While common perception holds that post-secondary theological education has shrunk rapidly, Canada’s provinces actually continue to provide millions of dollars per year to subsidize directly or indirectly the study of religion and theology. Many professors in the humanities and social sciences spend time considering questions that would once have only occupied theologians. Most public universities in Canada have at least modest religious studies departments, with one or two professors working on issues of concern to the Christian faith, while other schools have world-class professors, research programs, library funds, multiple departments and affiliated schools of religion and theology.
If one were to include together direct and indirect funding, there is no doubt that, as a society, we are still spending a great deal on the study of theology and religion. Consider, for example, the hundreds of thousands of dollars received each year for conferences and publications from the federal and provincial granting agencies—this on top of regular salaries or funding from within the university. Though research is undertaken for a variety of reasons, there is no doubt that much of what is done in these institutions is meant to be useful outside the university.
Two points might help us think about the study of theology in government-accredited ‘research’ universities. First, the model of secularism in which religion would be erased from our society as the methods and goals of science advanced is less plausible than it once was. Canada continues to be home to myriad religious groups, especially Christian. As Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor notes in his monumental A Secular Age, another view of secularism in which faith becomes one option among many, is more descriptive of reality. We are not seeing the end of faith so much as its continued fragmentation.
Moreover, various religious traditions, including many Christian denominations, retain pockets of surprising health. And since immigration from countries in which religion still dominates politics continues to be strong, we will no doubt see increasingly the need to negotiate ‘reasonable accommodations’ for religious minorities. Do we want to leave such negotiation to the rotation of political parties or the courts?
Second, since our society continues to be home to such diverse religious traditions, we need venues to inform and debate. Though Christian theology is properly at home in the Church, it need not only be discussed within the Church or at church-run institutions. Though the work of these institutions is often commendable, it is not always accessible. Paradoxically, it may be theology’s very oddness and the offensive scandal that it represents to the present-day, politically correct consensus that make it especially important to the world of scholarship at the university. Seeing that significant resources for deep theological study still exist in Canada, those who might be discouraged should not give up, but seek to participate in conversations in profound and meaningful ways. There is still room for a new generation of scholars to join the many theological discussions that happen in a country whose changing religious population is discovering how to live together.
