Like many democratic countries, Canada continues to wrestle with the place of religion in public life, most recently in disputations on the role of military chaplains. Of course, except for spats over tariffs, things Canadian traditionally hold little interest for Americans. But these disputes north of the border both mirror and have lessons that Americans need to heed.
The Canadian government recently issued instructions for the Canadian armed forces on “Spiritual Reflections in Military Settings.” It restricts chaplains in public settings, especially those where personnel are required to attend, from referring to the tenets of their particular religion, including possible references to God. Instead, chaplains should seek to offer a generic “spiritual reflection.”
This instruction has elicited wide criticism. The Evangelical Fellowship of Canada (EFC), for example, headlined its careful statement “A Secularist Gag Order” and complains that the new policy “forbids military chaplains from not only praying, but from referring to God or the divine in spiritual reflections. They are being required to be publicly secular.”
Given past Canadian government recommendations on chaplains, suspicion and criticism are warranted. In April 2022, a previous “Minister’s Advisory Panel on Systemic Racism and Discrimination Final Report” stressed, in current postmodern fashion, that current policies were “rooted in the system that was created by European settlers. The systemic and cultural racism that is institutionalized in regulations, norms, and common worldviews in the Defence Team is a direct consequence of Canada’s colonial past and the associated treatment of Indigenous, Black and racialized people.”
The government’s commitment to its version of “inclusion” ends up excluding traditional religious practice. Its recommendations about chaplains, for example, criticized the Armed Forces for employing chaplains from religious denominations that do not ordain women, arguing that applicants from such groups not be considered for employment. Thus, it recommended that Catholic, Orthodox, Eastern Orthodox, and many Protestant groups, as well as many Muslims and Orthodox Jews, and others, be barred from chaplaincy. Only those espousing current orthodox secular opinions should be allowed.
This would likely exclude the religious representatives of most Canadians.
After a broad-based outcry, the report was quickly disappeared back into the bureaucracy. However, given this recent history, it is wise to cast a critical, even suspicious, eye on this latest instruction.
However, the Instruction is attempting to deal with a real and difficult problem. This is how to guarantee both the religious freedom and pastoral needs of all members of the Armed Forces while also seeking to ensure that the government does not favor one religion over another.
This Canadian policy concentrates on military chaplains but applies to all members of the Canadian Armed Forces, as well as civilians, contractors, volunteers, and others engaged in providing spiritual or religious services.
In attempting to address this issue, the Instruction delimits its restrictions to public events such as graduation parades, changes of command, awards ceremonies, mess dinners, or Remembrance Day ceremonies. In these, the chaplains are public representatives of the Canadian government and service members may be required to attend.
In contrast, Military and State funerals are not deemed public, so the ceremony may be shaped by the wishes of the deceased or the family.
In private counselling, voluntary worship, faith-specific gatherings and the like, chaplains are as free to pray as they were before.
We should also note that chaplains need to give their services to all who might need them. Thus, Father O’Brian may be called on to minister to a severely injured Muslim soldier, and vice versa. This requires sensitive pastoral insight, something not easily subject to general rules.
This illustrates a key question: how do you deal with diverse religious beliefs, especially in an official government capacity (chaplains are government officers) in addressing a religiously diverse audience, especially a captive one.
Bruce Clemenger, EFC’s president emeritus and a member of the Interfaith Committee for Canadian Military Chaplaincy (and, full disclosure, a former student of mine) correctly notes:
“In public venues, chaplains are often the ones asked to provide a reflection or meditation, historically a prayer of solace, as Canadians gather to remember those who served and continue to serve, and acknowledge the pain and suffering that accompanies this sacrifice.” However, with the new policy “Belief in something beyond humanity must now be privatized and the historic public ritual muted in its fulness.”
Previously, “chaplains gave a spiritual reflection or prayed a nondenominational prayer, they would offer a preamble that recognized that members of the audience would adhere to a variety of beliefs, including those who believe and those who do not believe in the transcendent or the divine…. Now even a mention of God or the divine is proscribed.”
In dealing with the very real problems when governments address religious diversity, the Canadian government, here as elsewhere, in fact represses diversity and instead proposes a secularity in which religion is to remain silent and unacknowledged, rather than be recognized and duly acknowledged in all its diversity.
It is a mistake to think that when, in your teaching or speaking, if you ignore something then you are then saying nothing about it. On the contrary, you are teaching that it is to be ignored. And you do this not openly and explicitly so that it may be recognized, questioned and challenged, but quietly and surreptitiously so that it might remain unquestioned. Ignoring something is a powerful teaching that it is to be ignored. (Here I have paraphrased a more eloquent statement of this argument from many years ago, but neither I nor AI have been able to trace the original quote. My apologies to the original).
Clemenger again: “This years-long debate over prohibiting prayer and now the mention of God or the divine has raised substantive issues about the role of chaplains serving in a religiously diverse context: how they can serve those of their own faith tradition while caring for all, the meaning of state neutrality and the nature of pluralism, and what fairness entails.”
Since there is no one public stance that will fit completely the real diversity of current religions in Canada, or the US, there is no simple answer to these questions. America currently seeks to do so via incorporating a generic civic religion in public occasions. This reflects the views of the vast majority of Americans, and is accepted by most others.
But it is an issue that will remain.
