Canadian Board Decides Against Christian Program in School

April 30, 2001

      The Saskatoon, Sask. (Canada), public school board has decided not to add the controversial religious program Logos to the curriculum. The debate about how religion fits into the public education system has been ongoing since June of 1999, when Kenneth Halvorson, a retired Queen's Bench justice, ruled that reciting the Lord's Prayer discriminates against non-Christians. The school board removed the prayer at the start of the current academic year.

In a letter to Suzanne Turanich, interim president of the Saskatoon Logos Society, deputy director Karen Anderson wrote that "based on the advice of the board's legal counsel" the program will not be used. The board's lawyer suggested it would be unconstitutional to deviate from Mr. Halvorson's decision and the policy that replaced the Lord's Prayer with "personal reflection through a moment of silence or sharing a thought for the day."

Logos is an educational ministry founded in 1978; its programs follow traditions of biblical orthodoxy, and include morning routines of prayers, songs and Scripture readings. It would be an elective, so those not interested would not be exposed, Turanich said.

--Used by permission of Religion Today

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Canada Regrets Refusing Jews Asylum

Tuesday, November 7, 2000

    Christians apologized for a decision that resulted in condemning Jews to the Holocaust. Canada's government refused to allow 937 European Jews aboard the S.S. St. Louis to enter the country in 1939, The Ottawa Citizen reported. They were forced to return to Europe where more than half died in Nazi death camps.
    Baptist, Catholic, and other Christian leaders expressed remorse for the decision to 25 Holocaust survivors who had been aboard the St. Louis. Watchmen of the Nation, a Christian group, brought them to Ottawa to take part in the ceremony, according to the Citizen. "If Canada repents of our atrocities to the Jews, we're going to see God's power released for healing the French-Canadians" and indigenous peoples who have been hurt by government decisions, a spokesman for the group said.
    Christians share responsibility for denying the Jews access to the country, David Mainse, a Christian broadcaster said. He said he was ashamed not only that Christians did not protest the government's decision to turn the St. Louis away, but that "there were professing Christians who made anti-Semitic decisions."
    "I stand before you in great fear for I understand that my name is not one dear to your heart," Baptist minister Doug Blair said. His great-uncle, Frederick Charles Blair, had served as director of Canada's Immigration Branch and resisted appeals to let the St. Louis passengers in, according to the Citizen. Frederick Blair did not like Jews and had bragged about his role in refusing the passengers entry to Canada, the paper reported.

--Used by permission of Religion Today