By Brian Dryden, Canadian Catholic News
[Ottawa – CCN] – You can learn a lot about Islam, Judaism, Christianity and other faith in books, but the best way to really know about another faith is through personal relationships.
And that is part of the rationale at the heart of a new Parliamentary all-party interfaith caucus that was launched during an online meeting that focused on the role that faith plays in a multi-cultural democracy such as Canada.
No one involved in the online discussion questioned the need for a multi-cultural democracy such a Canada to have a secular form of politics, but all involved talked about how a person’s faith does inform who they are, what they believe, and what their politics are.
“Faith plays a positive role in people wanting to get involved in their communities and wanting to get involved in public policy,” said NDP MP Daniel Blaikie, the new co-chair of the interfaith caucus that includes members from different religious and political backgrounds.
“What I hope is that we can implement a dialogue among different faiths,” he said during an online meeting that also included former politicians who shared their views on how faith plays a role in politics within a secular democracy.
Related article: Work of “Catholic Conscience” includes ongoing resources in-between elections: LINK
While the Parliamentary all-party interfaith caucus is new, it has been in the works for a couple of years and is only now getting off the ground because it was delayed by the COVID pandemic.
The new caucus, which is associated with the Canadian Interfaith Conversation and its member organizations, is being touted as a way “to promote dialogue between Parliamentarians and representatives and members of Canada’s religious communities on matters of shared interest and concern.”
According to the Canadian Interfaith Conversation (CIC), which is Canada’s national interfaith organization, it is hoped that the new interfaith caucus will help foster a dialogue about the “contribution” and “experiences” that Canada’s religious communities can bring to public policy challenges.”
As the charter of the CIC said, “The practice of religion and its impact on the identities of Canadians is an enduring feature of this country.”
“We want to promote harmony and spiritual insight among religions and religious communities in Canada, strengthen our society’s moral foundations, and work for greater realization of the fundamental freedom of conscience and religion for the sake of the common good and an engaged citizenship,” the CIC charter said.
Membership in the interfaith caucus is open to all Canadian MPs and senators and at this point has representatives from most parties in Parliament on its executive.
The Green Party’s Elizabeth May, along with the NDP’s Blaikie is caucus co-chair, and Conservative MP Garnett Genuis and Liberal MP Rob Oliphant are also on the executive of the caucus.
One of the people who took part in the online discussion June 16 was Canada’s first-ever Muslim Senator Mobina Jaffer, who spoke of facing a backlash when she was first appointed in 2001 and who raised Quebec’s controversial secularism law Bill 21 that she said “prevents Muslims from looking like Muslims” if they want to work in the public sector in Quebec.
But another participant in the June 16 online forum pointed out why even when discussing Quebec’s Bill 21, which has been criticized by faith groups and many other non-faith rights organizations across the country as an attack on religious freedom, there needs to be an understanding of the complete context of the law that can only come from further respectful discussion.
Former Bloc Quebecois MP Richard Marceau, who is Jewish and spoke during the June 16 online meeting, said it is important that viewpoints that come from faith and religion be heard during public debate, but that in a secular democracy those viewpoints do not have a veto and everyone should understand that.
He said issues such as Quebec’s controversial secularism law Bill 21 has to be understood within the context of why the law was enacted in that province, and the history of religion and especially the Catholic Church’s role’s within Quebec in the past.
While he said that as a Jewish person he is against Bill 21, he also said “you have to understand Quebec’s history” to understand why that law is so popular in Quebec.
“You cannot just dismiss that without some understanding of what the role of the Catholic Church has had (in that province),” he explained.
At the end of the day, Jaffer said dialogue between people of different faiths and backgrounds shows us all that we all have more in common with each other then there are differences regardless of what our traditions and backgrounds are.
“Our practices and traditions may differ, but our values are often the same,” she said.
-30-