News

What do voters have a right to know about candidates who stand for the highest offices in Canada or the United States?

Personal misdeeds, youthful errors and long-ago writings — recorded and accessible now because of the Internet age — have tripped up numerous candidates in the Oct. 14 Canadian election campaign.

But the underlying religious or personal beliefs of the five men and women leading their parties here have not been the subject of the kind of intense debate that has surrounded the American presidential and vice-presidential candidates.

Democratic nominee Senator Barack Obama has been the subject of a false rumour campaign saying he's a Muslim, and the racially tinged sermons of his longtime former preacher caused problems for his campaign earlier this year.

When Prime Minister Stephen Harper won the last election and ended his victory speech with "God Bless Canada," there was a huge outcry alleging he was introducing American, un-Canadian and fundamentalist values into our country.

But otherwise, most Canadian voters know little about the religious, or deeply personal non-religious, views of our five party leaders?

Should we?

Does what and how they worship, or what their core beliefs are, have any impact on how we vote? on how they would perform their duties in office?

To further that debate, we at globeandmail.com have invited our semi-regular group of faith panelists and free thinkers to write about those issues and to take your questions on the topic.

This is not one of our regular "live" discussions. Rather, each panelist will write a short essay on the question:

Should a candidate's religious leanings or other basic personal beliefs matter to voters? If so, why?

The essays are published below.

In addition, the panelists will take your questions later today on their essays and on the issues raised.

The members of our panel are:

Michael W. Higgins is President of St. Thomas University in Fredericton and past president of St. Jerome's University in the University of Waterloo.

Dr. Higgins is a broadcaster, author and co-author of numerous books and CBC Ideas series, including Heretic Blood, The Muted Voice, Power and Peril and Stalking the Holy.

Lorna Dueck, an Evangelical Christian journalist, writes a monthly column for The Globe.

She is also executive producer of Listen Up TV , a weekly newsmagazine on spiritual perspectives in current events, seen Sundays on Global TV, and Thursdays on CTS, Salt and Light TV and Christian Channel.

Rabbi Ed Elkin has been the spiritual leader of the First Narayever Congregation in downtown Toronto since 2000.

Born in New York, he graduated from Princeton University and has worked or studied in Canada, the U.S. and Israel.

Sheema Khan also writes a monthly column for The Globe. She has a Masters degree in physics and a Ph.D. in chemical physics from Harvard. She has worked in R&D, is an inventor and has worked at law firms in intellectual property law.

Ms. Khan also served as chair of the Canadian Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR-CAN) from 2000-2005.

Justin Trottier is Executive Director of the Centre for Inquiry Canada, advancing secular humanism and skeptical inquiry throughout the country.

He is a contributor to Free Inquiry, Skeptical Inquirer and Humanist Perspectives magazines, and hosts the Course of Reason podcast.

Editor's Note: globeandmail.com editors will read and allow or reject each question/comment. Comments/questions may be edited for length or clarity. HTML is not allowed. We will not publish questions/comments that include personal attacks on participants in these discussions, that make false or unsubstantiated allegations, that purport to quote people or reports where the purported quote or fact cannot be easily verified, or questions/comments that include vulgar language or libellous statements. Preference will be given to readers who submit questions/comments using their full name and home town, rather than a pseudonym.

Lorna Dueck: Yes, it does matter, and those views are the first thing some of us look for in a candidate.

Beliefs shape a person's worldview and that affects their character, their treatment of issues, relationships, how they react to life, it influences everything about a person.

However, if someone has the same worldview and belief structure as I do, that does not mean I vote for them.

It's just one part of understanding the candidate. They still have to pass the test of having the wisdom and leadership skills necessary for political life.

But true to what you might expect from an evangelical Christian, I do want to know what Canadian political leaders believe about God, and so we asked them.

Here's a preview of their video responses from our TV broadcast going to air this Sunday on Global TV at 11 a.m.

Elizabeth May, like six million other Canadians, attends church each week and described herself as among the league of Christians who "look at policies for ourselves, and we can ask ourselves, what would it be that the Scripture most asks us to do? And it's not to condemn others, it's not to be judgemental, it's to work to eradicate poverty. If there's any one simple message through Scripture that everyone can understand, it's the message to end poverty. That's what Jesus Christ asks us to do."

Jack Layton says he derives his entire concept of service from his upbringing in a home of staunchly held United Church faith views, and his teen education in his dad's Bible study class.

Mr. Dion described his beliefs as "hope," using his Roman Catholic upbringing as his point of reference, saying: "I hope that there is a God, who's a God of love and who is able to bridge all the religions of the world."

Mr. Harper and Mr. Duceppe's managers have not declined to answer the faith question, but they have yet to create a time to answer it. I believe they're stalling, hoping the deadline will pass.

I am a voter who listens carefully to fuzzy statements like that and I appreciate the limited dimension it adds to my evaluation process.

It is politics which hold the primary foundations for how systems are able to treat people.

As a Christian, that matters profoundly. Education, health care, justice, the economy, are all fundamental issues for the dignity of people, and all gifts of God's grace to our culture.

The more I can know about the people governing those ideals, the better.

Justin Trottier: As a secular humanist, I feel a great dichotomy pulling me in two directions.

Free speech is fundamental and candidates, like all individuals, should have the right to express themselves freely. But we demand government neutrality between religions and between those with and without faith.

These two positions run against each other when candidates begin invoking god or accepting endorsements from religious leaders.

I'd like to put forward a solution and perhaps it's radical to everybody: Let's open the public square completely to the fullest debate. Let's allow candidates to bring their religious values and beliefs into the open, but let's also reopen the public square to the assertive defence of secular values, like personal autonomy, equality, toleration, and self-criticism.

Let's have them compete in a free marketplace of ideas where shared norms may arise as consensus develops.

Could this work? I think it already does. Consider the press. The press is free from state coercion and publicly open specifically so that citizens have a forum in which to contend with each other and work towards solutions to complicated societal issues. The press is not in this sense private.

Two caveats here.

First, this scheme will work only if nonbelievers are represented in public discourse on all relevant issues of ethics, value and identity, and if all beliefs — religious and secular alike — are equally open to the most aggressive forms of criticism.

Secondly, just as the press is free from coercion specifically so that citizens can debate on an equal footing, then similarly the infrastructure of the civil public square must be at all times neutral.

This is impossible if the government favours a single worldview, say with constitutional preambles stating the supremacy of god, god-invoking national anthems, prayers to open legislature, and publicly funded schools of a favoured religion.

Secularism is the very prerequisite for a meaningfully open public square.

Now when it comes to invoking religion during speeches in which an individual is acting in his or her capacity as official leader of a nation, as opposed to an individual simply running for office, then as a public servant and representative of the diversity of their citizens' beliefs, they should similarly bear in mind how ending a speech with "god bless Canada," for example, may damage the openness of our public square.

One final word. Though its clear I vote to keep the public square open, I would urge politicians to consider whether it's worth mixing religion with campaigning.

Look at what we've seen over the last several months: John McCain distancing himself from John Hagee's endorsement after his anti-Catholic remarks. Barack Obama distancing himself from Jeremiah Wright following his racist epithets. Sarah Palin's Assembly of God removing sermons from its website given by witch-hunting Pastor Thomas Muthee. And, closer to home, Stephane Dion's admission on The Michael Coren Show that he was playing the crowd by artificially harping on his religious convictions on television.

There's a pattern here and my message is simple. If candidates think their religiosity should be an attraction to voters, they shouldn't scream discrimination if voters end up being turned off instead.

Rabbi Ed Elkin: Voters clearly have an interest in knowing where the candidate stands on fundamental issues of concern to them.

Sometimes, a candidate's position on these issues is influenced by his/her religious beliefs. So, for example, if you're a voter for whom the issue of abortion is one of your top priorities (one way or the other), it is legitimate for you to look into how a candidate's religious beliefs and allegiances affect his/her position on that issue.

However, there is a world of difference between questioning the role religion plays in a candidate's life, and deciding one's vote based on their religious affiliation.

The current whisper campaign about Barack Obama insinuating that he is a Muslim is scurrilous on two counts.

First, it's untrue. Sen. Obama is a believing and practising Christian.

Second, suppose he were a Muslim? Does that suddenly disqualify him for the presidency? Is American society still so narrow-minded and prejudiced as to reject a candidate solely because of his religious affiliation?

Whether Canada is any better is hard to say — minority candidates seem to have even less chance of attaining leadership in our political parties here than in the States.

The key for any voter should not be a candidate's religious affiliation per se, but rather her/his views on the issues important to that voter, and the extent to which the voter feels the candidate has earned his/her trust.

No religious community is uniform, so knowing a candidate's religious affiliation does not necessarily get you any closer to knowing their views on the issues of the day.

There are pro-life Catholics and pro-choice Catholics.

There are evangelicals whose main focus is stopping stem-cell research or promoting the teaching of Creationism, and evangelicals whose main focus is the alleviation of poverty, disease, and slavery in the Third World.

There are Jews who support the policies of the current Israeli government, and other Jews who vehemently oppose those same policies.

There are Muslims who are sympathetic to al-Qaeda, Hamas, Hezbollah, and other radical groups. There are other Muslims who abhor them.

So knowing a candidate's religious affiliation does not necessarily tell you much about their core beliefs or what positions they would advocate in office.

Deciding one's vote based on the religious community they affiliate with rather than their personal record and positions on issues is simply prejudice.

Religion is one piece of information for a voter, but nowhere near the most important.

Michael Higgins: The question of faith and politics — as opposed to faith in politics — seems to be especially vexatious for the Canadian electorate.

Is it because we fear going the way of our American friends, by which I mean that the spectre of theocracy looms large on the horizon?

Or is it beacuse we have decided, or had it decided for us, that religion, spirituality, and/or faith must have no role to play in the political arena in the very interests of preserving the commonweal?

Undoubtedly, the national preference for abiding by the canons of courtesy and good manners — a bit stretched during the current election — says something about our reluctance to make the private religious beliefs of our parliamentarians the subject of public discussion.

And our collective anxiety over the sometimes divisive role religion in its more sectarian form has played in Canadian political life warns us against going down the street of sacerdotal interventions, ministerial admonitions, and unsettling displays of religious zeal.

So, best to keep religion isolated or marginalized as a factor in voting because it will bring us no social good.

There is something to this argument for sure, but our failure to take religion seriously as a component worthy of scrutiny and reflection in an election campaign undermines our capacity to see the personal faith of a parliamentarian as a positive feature and consigns it to the dustbin of privacy.

We know that a number of MPs have religious affiliations and that many of them understand their call to public service as a social consequence of their faith.

What is to be lost by knowing more of that faith as it shapes and defines a politician's worldview?

Faith and fanaticism are not the same thing. Political integrity is not compromised by religious fidelity; public leadership need not and should not demand the jettisoning of one's spiritual life; and faith and public life do not lead inexorably to theocracy.

There are plenty of examples where the narrow focus of a particular religious position can pose serious threats to social cohesion and harmony and what better way to fight it than to have full transparency in the public light.

Genuine faith is not a synonym for mindless dogmatism; genuine faith does not reduce the moral complexities of life to a simple-minded mantra; and genuine faith does not generate or foster hostility toward those of alternate perspectives.

Anti-faithism, to coin an awkward term, is as much to be feared as the excesses of religious fervour. Neither has a place in the public arena.

But why should we allow the caricatures and distortions to define the reality?

If a candidate subscribes to an ecclesial movement like Opus Dei, I want to know what that means.

If a candidate advocates on behalf of a scientific heresy, I want to know what that means.

If a candidate espouses a point of view that calls into question the validity and eternal value of the disabled and vulnerable , I want to know what that means.

In fact, I am entitled to know what that means.

Sheema Khan: The premise of this debate — should we know the religious/non-religious views of candidates — highlights one of the fundamental differences between Canada and the United States when it comes to matters of faith.

Polls published by the Pew Research Institute have shown that Americans emphasize the importance of belief in God in shaping morality, far more than Canada and Europe. In the U.S., religion seems to play a far greater role (overtly) than in Canada.

As The Globe's John Ibbitson remarked recently on The Agenda, a U.S. President has to be a "good Christian" in the eyes of many American voters.

That is one reason that the "smear" campaign against Barack Obama (regarding his religion) has been employed by his detractors — which feeds on the fear and prejudice against Islam.

It is eerily similar to the criticism endured by John F. Kennedy, the first American Catholic President.

In Canada, the role of faith is a far more private affair — except, it seems, in Quebec.

For the most part, we have decided that our elections are akin to job interviews, and that a candidate's personal faith (or lack thereof) in God is not a primary factor in deciding how well s/he can discharge the duties of an MP.

This, one may add, is oddly reflective of our Charter — where religious discrimination in employment is unlawful (save for a few exceptions).

Like any job interviewer, we would like to know about the skill set of a candidate (based on their past accomplishments), their ideas on how they plan to execute their duties if "hired," and their general behaviour (i.e. are they reliable, respectful, etc).

The "package" that a candidate brings to the table is obviously shaped by his/her personal convictions. For many Canadians, if the skill-set/vision/character are present, the details of an individual's personal beliefs are not relevant.

For example, we like to think ourselves as a fair and inclusive society. Candidates who express contrary views are often ditched.

And, more importantly, there are believers and non-believers who work passionately towards a more just society based on the twin pillars of fairness and inclusiveness.

Alternatively, members of either group have, at times, been guilty of crossing the line.

In Quebec, the historical role of the Church in politics has shaped a different narrative. Following the Quiet Revolution, religion does matter but in a manner that elicits suspicion.

Witness the debate over "reasonable accommodation" regarding the role of religion in the public sphere.

Dr. Samira Laouni, a Montreal-area NDP candidate, happens to be a Muslim woman who wears a hijab. She was part of a contingent that went to Hérouxville to engage the community there. She has appeared before the Bouchard-Taylor commission and believes much in building bridges towards a cohesive society.

Yet, two weeks ago, she was subject to a brutal inquisition on radio, where the male host commented on how "sexy" she looked in her hijab, probed her marital life, attacked Ramadan, and then, asked: "If I were to rape you here today, you'd need witnesses to testify that you weren't consenting?"

Perhaps the biggest outrage is that there has been none — except for The Montreal Gazette, which printed a story headlined Politics 101: The art of staying calm in the event of obnoxious questioning about the incident.

We need to put a stop to the double standard that exists for minority and women candidates.

Jim Sheppard, Executive Editor, globeandmail.com: Thanks very much, panel. Many of our readers expressed a variant on this theme, so I'd like to make this our opening question for today.

Given what you have already written today about the importance of faith and/or non-religious beliefs and principles, can you elaborate on whether you personally can ever vote for someone whose policies you like but who has a very different set of underlying values?

Lorna Dueck: Yes, I can vote for someone whose values are formed from a different faith view than mine — Muslim, Hindu, Atheist. What will matter to me is the outcome of how those values are expressed.

For example, I watched the aboriginal policy discussion get scant attention in the leader's debate, and it affected my vote. I was looking for the leader who would champion the next steps after the aboriginal apology because my values are that we fix this crisis.

If an evangelical politician won't champion it, I will look for the person who will. It is one of the components I weigh in sifting through the values I see expressed in political parties.

When I read in The Globe this week that the Conservatives will not allow cabinet ministers to support any private member's bills that could reopen the abortion debate, that move against freedom of expression was a value that affected my vote.

Our moderator has been kind to tone down the edge that's attacking on this question of values, but I want to get right at what's bugging our readers Nick and Tony about my voice.

Guys, we could never expect politics to be an expression of faith values. Faith will be in the mix of the democracy and pluralism that is gathered in the House of Commons, but in that world of compromise you cannot discover the truth of Christian faith, or any other faith view of an elected politician.

At times, the political realm needs the faith world and uses it for concepts of justice, and ethics, but politics is one kingdom, the faith is another.

Tony, you cannot minimize the depth of Christianity, or other faiths, to characterize voices as a "type."

Even talkative evangelicals are so diverse you will not find them, as you describe, "goose stepping." If we have any uniformity, it is that we all agree our sin has broken our lives and the world and we are stumbling on a pilgrimage of redemption with Jesus Christ as our leader.

Rabbi Ed Elkin: I'm trying to imagine the scenario behind this question. I'm not sure how I know what a candidate's "underlying values" are other than through their policies and their record.

If a candidate's policy on drugs is to put more dollars into the prison system than into prevention programs, then one might conclude that the candidate holds an underlying belief that the abuse of drugs is a crime that must be punished, rather than a sickness that can or must be treated. And vice versa.

If a candidate's policy is to withdraw Canadian troops from Afghanistan immediately, then voters are entitled to draw conclusions about the value system that lies behind that policy — one that probably leans strongly toward pacifism, likely with a dose of anti-Americanism mixed in.

I don't know how else I would know a candidate's value system other than through their policies and their record — I certainly don't think I can divine it based on where, or how often, or whether they attend church.

If I'm not sure why a candidate has taken a position that s/he has, it's my job as a voter to ask, and learn from the response.

As a member of a tiny religious minority in Canada, I am very accustomed to voting for candidates who are not part of my own religious group, as long as I feel comfortable with their policies and their record.

Conversely, I could easily imagine voting against someone who is a member of my religious community, but whose policies are simply not acceptable to me.

As much as I take pride in seeing members of my community succeed in the political realm and in so doing contribute to Canadian society and democracy, they do not automatically earn my support. Policies and record of achievement are the key.

Justin Trottier: I think we first need to realize that a politician's espoused religious adherence can often be at odds with their values as indicated by their position on various significant ethical issues.

The best example would be the many Catholic Liberal leaders whose views on abortion have been diametrically opposed to those of their spiritual leader.

Due to the inconsistent manner in which many religious believers pick and choose what to accept from the buffet of their religious dogma, I can really only assume that a politician's policies — where they touch issues of ethical significance — stand for their underlying values.

However, if I should support an individual's policies on issues of economics, foreign policy or some other area where religion generally plays a smaller role, but fear their stance on social issues due to the influence of religiosity, then I will, like mostly everyone, be forced to decide which issues are of greater significance.

I cannot imagine that anyone ever agrees on every issue with the person for whom they vote.

It is shameful when so many, particularly on the religious right in the U.S., can be counted on to vote for those with no ability or experience simply because of their position on a few hot-button but really quite inconsequential issues (compare the bailout plan to same sex marriage) — which is the only explanation I can see for the invitation to Sarah Palin to join the Republican ticket.

Jim Kelly: Watching the leaders' debates last night and the night before I was impressed by the "round table" format which seemed to allow genuine person-to-person discussion and reduce political grandstanding.

I think the format benefited Elizabeth May and Stéphane Dion in particular because both of them are more comfortable in discussion, and neither has the hardened partisan experience of the other three leaders.

Does it matter that the personal spirituality or religious practice of any of the leaders did not arise? Probably not.

What is notable is that the grand scheme of Canadian politics goes unnoticed.

Dion is seen as a Catholic by Protestants — and therefore as a man who cannot be entirely trusted.

Harper is seen as a Protestant even, or perhaps especially, by secular Quebecers who feel they "own" traditional Catholicism even as they espouse secularism.

In the last federal election, Paul Martin made a fatal mistake. Seeing his poor showings in the polls, he proclaimed that Stephen Harper would ignore "the fundamental right of women to choose, and the right of same-sex couples to marry."

Both of those issues were so painfully unsettled among Catholic voters that they could not support a leader who espoused them.

Sheema Khan: Hi, Jim. Thanks for your perspective.

If I understand you correctly, you believe that an individual's religious affiliation can stir up issues of mistrust, based on past (or present) religious confrontations that linger in the minds of people.

The Protestant/Catholic divide is one example. In the U.S., John F. Kennedy's Catholic faith was subject to intense scrutiny.

I believe, however, that the problem is "war rooms" which seek to exploit these prejudices for political gain. Mario Dumont of the ADQ successfully used this strategy in the Quebec election earlier this year.

In the U.S., prejudices against Islam have been exploited to attack Mr. Obama — to the point, where his own campaign organizers removed two young hijab-clad women from a Michigan stage during the primaries since it wouldn't look "good" for an obvious Muslim presence in a photo-op with Obama (Obama later apologized).

It is time for leaders to set the tone, and stop exploiting deeply-held prejudices by playing the religion card, or thinly-veiled references to religion.

By all means, we should know a candidate's views on matters that affect our present and future (such as the economy, the environment, foreign wars, etc), in a manner that does not descend to group demonization.

And it is up to the public to tell candidates that they will not accept the vilification of any member of our society — in keeping with our deeply-held values of fairness and inclusiveness.

M. San, Calgary: I find the biggest problem with any discussion on faith today is just how people view religion.

Many view religion simply as a subjective belief, comparable to your favourite flavour of ice cream. And if religion is simply a flavour, then of course it would be wrong to force that view on others.

But clearly, when religions claim that it is good to help the poor or bad to kill unborn children or that Jesus is not the Messiah, they are making objective claims that are either true or not. Those ideas are either true for everyone or for no one.

Yet when we open up issues like abortion, there is an insistence that we can't talk about it because it is religious — i.e. a preference. Is that fair?

And why when we talk about other religious ideas, like helping the poor, does no one try to censor those discussions? No one claims we are just trying to impose our religious idea of helping the poor on others?

Justin Trottier: I agree with the hypocrisy of allowing certain religiously-inspired ideas into the debate and not others, as stated explicitly in my opening essay, where I called for all ideas to be submitted to public scrutiny and shared norms, and clarified the fallacy of equating freedom from governmental coercion with freedom from public criticism.

A good part of the problem lies in polarizing certain issues so that one position becomes the religious stance and the other the secular one.

The value of helping the poor has not been polarized, as can be attested by many secular charities, and so there is little controversy.

However, when it comes to something like abortion, we find the playing field cleared between two ends.

Either you are a Catholic or evangelical Christian and pro-life, or you are a secularist and pro-choice.

It would help everyone to see how complicated the issue is, specifically the shallowness of our labels.

Many of my humanist colleagues decry the term "pro-life," considering their support for abortion to hinge on the desire to support the fullest life for the parents. But the term "pro-choice" is equally vacuous if it implies society has no business limiting any individual's right to choose what they can or cannot do with their own body.

Many, if not most, ethical problems will impact a rights analysis.

Should we force-feed an anorexic patient? Should we step in to force a blood transfusion for a child whose parents are more concerned with their religion than with their child's life?

Is it even acceptable to discuss these matters? After all, many would like to have the abortion discussion censored since it seems to impact personal autonomy.

Interestingly, few who support a woman's right to choose abortion seem at all concerned with the issue of men's rights.

If we are concerned with choice, it seems odd that a woman should have the ability to unilaterally appoint or withdraw fatherhood. Fatherhood necessitates at least 16 years of financial and personal obligation, ensuring, if a man was unprepared or surprised by the pregnancy, that his body is no more his own in a meaningful way for those years, than hers would have been for nine months of a forced pregnancy.

Nor do many secularists campaign to end the male-only mandatory military draft registration which still exists in the U.S. and several other countries.

We might also consider the great variety of abortion laws around the world, which differ in circumstances for allowing abortion (protection of woman's life, rape, socio-economics, etc).

Even within faith traditions, there is great diversity. We have Catholics United for Life but also Catholics for a Free Choice, Jews for Life but also the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism, Presbyterians for Life but also the Presbyterian Church (USA).

So in answer to the question, most so-called religious issues are not merely a question of what god did or did not command.

They happily have much more substance and are definitely amenable to consensus building in the public square.

Rabbi Ed Elkin: I take my religion seriously, and I think lots of other folks do as well. I believe the teachings of my faith as I understand them are true. One of those teachings is that someday God will send a Messiah who will resolve the conflicts and tensions and clashes that so characterize our life together as human beings.

In the meantime, however, while we wait, we have to do our best to address some of those issues as best we can in our inevitably flawed, imperfect, human way.

The best way that we have found to do that without killing each other is through democracy, and democracy is worked out through politics.

Politics has become a dirty word, but it is the only way that we have as human beings to strike the compromises which are necessary for us to be able to live with each other in one society.

So I honour compromise, and I honour legislation which doesn't make things perfect (perfection will always elude us in the human realm) but which makes things just a bit better than they were before.

Everybody believes that it is good to help the poor. I don't know of a religion or other value system that doesn't hold that to be true.

The question is how. Some emphasize soup kitchens, welfare payments, and giving to beggars on the street. Some emphasize taking measures that will lift the economy as a whole, which will create jobs, and therefore help alleviate the poverty associated with unemployment. There is no one answer, and each one has drawbacks and makes tradeoffs.

So I'm not sure how a religious belief in the importance of alleviating poverty necessarily leads to a particular set of policies for how to do that.

Everybody believes that it is bad to kill children. At what point a fetus claims the status of "child," however, is subject to dispute, among different religions and within religions as well.

And the value of preserving unborn life bumps up against other values which many people believe in as well, namely the dignity of women, and a recognition of the emotional and physical and psychological cost of bearing unwanted children.

Again, my faith holds that someday the toughest issues, like this one, will be resolved, by Heaven. But in the meantime, the only way we have to address issues like these as legal matters is by debating them in the democratic institutions we have, Parliament and the courts.

No one's religious beliefs should be censored in these debates, but neither can they be determinative, given the pluralistic nature of our society.

No one should be censored from expressing their religious belief that life begins at conception, for example, but if they want to make that belief the basis for legislation, then they have to understand that other folks will come back with different beliefs about the beginning of life.

The political and judicial systems will then have to sort it out as best they can. It's not perfect, but it's the best we can do.

Sheema Khan: Thank you for your observations.

Helping the poor, politically speaking, is not a contentious issue. Any politician, who derides this noble mission, does so at his/her own peril.

Abortion, on the other hand, is very contentious. As such, each side will not only buttress its own argument but also attack the other, sometimes appealing to emotion and fear.

And yes, the religion card will be, and has been, played. Is it fair? In some instances, yes. In some, no. It depends on how religion is brought into the debate, and whether such beliefs are denigrated or not.

Religious values have a profound impact on the abortion debate, and should be discussed openly, without being subject to vitriol.

But perhaps, we should take a step back, and realize that a politician's personal religious beliefs cannot override the interests of his/her constituency or our Charter.

Our system, as imperfect as it may be, is geared towards the "middle." If you read today's Globe article A Harper majority would tread lightly on Prime Minister Harper's strategy on incrementalism, it is clear that any party that wishes to have a long-lasting impact on the political landscape, must move to the center.

Similarly, political candidates who propose a vision that is out-of-touch with the majority of the voters (whether that vision is based on religious or secular ideology) will be dismissed.

Patricia F., Berlin, Germany: Is Canada in danger of becoming a country where the separation between religion and state becomes seriously blurred (as in the U.S. and Turkey) or disappears (as in Iran)?

Sheema Khan: Hi, Patricia. Thanks for the thought-provoking question.

First of all, let's recognize that there is no one-size-fits-all secularism.

The American political system, reflective of its people, has always had an infusion of religious discourse in the public sphere. I disagree that the separation between religion and state has become blurred in the U.S.

With regards to Turkey, we are witnessing a struggle between Kemalist forces [archly secular, akin to the laique system of France], and those inclined towards a system where faith is permitted in the public sphere.

Canada has its own evolution of church and state. In fact, it has not been uniform within the nation.

In Quebec, for example, the church had a tremendous influence in the province's politics, up until not too long ago.

Consider that Quebec was the last province to grant women the right to vote (in 1945), due in part, to restrictions placed by the church.

Now, the pendulum has swung the other way, where religious affiliation is often viewed with suspicion, and as a reminder of the past stranglehold by the church.

The "laicite" of Quebec is more reminiscent of certain European countries, than the rest of Canada. It is an interesting dynamic that cotninues to unfold.

The rest of Canada does not have the same recent memory of church and state issues.

As such, the dynamic between church and state has been far more benign [although our aboriginal communities may beg to differ]. In fact, the recent admission by various Christian denominations regarding their role [in partnership with our federal government] in the cultural genocide of our aboriginal communities, shows that dynamic between government and religious institutions continues to evolve towards a more just direction, whereby persecution of segments of our society, under the guise of religion/government policy, will not be tolerated.

In fact, it is the duty of every Canadian to work towards a society that is inclusive.

As such, I do not believe that we are in "danger" of blurring the lines.

Rabbi Ed Elkin: Patricia, I don't believe so. I believe our democratic institutions are strong, and will ensure a continued separation of religion and state in this country.

I can't think of a recent major piece of legislation or a court ruling which I felt imposed the beliefs of the majority religious culture on the rest of us.

The achievement of gay marriage in this country, confirmed by both Parliament and the courts, provides the best recent example that the religious beliefs of one segment of our society will not be allowed to interfere with the civil rights of other segments.

We must continue to be vigilant, but I think we're doing okay.

Lorna Dueck: Hi, Patricia. No, Canada is not in danger of losing its line between religion and state, but we are a country that is in danger of becoming ignorant of the facts of our faith lives.

That minimizes who we are, and how we answer the big questions of life and purpose, and countless small decisions that affect the way we treat each other.