Given the cantankerous tone of many commentaries provoked by the pope's visit, many will appreciate Evan Harris's measured contribution to the debate over the place of religion in public life. Free from the irate polemics seen in some recent anti-religious commentaries (here and here), his "secularist manifesto" invites constructive dialogue. Interestingly, although Harris suggests that someone opposed to the whole of his manifesto is "probably archbishop material", its intent seems to converge with the "procedural secularism" proposed by Rowan Williams a few years ago. Under this model, advocates of contending belief systems may freely advance their political views in public debate within accepted rules of democratic engagement but with no one belief system enjoying entrenched constitutional privilege. Williams distinguishes it from a "programmatic secularism", which would seek to impose a secular humanist belief system on society via state power. Commendably, Harris distances himself from any such imperious ambition. His 10-point manifesto contains much that many citizens of religious faith could endorse: his championing of maximum religious freedom, including the right not only to hold beliefs but to manifest them in public; his argument against the political privileges still accruing to the Church of England; his repudiation of "parallel" religious legal systems; his opposition to "unjustified" discriminatory practices against both religious and nonreligious belief systems in the public sector; his objections to compulsory school worship, to the use of public money to support proselytising, and to obligatory Christian prayers in parliamentary sessions or local council chambers. Yet alongside these legitimate objectives the manifesto contains troubling elements, which serve to undermine his professed support for the right to manifest religious belief. First, it proposes a restrictive interpretation of the right to conscientious objection within the public sector, which would be limited to "rare and specific" exemptions agreed by parliament. His stance is in accord with the trend of recent employment tribunal and court decisions but it departs from the generous British tradition accommodating conscientious objection wherever possible. Why, for example, must a marriage registrar be legally compelled to perform a same-sex civil partnership ceremony against her religious conscience when other colleagues are readily available to do so? Protecting conscience would not imply a "blanket religious exemption based on subjective feelings" but rather a better balancing of objective legal rights. Second, it fails to recognise that an effective right to "manifest" belief is not only individual but organisational. For many religious believers, manifestation is a corporate not a solitary enterprise, coming to expression in a wide range of faith-based educational, welfare, charitable, publishing or campaigning associations. Some operate outside the public sector while others come within its purview either through historical incorporation by the state (eg. church schools, religious hospitals) or through having entered into contracts with the state to pursue specific public purposes (eg. faith-based social service agencies). But Harris wants to impose severe legal restrictions on the ability of such religious organisations to act according to their distinctive religious beliefs the moment they enter the public sector, thereby frustrating the very reason for them existing as distinct bodies rather than mere replicas of secular agencies. For example, it could have the effect of coercing church schools into hiring staff who might repudiate the very religious beliefs or moral practices defining the school's distinct identity, or of preventing such schools from teaching RE from their own perspective. Third, it elides the distinction between a separation of church and state and a separation of religion and state. The meaning of the first is plain enough but Harris is worryingly unclear about what he means by the second. Like many who call themselves secularists, he claims to be against "banning religion from the public square", yet the tenor of this and other public interventions suggest a desire to keep it on a tight leash. Since at this point his penchant for detail is not on display, let me suggest two forms of religious public speech he might care to consider: 1. Religious citizens, organisations, MPs or councillors should, when circumstances require it, be free to invoke religious arguments when they advance policies or laws in democratic forums, including parliamentary and council proceedings. They should, like anyone else, do so within the constraints of legality and civility. 2. Legislators may quite legitimately be significantly, even primarily, motivated by their religious beliefs to support a law or policy, even though governments themselves would not invoke religious reasons to publicly justify official acts of state. In this way religious beliefs might shape the content of law just as secular humanist ones already do. The outcome would be a boisterous procedural secularism in which religious voices could make their distinctive contributions unconstrained by the sort of deliberative restraints often imposed by self-styled secularists. Presumably Harris would not object to religious citizens exercising the same kind of democratic influence over law as that available to everyone else. Those, at least, are some starters for discussion.

Peter Stockland on CBC viewpoint, about radical Islam and reading history in the news media age. Read the Viewpoint here.

Senior Fellow Jonathan Wellum on Business Network News, How to Position your Money. During the segment, Jonathan highlighted debt to GDP levels in developed and emerging countries, the need for government restructuring, and the importance to find investment opportunities in global business that provide essential products/services to the world's consumers. Watch his commentary here.

Join Dr. Robert Acuff as he interviews Alissa Wilkinison of The King's College in New York as they discuss the role of media as it effects culture. Alissa is also a contributor at World Magazine, Christianity Today, founding editor of the Curator, Associate editor for Comment Magazine and blogs at http://alissawilkinson.com/. Listen here.

If you want to see Canada's growing urban-rural divide play out on a cultural level, keep your eye on the fate of the annual Stampede Rodeo and Rangeland Derby, currently under way in Canada's fourth-largest city and a canary in the coal mine of social change. Recent predictions forecast that Calgary, which has doubled in size in 30 years to 1.1 million residents, will again more than double over the course of two generations to 2.5 million by 2050. My grandchildren's generation will live in a city roughly the same size as the Toronto of 2001, and with a similar demographic texture. How Calgary, which is already a modern urban environment, can expect to retain the visible expressions "ridin, ropin, wrasslin, and wranglin,"  that celebrate its unique cultural roots in what will become an uber-urban culture is a question that should dominate its civic conversation. But while most North American cities would kill for an identifying brand as robust as the Stampede, Calgary's elite is once again seeking to rebrand the city's image into something assumedly more modern. Calgary's development plans call for the importation of an additional 40,000 to 50,000 residents within its downtown core, creating density levels rivalling those in Manhattan and condo towers that inexplicably overlook the rodeo and chuckwagon competition venue. And while the city's talent and labour pool has traditionally drawn people from across the country, the baby boom's extinction-inclined levels of reproduction combined with the increased competitiveness of Saskatchewan and British Columbia means a steadily increasing reliance on new immigrants to sustain Calgary's economy. Indeed, as recently as two years ago, while Alberta's overall population growth continued, the province actually suffered negative interprovincial migration, which means more native-born Canadians were leaving Alberta than coming to it. Population growth is primarily dependent on new births and immigrants, without whom the economy would be grinding to a halt but who have no roots in or connections to a rural Canadian, let alone cowboy, culture. Inevitably, this will have an impact on the city's look, feel and sense of itself. Given that immigration is primarily to large urban centres, the gap will grow into a gulf between those cultures and those of rural Alberta and elsewhere in Canada where population levels are relatively stable, or, if you prefer, stagnant. Without the stimulation of economic growth in those areas, which will be increasingly rare as economies shift from the industrial to the technological age, immigrants won't be drawn to small-town Canada in enough numbers to influence and be influenced by rural traditions and values. The rural-urban divide, already evident in voting behaviour (Edmonton-Calgary vs. the rest of Alberta; Toronto vs. the rest of Ontario, etc.) is going to grow and grow. And, given that the Stampede is a celebration of profoundly rural roots, its marquee events may end up fighting for survival. Rodeo has already been forced to adapt to urban sensibilities that a generation ago would barely have been seen as sensible. Calf roping is now referred to as tie-down roping and, even more significantly, it and steer wrestling were eliminated a couple of years ago as events in B.C.'s Cloverdale Rodeo, which is one of Canada's largest. This followed an incident in which a calf was put down after its leg was broken. People raised on a farm have a deeply respectful but entirely different view (some would argue far more realistic) of livestock and their connection with humans than do people who live in cities. Downtown and in suburbia, the long-standing philosophical and theological line drawn between humanity and the world's other creatures grows ever more blurred: When animals are experienced primarily as pets and when food bountifully appears in grocery stores and restaurants without evidence of violence, the death of an animal is a tragedy. In the rural experience, animals die all the time; the event is neither rare nor does it evoke the same confused emotional response. Simply, it is nature. Maintaining a common language that can bridge the gap between urban and rural Canada will be among the great challenges of the century and, hopefully the cowboy, the cowgirl, and all for which they stand, do not become its most endangered species.

President Michael Van Pelt and the Cardus white paper, Living on the Streets, were quoted in an article in the July 7 National Post looking at the role of religious institutions in urban centres. Read the article here.

Having been singled out in a recent Holy Post blog by Justin Trottier, it is only appropriate to provide a response. It would be easy, even tempting given the girth of the rhetorical pitches he has thrown, to swing for the fences. I choose instead to offer the other cheek. Mr. Trottier and I agree that religion can be, has been, is and will likely continue to be a subject of division between people. Where we disagree is in understanding that it is just one of many tools used by human beings over the course of history to assert their desire to dominate. Other causes similarly abused to cause strife include differing views on trade, economic systems, ideology, pride, social justice, freedom, secularism, culture, language, etc. Honduras and El Salvador have gone to war over a World Cup qualifying match and the Trojan wars were caused by a dispute over a woman, Helen of Sparta, or Troy. None of this, of course, is reason to build barriers to prevent the participation of economics, ideology, women, football, freedom or social justice within the public square. That cleared up, my argument is not religious. It is sociological and based, not on faith, but on reason and empirical data collected by agencies such as Statistics Canada. Theists punch far above their weight when it comes to contributing to charities both financially and in terms of volunteer hours. Why or if this will forever be the case may be debated. That it is currently the case is not debatable. According to the Canadian Centre for Philanthropy and Statistics Canada, the 32 per cent of Canadians who are active in their belief make 65 per cent of the nation's direct charitable donations. Mr. Trottier may believe as he says that this is because they are funding purely evangelical causes such as, one presumes, the construction of clean water filters in African villages or the feeding and housing of the hungry and homeless at institutions such as Inn From the Cold, Mustard Seed and the Salvation Army, but the truth in this area remains inconvenient to his argument. Even in the purely secular donations sector, that same 32 per cent of believers donates 42 per cent of the $2.1 billion raised annually. Trottier and others need to consider whether their belief system is blinding them to the reality of empirical data. All of this would be neither here nor there if it not for the fact that this 32 percent, the civic core of Canada's giving sector, is declining by 1 to 2 per cent annually. As it declines, and assuming the trend continues, only one outcome can be reasonably assumed, that financial support for Canada's charitable institutions will decline along with it. Assuming that the need for services such as food and housing, offered both by secular and faith-based institutions, is unlikely to disappear, only two outcomes are possible. One is that the needs of the hungry and homeless will not be met; the other is that the burden of their care will shift to the state. One has then to simply ask the very rational question of whether it is more efficient for society to have these needs met by a $30,000-a-year Salvation Army soldier with a degree in social work or an $80,000 a year government employee with a degree in social work. This is to say nothing of the other enormous contributions made by the physical infrastructures of theist institutions to the social infrastructures of society such as the use of their facilities as day cares, seniors centres, Alcoholics Anonymous meetings, etc. I do not deny that people who share a non-theist belief system contribute. They are responsible for 35 per cent of Canada's total contributions, after all. So far, however, there is insufficient data to inspire confidence that as the theist-active civic core described above declines, a new civic core with a non-theistic moral code will emerge to pick up the slack. As Partis Quebecois leader Bernard Landry who as Premier of Quebec led one of western society's most vigorously non-theist societies was quoted as saying in Brian Lee Crowley's Fearful Symmetry: "The revolution (of the 1960s) changed so many things in such a short period. We made a break with Catholic morality and have been trying to build an ethical and moral code that is not linked to religion . . . and we haven't found a good way to do that." The rational approach in a truly open society tolerant of Mr. Trottier's beliefs and mine is to ensure the physical and intellectual contributions to the charitable needs of society is recognized and supported by public policy. The people served do not deserve to be the collateral damage of an intellectual assault on the people who serve them.

Forty days is too soon to identify reliably the trajectory of Britain’s Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition, but its 35-page policy agreement contains clear pointers to its intended direction of travel. The official line is that the agreement heralds the discovery of common “liberal” (in the European, not the American, sense) principles between the two parties. And indeed, David Cameron has sought to move the Conservatives toward a “liberal conservatism,” while Nick Clegg represents the more pro-free market and individualist wing of the Liberal Democrats. The Conservatives campaigned on the need for a move “from Big State to Big Society,” attacking Labour’s squeezing out of the independent responsibilities of individuals and intermediate institutions. In the agreement, such “Big Society” talk is blended with Liberal Democrat aspirations to “disperse power” and liberate individuals and local communities to exercise greater decision-making responsibility. Thus the document promises “to distribute power and opportunity to people rather than hoarding authority within government,” and to effect “a radical redistribution of power away from Westminster and Whitehall to councils, communities and homes.” But when we examine the policy detail what we find is a more complex view of the role of government. There is no straightforward transfer of authority away from central government to somewhere else. True, a raft of laws and several non-departmental public bodies are set for the chop. And many of the planned new measures are not imperative or indicative but permissive or facilitative. But whether the net effect of the overall program will be “smaller” or “bigger” government is not easy to predict, (though the drastic austerity budget of June 22nd will undoubtedly reduce the proportion of national income spent by the state). This should come as no surprise. The laudable goal of restoring proper responsibility to individuals and to a range of public and nonpublic institutions is not the same as simply “shrinking the state.” It requires the establishment of a multi-faceted framework of just public relationships across society as a whole. Sometimes this requires government to step back, at other times to step forward. Thus, for example, while the agreement contains several measures to lift the regulatory burden on businesses and reduce corporate taxation, it also envisages a welter of new economic interventions: to restore responsible decision-making in the banking sector, to require companies to report on their social and environmental duties, to reform energy markets, and to increase consumer protection. Further, while there are significant transfers of authority from central to local government, there are also measures which restrict local authorities in new ways: a freeze on local taxation, limits on their use of investigatory powers, and tighter rules on local authority newspapers. Equally, major decentralizations of power are envisaged for public services, yet alongside new mechanisms of regulation. In the national Health Service, for example, a bonfire of ministerial controls stands alongside newly-imposed national regulations: a uniform expansion of “best practice,” a beefed-up quality inspectorate, and new contracts for doctors and dentists. In education, parents and teachers are ceded new rights to set up their own (publicly-funded) schools, while central government is also set to establish new national performance tables and expanded disciplinary powers for teachers. The new UK government may prove an interesting case study of the central proposition of a “public justice” perspective: that statecraft is not simply about the reduction of government but about the proper attribution of plural social and personal responsibilities among many sources of social and political governance in a complexly interconnected society.

Gideon Strauss interviewed in Christianity Today as one of the movers and shakers in North American Christianity. Read his interview here.