Chris Selley: Want to be atheist? Be coherent first

[rug]

Calgary's Webber School should be able to refuse to accommodate prayer. But it needs to make a better caseStuart Gradon / Calgary Herald

Chris Selley | April 23, 2015 7:13 PM ET

If you run a private school with a position on religion, these are interesting times. Last month, the Supreme Court ruled Montreal’s Loyola High School was entitled to teach Quebec’s Ethics and Religious Culture curriculum from a Catholic perspective — that is, it said Catholics were not required to treat Catholicism as just another faith. You might ask: Why would anyone enrol his children in a Jesuit school expecting it to be neutral about Catholicism? Why would a government that strives toward neutrality in matters of religion allow churches to run schools and then presume to tell them how to teach about religion? But this is the country we live in. Many of our governments subsidize the religious schools they’re trying to nudge away from their faiths.

Now a Human Rights Tribunal ruling in Alberta raises another quandary: What if you don’t want any religion on your campus? Accounts vary wildly among the parties involved, but they agree on this much: Webber Academy, a highly regarded Calgary private school that calls itself “non-denominational,” informed two Muslim students and their families that they wouldn’t be allowed to pray anywhere on school grounds — not in the library, not in a vacant classroom, not in a closet. When the parents complained, the school refunded their deposit on the next year’s tuition and politely suggested they find another school.

And that wasn’t on, the tribunal concluded: “We find that Webber Academy’s standard of no overt prayer or religious activities on school property was not reasonably necessary to accomplish Webber’s purpose of maintaining a non-denominational identity that is free from religious influences, and that the students could have been accommodated without incurring undue hardship.”

http://news.nationalpost.com/full-comment/chris-selley-want-to-be-atheist-be-coherent-first

http://www.scribd.com/doc/259274261/Loyola-High-School-v-Quebec-Attorney-General-2015

http://www.canlii.org/en/ab/abhrc/doc/2015/2015ahrc8/2015ahrc8.html

Let's not forget, atheism, per se, says nothing about prayer in school, or elsewhere.

[cbayer]

1. They let them wear turbans and hijabs but not pray?

I agree that there policy is really inconsistent.

[struggle4progress]

2. I don't know what the law in Quebec is, and I would generally regard that

as a matter for folk in Quebec to sort out for themselves. I'm often somewhat predisposed to allowing private institutions considerable latitude, though I'm not an ideological absolutist about that. I'm also somewhat inclined to expect that good educational institutions should model and teach a certain tolerance, as that seems important for modern democracies