Fighting Over God:
A Legal and Political History of Religious Freedom in Canada
By Janet Epp Buckingham
McGill – Queen’s University Press
In the 1950s, more than 1,500 Jehovah’s Witnesses were arrested under a Quebec law restricting their right to proselytize. Witnesses were attacked, their meetings disrupted, all without police protection. They fought back in the courts; and in 1959 the Supreme Court of Canada held Premier Duplessis “personally responsible for ordering the revocation of the liquor license of a Jehovah’s Witness supporter who owned a restaurant.” This case, along with other lobbying, led to the 1960 Bill of Rights under Prime Minister Diefenbaker, which moved “property and civil rights” from the jurisdiction of the provinces under the Constitution Act, 1867, to a national consideration.
That Bill of Rights affirmed “men and institutions remain free only when freedom is founded upon respect for moral and spiritual values and the rule of law.”
An argument could be made that the battle for religious freedoms has been a defining force in Canada’s story. While this book does not make that argument, it is filled with cases lawyers still use as precedence. For example, the treatment of the Jehovah’s Witnesses led Pierre Trudeau to think more about human rights, which in due time would lead to the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. The Charter, in neutralizing the relationship between religion and the state, has made many religious folk feel marginalized.
The conversation over religious rights and freedoms continues, of course. One only need look to Quebec and their Charter of Values, which in dealing with the issue of “reasonable accommodation” comes off as an arrogant assertion of a once homogenous culture. And that in many ways is the story of this book—of two separate cultures first accommodating each other and in that process learning to accommodate other cultures; that is moving from uni – cultural to diversity.
Janet Epp Buckingham is associate professor of political studies at Trinity Western University—a school currently in the middle of a reasonable accommodations consideration. TWU has a law school and wants its graduates to be recognized by the Bars across Canada. However, they also have a charter of values (Community in Covenant) which some in secular society consider in contradiction to basic human rights.
While the law school meets all accreditation, secular lawyers have argued the covenant denies basic human rights, and, to quote Clayton Ruby, “is inconsistent with law and democracy.” Buckingham closes the book with an appeal to diversity—that women’s equality cannot be used to force the Catholic Church to ordain women; and that gay and lesbian rights cannot be used to have a church change its definition of marriage.
This is an academic book and a slog for us non – academics; but, man, what a story. Church appealing to diversity in defense of its beliefs is a sure sign Christendom is gone.
