Discussion Group Report

A recent survey by a leading Canadian pollster, Angus Reid, of 3,000 American and 3,000 Canadian adults shows the following percentages answered "yes" in these comparisons (Canadian percentages listed first, Americans second): religion an important part of one's life 58% and 79%; pray weekly, 47% and 71%; attend church weekly, 21% and 40%; read the Bible weekly, 21% and 43%; the Bible is God's word, 28% and 55%, religion important to your political thinking, 19% and 41%; would vote for an atheist as government leader, 72% and 43%; would vote for a Muslim as government leader, 74% and 62%.

Don Page, a Canadian and former editor of The Humanist, in his article with the same name as this one in Humanism Today, volume 11, 1997, claims that Canadians are profoundly different from Americans in their religious commitment and expression and that they are among the leading Western countries in progressing toward the tolerant, secular and open society espoused by humanists. Why has Canadian society developed in this way while the United States is the most overtly religious and the least secular of Western countries? Readers will probably, as Discussion Group members in this month's meeting did, have differing views on Page's suggested answers to this question.

He says Canadians and Americans have fundamentally different histories. Canada inherited from Britain an empirical (evolutionary) approach to government and emphatically rejected the American idealistic (revolutionary) approach. "Americans have as secular a constitution as can be found anywhere--on paper. But human nature is perverse where prohibitions are involved, so that the practical result can be very different from that which was intended."

Canada's more empirical approach to its social institutions has allowed its society to become profoundly secular in a practical sense that American society has not. Contrary to the American view of Canada, the French-speaking and English-speaking parts of Canada are two communities that have been joined historically by a very strong tie--their mutual rejection of American-style libertarianism. The people of Quebec will vote for separate sovereignty only when it can be achieved while maintaining a close association with the rest of Canada, following the model of the European union. They have much more in common with each other than with their American neighbor. Except for the six million "true Quebecois" who wish to form an ethnic nation, Canada is a modern, cosmopolitan, democratic, new world state made up of a bewildering array of ethnic groups, more or less integrated. Richard Gwyn concludes that Canada is emerging as a new kind of nation-state. It is becoming the first truly postmodern society, the most open, pluralistic, multiethnic, multicultural society on the world scene. It exists as an act of will--to build a more gentle and ordered society than that of its American neighbor.

"The difference in the understanding and practice of pluralism," says Page, "is one of the reasons why Canadian and American religious norms differ--and in particular, why Canadian society is so much more secular in practice." The Canadian political culture reflects a classic social democracy on the European model--a result of the fact that Canadians never accepted the philosophy of individualism espoused in the American Declaration of Independence. Over succeeding generations, Canadian society developed and democratized more gradually, through an evolutionary process. Canadian society retains that organic characteristic that distinguishes a social democracy from the liberal American model, where the individual is held to be supreme and independent. This fundamental difference explains the distinctive characteristics that Americans notice about Canada--the relative absence of crime, the higher respect for governmental authority, making possible the enforcement of gun-control laws and the like--and the expectation of a social role for government in aspects of life such as the health care system with Medicare for everyone. "This organic quality in a social democracy is due to the imbedded sense of being a collective--or extended family" he opines. There is a sense of government as "us," in contrast to the "they" in the American attitude.

Page offers the explanation that the high incidence of conservative religious beliefs and narrow attitudes held by Americans that are disappearing elsewhere may be related to the American interpretation of separation of church and state. Statutory forms of prohibition usually lead to stubborn resistance by those affected and can only be effectively enforced if they have the support of an overwhelming majority of the population. It seems clear to an outside observer that the First Amendment is a constant spur that energizes the sizable minority of evangelical Christians. It is counterproductive to humanist objectives--leading to an endless social war and preventing real secularity in the U.S.

Why is success so elusive in the United States while pluralistic secularism is becoming the norm in the rest of the developed world? Page says the answer must be found in the structural differences between the United States and other countries. The U.S. is unique in being a libertarian democracy rather than a social democracy and in its rigid constitutional prohibitions regarding religion. In Canada taxes are used to support religious as well as secular schools. Its concern is with an end result using a different criterion. Canadians say, let humanists in each country do what is necessary to ensure that the system is fair to them. According to Page, "An idealistic mindset makes it difficult to see the other's viewpoint--and in its pathological form it makes compromise impossible." He charges that American idealism is the destructive factor in the American humanist movement.

Page's views are provocative and deserve consideration, but in reading them, I found myself asking, would eliminating the First Amendment requirement for separation of church and state really change the minds of many American Christian Fundamentalists about their determination to make America a Christian state?