In a post-Christian and secular Canada, is the Good Friday holiday discriminatory?

Is Good Friday a discriminatory holiday? That was the question raised by the Canadian Human Rights Commission (CHRC) last fall when it published a discussion paper on religious intolerance. 

In the paper, the Commissions suggested Good Friday and Christmas are not only “grounded in Canada’s history of colonialism” but are “an obvious example” of religious intolerance—being the “only Canadian statutory holidays linked to religious holy days.” 

The result, the paper went on to say, is that while Christians are privileged by getting days off for their religious observances, non-Christians may experience intolerance or discrimination since they need “to request special accommodations to observe their holy days and other times of the year where their religion requires them to abstain from work.” 

So why is Good Friday still a statutory holiday in our very secular and post-Christian country? And how could Canada make people from other religions feel more included? That’s the question I address in my most recent Free Press column.

 

Many church leaders in U.S. on wrong side of power, new book asserts

 

“There’s something desperately wrong with the church in America.” 

That’s what David Fitch, author of the new book Reckoning with Power: Why the Church Fails When It’s on the Wrong Side of Power, says about Christians in that country who support Trump and are part of what’s known as Christian Nationalism in the U.S. 

Fitch, who teaches at Northern Seminary near Chicago, made the comment about those Christian leaders, mostly evangelicals, who seek to use the power of the state to force their version of Christian faith on that country. 

“That is so different from when God’s power is at work,” he said. “But many seem willing to exchange God’s power for worldly power to make the state do what they think should be done.” 

Read about Fitch’s new book, and the way some Christian leaders are trying to shape America according to their Christian beliefs—and what Canadian Christians can learn from the mistakes of their American neighbours—in my recent column in the Free Press.

 

 

 

 

"The fact is that I am a Christian." Alexei Navalny's faith underreported by media following his death

Accolades and tributes have been pouring in for Alexei Navalny, who died Feb. 16 in a Russian penal colony at the age of 47. 

The many media reports about his death mentioned his years of criticism of the authoritarian rule of Russian leader Vladimir Putin, the widespread corruption and lack of freedom in that country, and how he spoke against Putin’s war against Ukraine. 

One thing that did not get much mention was Navalny’s Christian faith. By leaving that out, media coverage summing up his life’s work missed “a key part of what made his opposition to Vladimir Putin so powerful.” 

Read more in my Free Press column.