The Voice of Canadian Martyrs

Persecution of Christians - IN CANADA

Lest we think that the faith is not being persecuted, read on. I picked this up earlier in the week, but failed to write about it. This case has gone on for some time, and is sickening to Christians.

Scary Fundamentalist: The Voice of Canadian Martyrs

Fellow free speech and Christian bloggers Scary Fundamentals and Deborah Gyapong both have jumped on this. When I read SF's take, I could not just quote from his piece, so I have quoted it all here:

The Voice of the Martyrs is an international Christian organization in several Western nations that raises awareness of worldwide persecution of Christians and provides relief or legal aid when possible can. They routinely highlight cases in which Christians are killed, tortured, jailed, or otherwise persecuted by their government for their beliefs.

One of the cases of persecution that they have recently identified is in the backwards, third-world despotic hellhole of - wait for it - Canada.

The persecution of Canadian Christians by the government's Human Rights apparatuses is reaching proportions not seen in many non-Christian nations. India's government, for example did not foist such incredulous conditions on Mother Theresa's aid organization as we have seen in Canada with Christian Horizons, which provides care and education to thousands of mentally disabled in Ontario.

This has nothing to do with the fact that CH is partly funded by tax dollars, but rather everything to do with employment contracts. As a Christian organization that sees to the spiritual development of its patients as part of the service, each employee at CH was required to sign an explicitly Christian morality code before being hired. After one employee, Connie Heintz, revealed she was in a lesbian relationship, she claims she faced harassment and pressure for her to resign, which she did in 2000.

Christian Horizons has been through this before. It was taken before the apparatchiks in 1991 for firing two employees who were in common-law relationships.

The OHRC got involved in the Heintz case, and got the Tribunal to slap CH with a generous dallop of Human Rights "remedy"(hereafter referred to as "sentence") which will gut the entire Christian culture of the organization. The same fate is in store for any religious organization that hires anyone. The Ontario Human Rights Code's s.24(1) contains very little protection for religious organizations, government funded or not. Essentially, churches are only allowed to specify a religious requirement for pastors, but as for everyone else they hire, no specifications on faith or morality are allowed. I wouldn't be surprised if Barbara Hall, commissioner of the OHRC, will go one step further and advise Christian ministers to include the promotion of the state's version of "human rights" in their sermons, as they did in Britain.

Part of the sentence is a requirement that all of CH's employees take Human Rights reprogramming training, to abolish the "poisoned" (i.e. Christian) environment in the workplace. The organization was also punitively fined $10,000 for creating that Christian environment. So much for the "remedial" nature of the Code.

It is a sad state of affairs when Canada is now internationally recognized for its persecution of Christians.

It is more than time to stand up for the freedom to proclaim and live our faith as Christians. We must stand together against that which would prevent us from telling the truth. This is one example.