A Christian Country?

A newspaper referred to Canada as a Christian country because a majority of telephone respondents told pollsters they 'are' Christians, always keeping in mind that 'being' a Christian in a telephone poll does not necessarily entail going to church or reading the Bible or putting any thought or effort into anything religious. It may just mean you identify with it more than the other listed options. More to the point, if most of the Christians in Canada were Roman Catholic, would that make us a Roman Catholic country? My fellow Anglicans wouldn't want to think so.

What a country is, is not to be determined by who makes up a country. If most Americans are white would that make America a white country? Would you want it to follow policies based on its status as a white country? White-only immigration, a whiteness test for the Presidency? Canada may have more Christians than Muslims or Buddhists but you can't claim that makes it a Christian country, you can only say that more Canadians, when asked, identify with Christianity than do any other single answer. If more humans are Chinese than are any other single group, does that make humanity Chinese?

To know what a country 'is' you need to look at its constitution, laws, and institutions. The Charter says you cannot discriminate on the basis of religion - even in how you identify the country. The law makes no version of religion official. You don't even have to vote if you don't want to, never mind belong to a church, to be a citizen. There are, in fact, multiple religious institutions in Canada: mosques, temples, synagogs, churches of various denominations, even secular organizations. In practice Canada is pluralistic in every area, be it politics, theism, economics, sports, food, language, ethnicity. Officially it doesn't matter what 'most' Canadians like to eat, read, tweet about, or even who they vote for (you don't need the most votes to win power, only enough MPs).

Our laws are not based on Christianity or adultery would land people in jail and teenagers who disrespected their parents could be stoned to death. Our government is not based on the Bible or we would have liquidated the national treasury and given all the money to the poor in sub-Saharan Africa. Christmas is not based on Jesus anymore; even those who keep the Christ in Christmas also keep the Santa Claus and the presents and the turkey and the office parties and the commercialism in Christmas - we all do.

The place where church and state, religion and politics meet and mingle is in the individual, not in the state or its laws or our constitution or 'the country'. A person can be both religious and political, in whatever form, but a country cannot be religious. It has no self (say, no soul) and even believers don't really believe that Christ died to save Ontario from its sins and that Toronto can have eternal existence if 50% plus one of Torontonians will just answer a polling question the right way.

A Christian church is not one that is made up of Christian people unless it is doing Christian things. Otherwise, two Baptists getting into a car accident would make it a Christian car accident. Religion is religious people doing religious things. Churches are the way religious people do religious things. Canada is not the way Canadians do Canadian things because there are no uniquely Canadian values. You may have to believe certain things to be religious, but there is no value you have to hold to be a citizen, and no value you have to be a citizen to hold.