By Stuart Parker, March 5, 2024
The grainy black and white video is truly shocking. A man wearing a facemask stands on the back steps of a historic Catholic church in Regina, and casually begins to pour an unknown liquid over the entrance. Bending down, he tries for several moments to ignite the accelerant. Suddenly, there’s a burst of flames. As the fire grows, the arsonist slinks off, likely pleased that he has struck yet another blow in the ongoing woke crusade against Christian churches in Canada.
An equally shocking moment occurred thousands of kilometres away, on Parliament Hill, in the wake of the arson. On February 13, just days after the fire, a Conservative MP stood in the house of Commons to ask for unanimous support of a motion condemning the attack. He was shouted down by Liberal and NDP MPs.
Thankfully, Regina firefighters were able to save the 118-year-old Blessed Sacrament Catholic Church. But across the country, there is an epidemic of arsons and vandalism against Christian churches – and the silence from some political and ideological groups is deafening.
The church attacks began in June 2021, about a month after the supposed discovery of a “mass grave” of 215 Indigenous school children at a former residential school in Kamloops, BC. Further investigations revealed no signs of a mass grave at the Kamloops site.
Who are the perpetrators? The video of the Regina arson showed what seemed to be a Caucasian man setting the blaze. And, the only person to be convicted since the wave of church arsons began is a white woman from Surrey, BC.
As the investigations into the attacks continue, one thing is clear – woke Canadians have been extremely reluctant to condemn the crimes. And that’s especially tragic since many of the targeted churches served non-white parishes. The first two churches burned in June 2021 served First Nations communities in BC, and since then, Filipino, Copts, and other multicultural Christian communities have seen their places of worship charred or defaced.
When the church-burnings began, Indigenous leaders formed a united front in condemning the attacks. Regardless of their political or ideological views, they spoke with a single voice to call for an end to the targeted arsons of on-reserve churches.
They pointed out that many Indigenous people still hold Christian faith, despite the legacy of residential schools, and that churches are often the oldest buildings in rural First Nations communities. These sacred spaces are more than just places of worship. They help to create a sense of community – places where families and friends gather to celebrate and to mourn, to educate, advocate and much more.
Shockingly, at the beginning of the arson wave, some woke Canadians seemed to not only support but encourage the church burnings. Over time, the rhetoric has cooled – but few woke voices today are calling for the fires to be quenched.
The current situation is reminiscent of the attacks on churches that took place in the American South during the height of the 1960s civil rights movement. Led by the Klu Klux Klan, White racists sought to terrorize Black Americans by bombing and burning their sacred spaces. Of course, not all White Americans took part in the attacks. But too many stood idly by – their silence seen as tacit support of the intimidation campaign.
Meanwhile in Canada, “anti-hate” groups and progressives in general essentially ignore the church burnings and vandalism, and instead focus on their own left-wing ideological agendas.
Why is this?
Let me be clear: I’m not saying that there is any kind of conspiracy directing these events. There’s no grand puppet master orchestrating a terror campaign against churches. Nor am I suggesting that police and prosecutorial inattention is part of any sort of policy. It’s just the natural outcome of the woke agenda that has captured the complete attention of justice and legal systems.
The intense focus on all things woke is especially worrisome considering that a broad swath of Canadian society – including many people of colour – disagrees with its tenets. When it comes to the sexualization of children, the destruction of women’s spaces, or assaults on the rights of parents, members of the Muslim, Sikh, and Hindu communities are leading the charge in opposition. And they’re finding common cause with another non-woke constituency – white working-class anti-authoritarian activists.
However, there’s yet another constituency that shares at least some of these anti-woke concerns – Black and racialized Christians.
I know this might sound preposterous to woke Canadians, but it’s possible for people of African descent, like me, to believe in climate change – and to advocate for the right of biological women to have their own spaces.
If more non-white Christians mobilized against the radical woke agenda, it would tip the balance of Canada’s culture wars. But every burned or vandalized church sends a clear message to this group – keep quiet, or else your church will be next.
My former political party, the NDP, was founded and led by churchmen. Tommy Douglas and J.S. Woodsworth believed that their policies were the expression of what was then called “the Social Gospel.” Over the years, the party (and its precursors) has been a strong voice against oppression and injustice, speaking out against Japanese internment during the Second World War, and in favour of the American civil rights movement. And now, in 2024, the NDP can’t bring itself to condemn a widespread and ongoing terror campaign against Christian churches?
In light of the church arsons in BC, many people of faith have reached out formally and informally to urge NDP Premier David Eby to take concrete action to protect the province’s Christian community. In response, the Eby government recently announced changes to the province’s hate crimes policy – however, the goal of the changes was largely to crack down on gender-, sexuality-, and race-based hate crimes.
People like Eby and federal NDP leader Jagmeet Singh seem content to ignore the literal fires that are consuming Christian churches, while stoking the flames of division to further their woke agendas. It’s an absolute affront to everything generations of New Democrats have believed.
Stuart Parker is a Vancouver-based writer and broadcaster who serves as president of Los Altos Institute, a socialist think tank.
