This morning I was thinking about this Canadian broadcast which has caused something of a brouhaha for religious people who know of it. I didn’t think so much of it before reading Anchoress, but then the gears got turning.
Canadian National Public Radio Broadcasts Call for State Control of Religion, Especially Catholicism
Continuing his comparison Ferguson stated, “I envisage a congress
meeting to hammer out a code that would form the basis of legislation
to regulate the practice of religion. Like the professional engineers’
P.Eng designation, there would then be RRPs (or registered religious
practitioners). To carry the analogy to its conclusion, no one could be
a religious practitioner without this qualification.”
One of the things that is bothering me, on my backburner, is the situation we are facing in Islamic terrorism in the fine balance that we must tread when calling for deterrent action . I have noticed for some time how Muslims especially, but many besides them, I suppose many that are their allies in cause ( Liberal apologists), are ever so coyly trying to spread the wrath onto “Christian fundamentalists”. Including them in the danger group, despite the fact that they don’t go about globally spreading terror and mayhem.
But that word “fundamental” is just so temptingly equivocal, all mixed up with the false idea that every religion believes basically the same thing with the same outcomes. Which couldn’t be farther from the truth, but who’s to quibble about truth?
And so what we see here, in this Canadian broadcast is nothing more than the armflexing of secular religion at its finest. One of the things that most struck my thinking in this was the setup of an elitest group who will kindly, for the good of society, tell everyone what they can think and believe. If that isn’t the ultimate wetdream of every secular religionist I don’t know what is. If that is obscene for your thinking… then no more obscene than what is being suggested by former professor Bob Ferguson.
And to go after the Catholics first, that is a bit of genius. Who, more than the Catholics, have proved most intransigent to the secular agenda? But that is , I think, just a smokescreen for the real target. The real target is the independent Fundamental Christian thinkers, especially the politically active.
Why do I think this? The Catholic Church is too big to take on in this way, but they are convenient to use for the longstanding prejudices and secular resentments against them. Plus they are mainstream in an ancient sense. You can’t identify Catholics with Jihadists so well in the Modern age. But those euphoniously similar ‘Fundamentalists”? Those politically active for family values and all things archaic to the secular mind? Now they are a target to go after with the cudgels of the state.
There is a certain form of displacement taking place here. Can’t get at those fundamental Muslims. scared to take them on? …well, how about bringing the boot on those Christians with the like label? How about that for distraction of the masses and furthering the agenda at the same time? How about funneling all that mindless anger that terrorism drums up on the Christians in your midst.
And when done with them, look around …who is next? Well, there will always be the Jews. Losing ever so slowly the margin of protection that the slaughter under Hitler gave them in the mind of anti-religionists. Anti-Semitism is already on the rise…. it is only waiting for a few opportune doors.
Secularism is never the way to handle the problems of religion in a society. It is only a neutral space, and as such, if forced and if the perimeters are pushed, it only creates a vacuum. And here is the reason why:
The power of the state will only be useful for imprisioning and killing in this case, to change the hearts of men you have to use something that is spiritually better. More effective, that wins over his heart.
It is a lesson which must be learned in dealing with the Muslims in our midst as well. We are spiritual grounds, more and more, and less and less people are equipped to deal with it.
Maxed Out Mama has some significant things to say on this same topic.
Guess I won’t be taking that long dreamed of fly-in fishing trip to Canada. I’d be jailed pretty quickly ’cause they ain’t shuttin’ me up about the best News the world has ever known.
I wouldn’t be so hasty, Mark… they are just talking right now, but state-directed religion is very scary stuff. Does anyone read Brave New World or 1984 anymore?
Freedom allows for failure, but that doesn’t seem to jive with utopian thinkers who are sure that they can remake humankind given the chance.
Really , people, like you, who joyfully share the Gospel are the answer. Keep on keeping on as we used to say in the old days 😉
Ilona, freedom can only survive if we are willing to admit failure. It is those who aren’t willing to allow other people the chance to fail who have killed so many in the name of whatever the ideal was.
I know you have written, and written well about freedom and the fact that religion alone did not give us what we have now. We have the freedom to pursue our own salvation, but we only got it when we allowed others to pursue their own understanding of God.
For me, this is because freedom itself is God’s plan. he allows us free will and the chance to accept his way with understanding and by a conscious choice. To attempt to short-circuit this plan is to attempt to make man’s will God’s will, which is the ultimate heresy in any religion.
And I agree utterly with your point in this post. This is raised now to suit a long-held agenda, but those who push the topic do so because they believe that people will be willing to act now in fear. Just very, very well said and apposite.
You said it best:”those who push the topic do so because they believe that people will be willing to act now in fear. ”
I think this is what we find on more than one front. People are running scared and getting panicked. It seems to happen on both sides, and while there are true enough crises, panic creates opportunity for our worst fears to happen it seems to me.
Stiffened backbones and voices of reason are what I would like to see- on the side of freedom.
I don’t know I think you’re making too big a fuss about it. Some retired professor sprouts some radical views (on public broadcast radio!) and now all this doom-saying? Last year a prominent Muslim (who happens to be a professor at my university) public stated his opinion that liquor should be banned from all universities, there was the same brouhaha, and now you’d be hard-pressed to find anyone who even remembers his name.
It’s something to discuss of course, but a “can of worms” that we have to “try and keep a lid on” or whatnot? Hardly.
Arethusa, I respectfully disagree and this is why:
I have a basic philosophy that what is promoted in the abstraction of philosophical ideas and becomes accepted as a model at that stage will eventually work its way down into the basic society.
You probably didn’t pay close attention, but what was being proposed was nothing less than a state-run religion of the strictest sort, maybe Canadians don’t find that threatening, but Americans do. It held components of censoring in the area of what people are allowed to think and believe, it held implications of not only punishment but interventions for those who don’t follow the state prescribed religion and practices.
I can see many problems with this.
I’m not saying that what the man is proposing makes sense or is something that should be adopted, but until I see more evidence that it’s actually being taken seriously by anyone then I’ll begin to feel “threatened”.
“I have a basic philosophy that what is promoted in the abstraction of philosophical ideas and becomes accepted as a model at that stage will eventually work its way down into the basic society.”
That’s swell but where’s the evidence of, I emphasise, one fellow espousing on public radio, filling the criteria of anything that’s becoming “accepted”? Unless you’re upset that he got a chance to say anything at all?
I just don’t like situations to be exaggerated. Facts is what I like to deal with. 🙂
Oh I should re-phrase a bit of that because here we are taking it “seriously”. My point is that I don’t fear the expression of ideas that I violently disagree with, unless the current climate is ripe for it’s fruitation. Are you saying that’s the case in Canada (of all places)?
Arethusa, I am an American… I hold to those basic ideals that you can say anything you want. It doesn’t concern me that someone says something, but who says it and which way the wind is blowing.
“until I see more evidence that it’s actually being taken seriously by anyone then I’ll begin to feel “threatened”.”
That tells me you don’t fully understand how these things work. By that time, it does no good to be concerned… you will be too far down the pike to make much difference. Certain freedoms lost, certain ideas instituted, are far more difficult to turn around, because of the sheer force it takes to change the mind of a majority, or depose an empowered elite.
I’ll make my calls when I think it might possibly do some good.
You haven’t addressed any of my points. You keep telling me that you believe this and that, so I ask you for evidence to back this up and you hit me with more declarations about the same belief.
I repeat: a retired prof comes on a radio show and expresses an opinion. Where is the evidence that this is a “can of worms” that indeed the “wind is blowing” some kind of way, and there is currently a powerful elite acting at work to enact his ideas into being? You have to give the people something to get excited about, you can’t just tell us that we “don’t understand” and “need to act now” b/c you’ve detected the scent of oppression. Facts, ilona, facts is what I deal with. Pleas show me how this sort of opinion is gaining tract in the Canadian public, that it’s becoming ‘accepted’.
I’d just like to remind you that it’s not Canada who is dealing with the big struggle between religion and government. No one’s pushing Creationism in the classroom here or having a hissyfit because the government funds parochial schools.