Many Canadians would say their country is secular. But Leslie Rosenblood, a member of the board of the Centre for Inquiry Canada, says it isn’t secular enough.
“We call ourselves a secular nation. And we are, compared to many countries,” he said. “Progress has been made, but there is still more to do.”
The centre, founded in 2007, is dedicated to promoting critical thinking, science and evidence-based decision-making to guide public policy. The organization, which counts just 326 paid members, has launched a national effort to make Canada an even more secular nation.
One area the centre would like to change is removing the advancement of religion as a charitable purpose, alongside the advancement of education, relief of poverty and other community benefits.
“It is based on the old assumption that advancing religion leads to good things,” Rosenblood said, noting that things such as residential schools show that isn’t always true. “It’s a presumption we challenge.”
Is religion a net benefit or cost to Canada?
Rosenblood isn’t against Canadians following a religion; he just wants the state to stop supporting it to the tune of more than $3 billion in charitable tax rebates, the centre’s figure. That money could be used for other things such as health care, he said.
Carolyn Innis, head of marketing at the Canadian Centre for Christian Charities, an umbrella group for more than 1,200 churches, denominations and ministries, disputes those findings.
For Innis, the Centre for Inquiry’s calculations about the cost of supporting religion in Canada fails to include the many ways religious groups actually are good for the country.
“Advancing religion is truly a benefit, not a cost, to Canadian society,” she said, noting their research shows that giving to places of worship through the tax system “generates more than a tenfold return for Canadians.”
Her organization bases that figure on the Halo Project, which finds a net benefit of $2.74 for every dollar places of worship spend — something that provides Canadian society with a net annual benefit of close to $14 billion.
“These same charities foster a large volunteer base to power vital programs, from food banks to children’s summer camps and support for newcomers to Canada,” she said, adding this makes religion “a powerful force for good.”
Rosenblood said his centre has no objection to religious organizations doing charitable work, such as providing food for hungry people or digging wells in the developing world.
“They can still do that under the relief of poverty,” he said. He is questioning the tax breaks churches receive and believes that aspect of the Canadian tax code is “rife for re-examination.”
Centre for Inquiry calls for change to how religion is measured
The Centre for Inquiry believes the way Statistics Canada measures religious involvement, through its census question, is misleading. Rosenblood said many more people actually fall into the category of no religion than the census shows.
Currently, the census asks the person filling out the form to indicate their religion, giving examples of different groups including no religion.
Since many people filling out the census might be older, they may be tempted to indicate the faith group they were raised in, Rosenblood said, even if they no longer are practising believers.
“We believe this significantly under-counts the number of non-believers in the country,” he said, adding the centre believes Statistics Canada needs to add a question about current religious status.
“This will give us better insight into the state of belief in Canada.”
Sarah Wilkins-Laflamme, a University of Waterloo associate professor who studies religion in Canada, said the call for change to the census question is, “the usual push by secular humanist groups to try and get more people to tick the ‘no religion’ box.”
Wilkins-Laflamme acknowledges the census does tend to undercount the non-religious a bit, but not in the way the centre says.
“The census is answered by the head of the household, usually one of the parents, on behalf of everyone in the household,” she said.
“The parent answering the census will usually say their teenage or young adult children still living at home are religiously affiliated, when in reality if you were to ask these kids more would probably say they have no religion.”
Additionally, the centre seems to conflate people who identify as culturally Christian — affiliated but mostly non-practicing — and the nonreligious.
“If you count those who are religiously affiliated but not regularly involved with a religious group as nonreligious, then yes, the census is not a good measure to capture this,” Wilkins-Laflamme said.
“But I don’t count this group as nonreligious.”
