Post 103--The Bible in Abbotsford Public Schools

Bible Belt, Right and Left

Today (March 31 2016) the local CBC news programme featured an item about Bibles in the Public Schools in Abbotsford, a city some 70 km east of Vancouver, nestled in the centre of BC’s so-called “Bible Belt.”  To me, I hasten to add, that is a title of honour even when the BC secular media use it largely with scorn, though I do sometimes cringe at the right-wing orientation of the place. I do not understand how Christians, let alone a Christian community as a whole, can be right wing, even when that is a rather common occurrence in much of North America. Which is not to say, I prefer left wing. In no way. That’s often worse than right. I want Christians to be independent of both of these orientations and just be themselves, be Christian. This means that sometimes they will sound right, at another, left, but usually creatively different and free from both. I am tempted to shout, “The plague on both of your houses!”  But that would neither be very kind nor Christian. Christians don’t wish a plague on anyone.

Bibles in Public Schools

So, what is the issue according to CBC?  The Abbotsford School Board is promoting the distribution of Bibles among its students. These Bibles are offered free of charge by the Gideons, a business people’s organization that distributes free Bible, all over the world, especially in hotels. If you use hotels, you must have seen them tucked away in a drawer.  The Board does not force them on the students. The latter are given consent forms for their parents to sign. The students of those parents who approve are given the Bible in the principal’s office—nothing public; all very private.

Objections to Bibles in Public Schools

Some members of the public are voicing objections. These include notions such as Bibles not having a place in Public Schools or the system should not use up public funds for religious purposes. The Bible may be free, but the progamme’s administration takes time and money, public time and money. According to the programme’s anchor,  Andrew Chen, the complaint was initially delivered by the Humanist Association. 

Secular "Neutrality"

These objections are exactly what I expected, for they are the classic reaction of secular minds to religion; in BC, especially to the Christian religion. The general attitude is that to be neutral one must leave religion out of public affairs, including education. To be neutral means, well, simply to be secular!  And to be secular means to exclude religion, exclude belief systems. 

Secularism Just Another Belief System

The problem is, of course, that secularism itself is a belief system that is based on a view of reason that constitutes faith in reason’s ability to know all and to fix all. The truth of that has never been proved but is simply accepted as “common sense” that is beyond questioning or doubt. So, when secularists want to push out what they consider religion, we really have a case of one belief system (secularism) ousting other belief systems. It would be exactly the same if Roman Catholics or any other faith system were to demand the ouster of all others, including secularism. The Humanist Association is actually demanding the status of establishment state religion at the expense of every one else, something that, I would have thought, our insistence today on pluralism would never even allow us to think about.   

Secular Establishment

Pluralism leaves room for everyone and resists any group seeking establishment rights and privileges. Unfortunately, the earlier Anglican establishment of BC has been replaced by a Secular one with many government privileges, especially in the educational sector. Secular says: Everyone clear the deck; we take over. We are the only rational neutral people around!  What a myth. What blindness.  The blindness? Inability and/or refusal to recognize their own faith-based orientation towards autonomous reason. Every religion in BC, to the best of my knowledge, is open about its being based on faith. It is only the Secular faith that will or cannot acknowledge its base. It is simply blind to it. Closed minded. It is caught in a narrow tunnel vision.

Poser--An Exceptional Pluralistic Humanist

However, not all Humanists think this way. I was once member of a multi-faith group that included three Humanists, one of whom was a former leader of the Vancouver Humanist Association, the late Ernest Poser. In fact, he was the founder of this group and Chairman till he became terminally ill. His idea was to encourage the teaching about all major worldviews in BC’s public schools, including Humanism!  Not proselytism or “evangelism,” but to help students understand each other and, later in their adult years, as neighbours. Why do my neighbours behave as they do? The answer is often found in religion. So, Poser reasoned, let’s teach that stuff in the public schools to enhance mutual understanding among the citizenry. However, he did admit that he did not find much support among his fellow Humanists, but still enough for them to provide our low-level budget for a few years, however grudgingly. Poser and I became very close friends; I loved him dearly, though we deeply disagreed with each other.

My All-inclusive Pluralistic Solution

My solution to the Abbotsford “crisis” is, like Poser’s, not to ban religion from the schools. That’s impossible; it is already there in the form of Secularism. And Secularism occupies all the space,  every square inch,  to indoctrinate students in its worldview. That space needs to be shared with everyone—Christians, Hindus, Sikhs, Muslims, Humanists, Atheists, Animists, etc. That’s the only way to be pluralistic, but it will require Secularists to open their eyes to their own belief system and admit it for what it is. Of all the religions, they are probably the most blind to themselves.    

Post 56—Introducing the Metro Vancouver Alliance (MVA)

Douglas Todd of the Vancouver Sun (VS) recently introduced the above Alliance to his readers. Though the Alliance’s address is only about four blocks from my residence, I had not heard of it before. It is my guess very few people had heard of it, but now that Todd has widely publicized the organization, it is my hope that many people will support it and actually join it via whatever organization they belong to. Actually, the Alliance is abundantly celebrated on the internet with many websites devoted to it. Go check it out for yourself, but be sure you include “Vancouver BC” in your search, for it is an international organization with more than 60 similar ones in various countries. 

We humans have a sad history of surrounding ourselves with fences to separate us from other humans. We do this in a myriad ways. We are born within some of these fences as, for example, tribal or national borders that clearly mark us as different from the people on the other side of the border, but often as better than them as well.  We may be born within religious borders that separate us from other religions or even from other denominations within the same religion as, for example, Protestants vs Catholics. Or, even within Protestants such as Reformed against Anabaptists. Or between organizations based on faith and secular ones, though that distinction, popular as it is and representing the common sense of our day, is a secular myth based on secular delusion.  

Now there is nothing wrong with borders per se. I doubt that we can live without them. They represent diversity within the human community; they enable diversity and they protect diversity. Vishal Mangalwadi, an Indian Christian philosopher, argues rather convincingly that national and tribal borders, for example, are willed by God.  In an age of intolerance in my birth country, The Netherlands, Abraham Kuyper argued for a radical political and social pluralism in which each party or grouping has a legitimate place around the table, including your most vociferous opponent, enemy even. I fully endorse that kind of pluralism that makes room for both borders and diversity within and across borders.

Right, there is nothing wrong with borders per se, as long as the people within one set of borders can tolerate, respect and cooperate within another set of borders. And that is precisely the aim of MVA. It is not to erase the borders so much as to encourage the folk on one side of the border to cooperate and improve the society within which the various groups co-exist as neighbours. The MVA includes a fairly wide range of religions, social groupings and labour unions who, after carefully listening to each other, have selected four issues to work on in its catchment area: transit, housing, living wage and social isolation. As a citizen of Metro Van, I can assure you these are indeed hot buttons in our community that seriously need to be addressed. They are not the only ones. If given the chance, I might have selected one or two additional ones, but, heh, just for an extremely diversified group like this to have agreed on four is itself a huge achievement.

I am deeply interested in all four issues, but today will concentrate briefly on the living wage issue. Deborah Littman, introduced by Todd as the “lead organizer” and a Jew, explains that among the “faith communities” interest in this issue “goes back to Catholic social teaching on the value of labour.” (I think she means within Christian faith communities.)  According to Todd,  the group has convinced the Vancouver City Council to “commit to a minimum wage of $20.68 for all its workers and contractors.”  According to Tara Carman in the next issue of VS (June 30, 2015), Mayor Robertson intends to offer a proposal to this effect this very week. MVA plans to be there with a “living wage rally” outside City Hall. Good for them.

Though in principle I fully support such a move, I do hope that those who have to make the final decision will have all the facts at their command and not simply act out of “leftist” idealism. Carman reports that Vancouver’s Fraser Institute has discovered that such a move “reduces employment for low-wage workers by 12-17 per cent.” It may be one thing for governments to pay such wages, but when it is imposed on business, problems arise. “Employers respond by cutting back on jobs, hours, and on-the-job training.” 

Justin Trudeau, the current leader of Canada’s Liberal Party, has just been quoted to insist that environmental issues like oil pipelines should be decided not on basis of idealism so much as on factual evidence (VS, July 2, 2015). I would hope that the final decision on living wage will similarly be based on factual evidence—and I do sincerely hope also that such evidence will indeed support a positive decision, for too many workers and their families make do with wages that simply do not meet their daily needs.  It appears that New Westminster, a member of Metro Vancouver, has already moved in that direction without the negative consequences having showed up so far. That is hopeful.  

Continuing the mixing idea of the last posts, this one has turned out to be yet another example of mixing religions with both the self-described secular community and with "worldly" affairs. Actually, such mixing happens all the time and should happen, for neither religion nor the world thrive when separated from each other.

Thank you, MVA.  I encourage my root church, the Christian Reformed Church, to join the movement as has the other denomination of which I am an “adherent,” the Baptist Church, already. 

This post is based especially on these articles in VS: (1) Todd, “Metro Vancouver Alliance builds bridges and makes things happen,” 29-07-2015; (2) Carman, “$20.68/hr: City looks at paying all staff and contractors a living wage,” 30-07-2015. With thanks to both.