Symposium addresses religious freedom

By Lethbridge Herald on September 24, 2024.

Bruce Clemenger spoke about religious freedom, political creeds and limited governments at the A Religious Freedom Symposium on Saturday at Southminster United Church. Herald photo by Justin Seward

Justin Seward – Lethbridge Herald

Bruce Clemenger opened up the guest speaker side of the Lethbridge Friends of Religious Freedom’s A Religious Freedom Symposium by talking about Religious Freedom, Political Creeds and Limited Governments at Southminster United Church on Saturday.

“State can’t do certain things because it has to respect the religious freedom of all communities in Canada and that often the state claims to be neutral,” said Clemenger.

“It claims that it can be areligious or non-religious and I don’t think it can be.”

Clemenger doesn’t see  faith being separated from politics.

“Faith is a dimension of life and all politics will be animated by some set of beliefs, some world view, some, what  one philosopher called, comprehensive doctrines,” said Clemenger.

Clemenger challenged that states could be neutral.

“States have to realize that they need to be even-handed in how they treat different faith groups,” said Clemenger.

Clemenger thinks when politicians and judges decide on laws, that an explanation will be required and will be understood with other faiths.

“They can’t be sectarian, they can’t say  well the Bible told me I had to rule this way, but they have to come up with reasons that are recognizable by … different faiths and that way we keep the cohesion,” said Clemenger.

The topic is a long-standing passion for Clemenger.

“One is a robust defence of  religious freedom, but coupled with a strong understanding of the need for mutual respect,” said Clemenger.

“So we’re going to make it work in a plural society where we all have different faith belief systems and coming together. One we need to learn to respect one another even though we could deeply disagree (with) what they believe, or what they say or how they live and the second thing is we need to affirm that we all have freedom of conscience.”

 Clemenger is the senior ambassador and president emeritus of The Evangelical Fellowship of Canadaa.

“The theme of the symposium is can religious freedom be a force for unity in society,” said Richard Low, who was part of the symposium’s organizing committee.

“A lot of times people think about  religion as a device of force, I mean we see wars, we see contentions all over the world and sometimes religion gets brought into that as an excuse or as  a justification. And our whole theory that we’re going to talk about is that’s not really what religious freedom is all about. Religious freedom is really about being able to tolerate other people with different beliefs and living together in peace and harmony.”

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