Lise Ravary: Why the Quebec Religious Culture and Ethics Course Had to Go

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The French philosopher Voltaire (1694-1778) is said to have stated: “I would rather die misunderstood than spend the rest of my life explaining myself,” although this is also sometimes attributed to William Shakespeare. I wish I could echo that sentiment, but I feel compelled to explain once again the concept of secularism – secularism – and why Bill 21 is not racist legislation.

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Voltaire, one of the leading figures in the Enlightenment, a movement that placed reason above belief, was known for his criticism of the Catholic Church. He opposed church meddling in state affairs. He fought superstition, but he was not an atheist. He believed in a God who ran the universe, but he hated the churches for their intolerable arrogance.

Voltaire did not invent “laïcité”, which emerged about a century after his death. But it could be said that it laid the foundations in France. I mention Voltaire because I will try to explain secularism by placing it in its historical and cultural contexts. I am not trying to convince anyone to love Bill 21. I want people to understand why Francophones are widely supportive of it.

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Last week, Sophie Durocher, my former colleague at Le Journal de Montréal, wrote about François Legault’s decision to replace the course on religious ethics and culture imposed on all Quebec students in 2008 with a civics course focused on culture. and Québec citizenship to foster national pride and cohesion. This approach has its share of chauvinistic traps, and I hope the course will be closely monitored to filter out teachers who may see it as a vehicle to promote political ideals or a brand of introspective nationalism.

Let me explain why the ERC program had to leave. By law, Quebec schools do not teach religion, but this course placed great emphasis on religious life, presenting only its orthodox varieties as authentic. A friend told a story that illustrates the problem well. A teacher showed his class a photo of a group of Hasidic men dressed in full clothing and told the students, “They are Jews.” A Jewish student raised his hand and said, “My family is Jewish, but we don’t dress like that.” The teacher’s answer? “Well then you are not real Jews.”

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ERC textbooks only show Muslim women wearing hijab. Not all Muslim women wear the veil, so why is ERC trying to convey that impression?

Durocher applauded the government’s decision replace ERC with a civics course and harangue those who saw this decision as proof that Quebecers are narrow-minded and obsessed with identity politics. “Whenever Quebecers want to celebrate the strength of their culture, they are accused of rejecting others. So should we celebrate all cultures except our own? ” she asks.

The same is true of secularism, a principle by which the affairs of civil society and religious life are kept strictly separate, and which has defined French society since 1905. In Quebec, the seeds of secularism were sown during the Silent Revolution, when the Catholic Church was shown the door. At the time, few thinkers argued that the rights of religious people were being trampled on. It was done for the good of the people.

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In Quebec, as in France, collective rights triumph over individual rights. No one is right, no one is wrong: Francophones perceive the world differently. Blame Voltaire if you want, but he wasn’t the only one who wished church and state were separate. American founding father Thomas Jefferson coined the expression “a wall of separation between church and state.” However, the United States, a highly individualistic republic, failed to separate church and state.

We have been spending too much time on religious symbols. Laïcité is a rich intellectual tradition that takes nothing away from the freedom to choose religion and worship.

I accept that Francophones and Anglophones do not always see the world in the same way, because they come from different intellectual traditions.

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