The Postmodern Church

Christianity Becoming a Dirty Word in Canada

By Joe Woodard

Canada Family Action Coalition (CFAC) - Posted June 19, 2003

http://www.familyaction.org/print.php?filename=Articles/article-pgs/dirtyword.htm


"Christianity Becoming a Dirty Word in Canada: "'Anti-Christian prejudice is the last respectable bigotry, and it's worse in Canada than anywhere else in the developed world,' says Jewish American scholar Michael Horowitz, an expert on anti-Christian persecution.... Horowitz said this sort of polarizing is 'a dangerous game (the secular elite) plays for short-term political advantage' -- suppressing Christian faith with Christian tax dollars. There's 'no excuse for the bigotry the Canadian establishment shows toward Christianity,' he said.... The pretext of this suppression is 'multiculturalism' -- the need to protect minority faiths....


"Vancouver lawyer Iain Benson...said: 'The problem is bigger than simply the velvet oppression of the political and cultural elites, antagonistic to faith. What we're dealing with is the corruption of Christianity itself.'' Benson said church leaders cling to the nominal Christianity of four-fifths of Canadians, ignoring the superficial nature of that identification, their buying into the consumer culture, and their lack of any real engagement with their own faith. Given their lack of fervour, Canada's Christians are not only unlikely to threaten anyone; they are clearly incapable even of defending their heritage....


"The secular establishment's slow squeeze on the country's fading Christianity is taking place largely in the area of sexual ethics, Benson said, because... 'sex is the mysticism of the materialists.' What began as a movement to 'tolerate' alternatives to the traditional Christian sexuality and its emphasis on the traditional family, has now become an insistence on public 'affirmation.'... So the 'chattering classes'' continue to be antagonistic to the very existence of the church, because of its latent claim to an independent moral authority.
"'What we see today is a triumph of the secular vocabulary, so that even church leaders find themselves addressing social problems in terms of the universal power of the state. The churches have lost any independent moral presence in our society.'


"What does it matter if Christianity is exiled from the public square? 'The church invented things like public hospitals, schools and charities,' Benson said. 'And we're discovering that these institutions remained humane only so long as they preserved their original inspiration.'"


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