"Christianity
Becoming a Dirty Word in Canada: "'Anti-Christian prejudice is the last
respectable bigotry, and it's worse in Canada than anywhere else in the
developed world,' says Jewish American scholar Michael Horowitz, an expert
on anti-Christian persecution.... Horowitz said this sort of polarizing is
'a dangerous game (the secular elite) plays for short-term political
advantage' -- suppressing Christian faith with Christian tax dollars.
There's 'no excuse for the bigotry the Canadian establishment shows toward
Christianity,' he said.... The pretext of this suppression is
'multiculturalism' -- the need to protect minority faiths....
"Vancouver lawyer Iain Benson...said: 'The problem is bigger than simply
the velvet oppression of the political and cultural elites, antagonistic
to faith. What we're dealing with is the corruption of Christianity
itself.'' Benson said church leaders cling to the nominal Christianity of
four-fifths of Canadians, ignoring the superficial nature of that
identification, their buying into the consumer culture, and their lack of
any real engagement with their own faith. Given their lack of fervour,
Canada's Christians are not only unlikely to threaten anyone; they are
clearly incapable even of defending their heritage....
"The secular establishment's slow squeeze on the country's fading
Christianity is taking place largely in the area of sexual ethics, Benson
said, because... 'sex is the mysticism of the materialists.' What began as
a movement to 'tolerate' alternatives to the traditional Christian
sexuality and its emphasis on the traditional family, has now become an
insistence on public 'affirmation.'... So the 'chattering classes''
continue to be antagonistic to the very existence of the church, because
of its latent claim to an independent moral authority.
"'What we see today is a triumph of the secular vocabulary, so that even
church leaders find themselves addressing social problems in terms of the
universal power of the state. The churches have lost any independent moral
presence in our society.'
"What does it matter if Christianity is exiled from the public square?
'The church invented things like public hospitals, schools and charities,'
Benson said. 'And we're discovering that these institutions remained
humane only so long as they preserved their original inspiration.'"