By Glen Taylor
The recent Supreme Court of Canada decision against Trinity Western University (TWU) ought to raise the concerns of every Canadian over freedom of expression. Why? Because the Supreme Court has made a ruling based on a statement of the beliefs and practices of a law-abiding, private, religious institution.
What raised the hackles of the Supreme Court was not whether TWU law grads would be good, fair-minded, inclusive lawyers—only someone “Christianophobic” would believe otherwise in the case of a reputable school. Rather, it was the clear implication that a same-sex couple would not qualify under the terms of the TWU covenant (which includes its religious understanding that sex be limited to a man and woman who are married) and thus not be able to attend this private Christian school. (As a private institution, TWU receives no government funding, and is thus not accountable to taxpayers for its policies.)
No one can escape a sense of discomfort in the implication of a same-sex couple’s “exclusion” here. But surely we must be willing to pay the price that basic logic requires of us to be both genuinely diverse and inclusive—to recognize that there will be individual cases where no overlap exists between the way two groups self-identify. (Philosophers and logicians have a favourite example of this: one cannot at the same time truthfully identify as both a bachelor and a married person.) Ditto for TWU and the LGBTQ+ community on the issue of sex. But isn’t that okay?
Failing to recognize the uncomfortable truth of this logic, the Supreme Court of Canada has in effect said to TWU: change how you “identify as”—even though it is central to who you are and what you believe—in order to conform to the norms set by another group (in this case the law societies of Ontario and B.C.). And why? Because conforming to this other group’s norms is “what it takes” to “fit in” and thus to be included in Canada’s public life. (This is precisely the message TWU received, only in the language of non-accreditation.) How is this in keeping with Canadian values of diversity and inclusion?
The day seems to have come when it is acceptable to require religious groups to alter aspects of their in-house, core identity even on their own soil. This ought to concern not just religious groups. If the Supreme Court can put one group’s “identity as” on the offering block, nothing is stopping it from doing the same to any other group’s identity under different circumstances.
The idea of TWU explicitly having a Christian ideology seems to have made the Supreme Court nervous, but it need not. The truth is, every institution has an ideology (even if only to believe it has none). Any school that operates under the pretence of “objectivity” is not only dangerously naïve but misguided, believing what is impossible. That TWU knows and names its ideology demonstrates that it knows how, why and where its head is screwed on. Besides—and here is a little-known truth—as world-class philosopher Hans-Georg Gadamer definitively showed some fifty years ago, having an ethos or ideology does not impede discovery and learning in the field of the humanities and social sciences; it is, in fact, the necessary prerequisite for all such forms of inquiry.
Our society is in crisis for lacking firm, immovable foundations upon which to make moral and epistemological judgments. It seems there is no one—or too many—bases upon which to make moral determinations: legal precedent, sacred texts, ever-changing public opinion, and so on. What might be the solution?
In his 2004 book, Democracy and Tradition, Princeton Professor Jeffrey Stout suggests that democracy itself is a tradition and that, to be fair to everyone in society, we need to make room for various groups—including religious ones—to actually bring their value-based traditions to the table—for the purpose of seeking understanding, and ideally resolution. In this way, religious groups will be able to come to the table without, as they presently must (so it now seems), denying vital aspects of who they are, what they believe, and why.
Without an approach like that of Stout, religious groups will only continue to suffer from unjust marginalization, as happened on June 15th. It is time to take a lesson from the gains of the LGBTQ+ community by banning all gag orders against the core identity and beliefs of every legitimate segment of our society, regardless of their popularity.
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Clashes between Christianity and culture are not new. Indeed, they have been occurring since the foundation of the Christian faith. Learn to think more deeply about the faith/culture relationship from the perspective of worldview analysis, through "Theology of Culture." This course seeks to engender a cultural discernment rooted in a radical biblical faith.
