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PERSONAL OPINION
Anti-Christian prejudice

John H. Redekop

Presumably, among the vast numbers of readers who eagerly await the arrival of this fine family journal, there are some whose blood pressure is low. I have discovered a remedy. Join me as I review one of my files, a fascinating one entitled “Anti-Christian Prejudice”. It raised my blood pressure; maybe it will do the same for you.

In a recent article, national columnist Art Babych reviewed Canadian political developments. Commenting on Stockwell Day and his family, he wrote that “Day’s eldest son Ben and his wife, Karen, gave their newborn old-fashioned Christian fundamentalist names: Gabriel Isaiah.” Old Testament names have, apparently, now become both Christian and fundamentalist. How low will the press elite stoop in trying to make evangelical Christians look bad? I have met Mr. Babych. As I recall, he told me he was Roman Catholic. I’m disappointed. What’s wrong with these names, Art? Would you have ridiculed Jewish parents for choosing biblical names? Note: An important response/clarification/apology regarding this item was carried in the Jan. 11, 2002 issue of the MB Herald. In 1998, a memorial service was held at Peggy’s Cove, N.S. for the 229 victims of the Swissair disaster. It was a multi-faith service. Jewish and Muslim religious leaders quoted freely from their Scriptures. The Christian pastor who participated was, however, not allowed to read from the Bible or mention Jesus. The Canadian government dictated this rule. In Toronto last March, Scott Brockie, a printer, was fined $5,000 for not accepting a printing job requested by a “gay and lesbian” organization. A strong evangelical Christian and a supporter of families, he said that to do so would violate his conscience. The Ontario Human Rights Commission ignored his conscience scruples and denied his inherent right to accept whichever jobs he wanted. Brockie has done commercial jobs for homosexuals, but he drew the line at content which totally contradicted his firm’s values. An appeal board, which also ruled against him, said that he was “free to hold his religious beliefs and to practice them in his home, and in his Christian community”. The gays, meanwhile, were free to inflict their views on Brockie. In New York in 2000, Mayor Rudolph Giuliani decided to cut his city’s voluntary financial support of the Brooklyn Museum of Art after it hung a painting of the Virgin Mary with elephant dung and pornographic photo cut-outs. He was taken to court and accused of violating free speech. He was forced to continue with the prior funding and to pay an additional $5.8 million. The Vancouver Art Gallery has similar abysmal standards. In 1991, it purchased “Piss Pope”, a depiction of a bust of Pope John immersed in urine. Would the Vancouver Art Gallery ever treat Mohammed that way? Or the aboriginals’ Great Spirit? Of course not! Only Christians are fair game for such attacks. The excellent columnist Anthony Wilson-Smith observed in 1997 that Preston Manning “may be the only leader in the country’s modern-day politics who is regularly accused of being too moral” (italics in the original). Numerous reporters regularly poke fun at Manning, Stockwell Day and others for their faith values. The same reporters didn’t seem bothered when, in 1999, Lou Sekora (Liberal MP for Port Moody-Coquitlam) said that Reform MPs questioned the wisdom of the Nisga’a Treaty “because they’re racist” or when, at an NDP convention in Regina in 1993, buttons were sold with the words “Morons for Manning”. Obviously, real bigotry can stoop very low. In Vancouver in 1997, advertisements invited “all women” to attend an International Women’s Day planning meeting. When two ladies, members of REAL Women, tried to enter the room, they were refused. When one of them began taking pictures of some women leaving, she was grabbed and kicked. So was her partner, who tried to intervene. Apparently, in the eyes of these “liberated” women, “all women” does not include Christian women. And then there’s music, to use the term broadly. The Detroit rap sensation Eminem, according to a Nov. 15, 2000 report by Cheri Hanson, has lyrics “about killing his ex-wife Kim and raping his mother”. His language is so vulgar that I cannot reproduce it in this magazine. He can include the “sounds of Kim choking”, and the official media monitors obviously don’t mind. But these same authorities apparently had no objection when the CBC refused to carry national TV commercials for Campus Crusade for Christ. Apparently Jesus is more of a threat to society than is Eminem. Compounding prejudice with ignorance, a CBC official acknowledged that the CBC network had run Mormon Church ads but said that it did so “because they don’t promote a specific doctrine”. Finally, today, we have the case of Heritage Minister Sheila Copps, who put out a Heritage Canada calendar of “important” days, weeks and months. Christmas and Easter were omitted. The calendar was distributed widely to schools and other organizations before “Christian” pressure produced a halt.

Anti-Christian prejudice and discrimination are widely in vogue. In our day, intolerance of Christianity has become a hallmark of so-called toleration.

John H. Redekop is on the faculty of Trinity Western University and is a member of Bakerview MB Church in Abbotsford, B.C.

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Last modified January 11, 2002.

© 2002 Mennonite Brethren Herald.
Published by the Canadian Conference of MB Churches.
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