"We have to be Canadians first, and then other things are secondary or third degree. Multiculturalism up to now has been fantastic, it has brought us to a very important level, but we now have to take this to the next stage."
This observation comes from Baljit Singh Chadha, a highly successful Montreal businessman who emigrated to Canada from India in the mid-1970s. Chadha was interviewed by Peter C. Newman for a recent Maclean's magazine article about the New-Canadian Establishment.
Chadha expresses his concern that the immigrants of the 1970s and 1980s are facing the same sorts of problems, including discrimination, that the Irish of the 1840s and the Jews of the last century faced, and he wonders why society seems unable to avoid this.
He notes that part of the problem is that immigrants "are always drawn together where their own kinds are" and so live in relatively closed communities. "There are people who consider that the Malton-Brampton area [on Toronto's outskirts] is an Indo-Canadian ghetto," Chadha told Newman.
"If you go north of Toronto, there are Italian neighbourhoods. Same thing with the Greek neighbourhoods. In Côte St-Luc in Montreal, it's Jewish. Probably… because it's people of a certain stock, people don't call them ghettoes."
These words pose as deep a challenge to institutional Christianity as to society — not just in the broad moral sense, but with respect to evangelism.
This year, Canada will have admitted up to 245,000 immigrants. Most of these new Canadians will pour into our cities. About 1,000 people move to Toronto alone each week — that's about half the total population of peninsular Halifax.
What are church-going Christians doing about this third wave of immigrants? In the Presbyterian Church it's not Italians, Irish or Greeks but Koreans, Ghanaians, Taiwanese and Chinese.
This month's cover story on the Toronto Ghanaian congregation's new church near Pearson airport makes a useful case in point. On the one hand, it's understandable, as Mr. Chadha has observed, that this ethnic community would pull together to build their own church, and it's awe-inspiring to see how quickly this impressive facility has been built.
But was it necessary for the Ghanaians to build their own church? That's the $4.2-million question.
Did the Ghanaians feel welcome and comfortable in "white" Anglo-Scottish churches? Did Anglo-Scots Presbyterians make Ghanaians welcome and comfortable? Are the two cultures incompatible in this third-party land of Canada, where Scottish traditions, such as the infamous Kirkin' o' the Tartan are more common than in Scotland?
Cultural alliances have to do with the soul wanting to belong. The question Christians need to ask is whether in this postmodern world, cultural distinctions warrant distinct worshipping communities and distinct multi-million dollar buildings?
This is not a new issue in the church given the controversial establishment of two Korean Han-Ca presbyteries and their congregations. But it is never too late to revisit — from both sides — whether such decisions remain the right ones.
Creating religio-cultural ghettoes may create a sense of ethnic pride, but it is difficult to see how they strengthen the overall community of faith and how they witness to a gospel where there is neither Jew nor Greek.
Our Anglo-Scottish forebears built many edifices that are now crumbling and almost empty, in part due to the massive demographic shifts in the country over the past 50 years. As more immigrants call Canada home (both good and necessary), those changes will continue.
No business survives without a master vision that includes human and material resources. The church is no different.
We have to be Christians first and then Presbyterians, other things are third degree. Perhaps the success of the Korean, Chinese, Taiwanese and Ghanaian Presbyterians is best viewed in Mr. Chadha's terms: up to now, it has been fantastic. But we now have to take this to the next stage. All our cultures need room in our church.
