, are they willing to recognize they are facing a government and a dominant culture that despises them and wishes they were nonexistent? Second, are they willing to pay the price of a genuinely Christian response to open persecution, or will they continue to pretend all is well and acquiesce to government pressure to conform?Not surprisingly, these are exactly the two questions faced by 3rd and 4th-century Christians living within the Roman empire. This was the infamous period when under emperors Decius (a.d. 201-251) and Valerian (a.d. 199-260,) Christianity was deemed a menace to the empire, deserving only to be scoured from the Earth by any means necessary. Christianity was outlawed, Christians were tortured and killed in various ways. There was however, a way out. They could offer a sacrifice to the gods and the emperor, thereby procuring a libellus, a document signed by a government official stating he or she was loyal to Rome and certainly not a Christian.Canadians are not yet required to deny their faith, but it appears that to get ahead in public life, or even visit a municipal pool, they are increasingly pressed to deny that their faith can have any say in how they live. Doctors and nurses can no longer plead their faith as a reason not to participate in abortions, Medical Assistance in Dying (MAiD) or deny a patient of any age the medical procedures necessary to “change” their sex. Moreover, Christian lawyers in Alberta are threatened by the Alberta Law Society with the loss of the right to practice law if they refuse to take training in Critical Race Theory (another name for culturally approved racism) in order to achieve “cultural competence,” toward Canada’s First Nations.Interestingly enough, when early Roman Christians were faced with persecution, their reactions broke along the same lines that characterize the responses of Canadian Christians today. Some tried to hide from authorities while waiting for the soon-expected return of Jesus. But sadly, a large number, perhaps more than fifty percent, apostatized, that is, they left the faith, offered the required sacrifices, and accepted the libellus that marked their betrayal, but guaranteed they would live. Others stood up for Jesus and paid the ultimate price, dying with eyes of faith set upon the life on the other side of the veil.As the flames licked around Pionius, a priest from Smyrna, in present-day Turkey, he cried out, “I hasten to my death so that I may awaken all the earlier in the Resurrection.” Such bravery did not mark the majority of the Christians, but neither was it rare, and it served to remind Rome that the certainty of eternal life in Christ was the real reason Christians defied its might. That, and their unique willingness to risk everything in order to tend the sick during times of plague. Perhaps nothing else could have so movingly expressed the reality of their confidence in eternal life through Christ.Canadian Christians might consider that less than a century after the terrors of Decius and Valerian it was Rome that bowed the knee to Christ, not the other way around. They might also reflect on the influence the Christian community gained among common people by their willingness to serve the “least of these” at their time of greatest need, rather than withdraw from society while waiting for the second coming. The road ahead for Christians in Canada is conceivably a difficult one Christians will have ever faced. But the promise of victory over death and the world is as certain today as it was 1,700 years ago.Calgary-based Shafer Parker pastored churches for more than 40 years, and in retirement remains an activist apologist for Bible-based Christianity.

PARKER: What’s next for Canada’s Christians, as church and state collide?

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