Last week, Prime Minister Mark Carney addressed a gathering of Jews at a Toronto synagogue. As the rabbi of Beth Avraham Yoseph of Toronto (BAYT) synagogue that was shot up by thugs in March, I too received an invitation. As it happened, I was spared the genuine dilemma of whether to attend a speech about antisemitism delivered by a leader who has — knowingly or not — contributed to that very hatred. At that same hour, I was officiating at the wedding of two wonderful young people from our congregation. I was doubly pleased to be part of a joyous occasion that is the real cure for the diaspora Jewry’s challenges.
To his credit, the prime minister correctly identified hatred as a growing problem and affirmed the necessity of pluralism and tolerance. He also acknowledged that Canada has failed its Jewish community. But as many analysts and editorialists have already noted, his proposed remedies — new legislation, increased security grants and an anti-racism council — fall far short. If you cannot name radical Islamism as a primary source of the problem, and if you cannot acknowledge that anti-Zionist rhetoric and policy are actively fanning the flames of Jew-hatred, then your solutions, however well-intentioned, will inevitably miss their mark.
As a theologian and member of the clergy, I found something else in Mr. Carney’s remarks particularly concerning — something I suspect most listeners passed over, but which to people of faith sounded like a dog whistle. Mr. Carney declared that Canada is a secular country, uncommitted to any particular religious values: “Our secularism is open. The state takes no side in the matters of belief, and the institutions of public life are not captured by any faith or identity.” It is this secular foundation, he argued, that obliges Canada to tolerate all religions and creeds.
Therein lies my concern. A nation grounded in secularism is founded not upon a creed, but upon the absence of one. Nature abhors a vacuum. It is exceedingly difficult to sustain tolerance for all beliefs when there is no overarching value beyond tolerance itself. Notably absent from Mr. Carney’s address was the word “God.” It is belief in the God of the Bible — not secularism — that has imbued western civilization with the moral resolve to care for the poor, pursue justice and make room for every voice within a polity. When God is absent from a nation’s mission statement, the barriers staving off the jackals at the gate have not been sufficiently fortified.
Consider that Canada’s own Constitution opens with the words: “Whereas Canada is founded upon principles that recognize the supremacy of God and the rule of law.” This language was enshrined in the Constitution Act, 1982 under then Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau. Canada’s founders broadly believed that rights derive from God, that government is constrained by a higher moral law and that religious faith nourishes public virtue. While belief in God is not a legal criterion for legislation, excising God entirely from the public square is both a tragic error and a betrayal of the values upon which this country was built.
