Religion and Diversity in Canada

Many Canadians are pleased to think of their country as being open to religious and cultural diversity. This collection shows just how closed Canadian society has been throughout most of its history and, in some respects, still is. In the opening chapter, Peter Beyer provides a summary of the history of discriminatory policies of the Canadian government toward Native Canadian cultural and religious practice and toward nonwhite immigration. Change does not really come until the 1960s, and this, at least in part, can be attributed to the influence of the “Third Force” (non-English and non-French Canadians) on the Royal Commission on Bilingualism and Biculturalism resulting in an official Canadian government policy of multiculturalism. In addition, Beyer also provides an analysis of the relevant Statistics Canada data illustrating the growth of religious diversity in the last decades of the twentieth century, and a report on his own research on the nature of religious belief and practice among second-generation Canadian youth.

Biculturalism · Commission · Cultural assimilation · Cultural diversity · Cultural pluralism · Diversity (politics) · Ethnology · Government (linguistics) · Immigration · Multiculturalism · Neuroscience of multilingualism · Political science · Religious diversity · Sociology · Gender Studies · Law · Psychology · Religion and Society Interactions

• Battles Over Symbols

  Open Access•L G Beaman•Journal of Law and Religion•2013

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